Tiffany is a product of the NYC public school system K-12. From an early age, she became acutely aware of how crossing from one zip code to the other vastly changed educational opportunities despite remaining in the same public school system. Yesteryear’s de facto segregation continued years after she completed high school. It was when she began working as a Spanish and French interpreter subcontracted for the DoE that she found schools like hers or worse across the five boroughs. It wasn’t just the dangerously dilapidated auditorium seats or other subpar infrastructure, but the lack of adequate math and science classes K-8 to prepare students for some of NYC’s own public high schools much less an increasingly globalized workforce that troubled her. When Tiffany’s child was accepted to a science program for two- to five-year-old children, she was disappointed to see that there were no Black or Hispanic children in her child’s class that year or the following year. Below is an email she sent to the West Harlem Development Corporation outlining the long-term ramifications of delaying scholarship opportunities or investing in STEAM programs for pre-school children:

Put simply, NYC must invest more in our public schools starting in pre-K. As someone who worked in China in the early 2000s and witnessed how quickly China developed as well as how much both that government and families invested in education, Tiffany knew that it was both possible and vital. While Tiffany does not believe in a teach-to-the-test approach, eliminating the SHSAT, for example, will not level any playing field if we don’t prepare our students from the beginning.

District 7 schools need a real-world approach to curriculum reform and we need to properly invest in our public libraries!