Education
As your State Senator, I will fight to direct more of our State’s education dollars to Northern Virginia classrooms. We need the resources to give our children the educational advantage they need to be competitively successful in the global marketplace of the future. As the mother of two young students, this means a lot to me.
We also need to make sure we are getting the best value for our education dollars. The “Standards of Learning (SOL)” system has established a valuable measurement to help assess our performance. It is important and useful, but is not the only measure worth tracking. I will work with our County school boards to ensure that the lessons of behavior, responsibility, and involvement continue to be taught as a priority in our schools. These are often the attributes that get our kids into the best colleges and jobs for the rest of their lives.
Virginia’s state supported Universities are among the best in the country, but well qualified Northern Virginia applicants are often denied acceptance while up to 30% of enrollment goes to out-of-state students. This causes families who paid Virginia taxes to pay again. We can do better. Using market forces, I will support changes to the formula for tuition to increase the expense for out-of-state students and make more room for our own children in these fine Virginia schools.
Similarly, the Thomas Jefferson Institute in Fairfax County is one of the nation’s top magnet schools but is no longer able to accept all qualified applicants. With the abundance of science and technology jobs in Northern Virginia, I see the need to charter more schools like “TJ” that will be able to offer the same quality education to our region’s gifted students. As a scientist, I want our children to have the math and science skills that keep these high wage jobs here in Virginia.
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