Political Quotes

“The American Families Plan recognizes that childcare is infrastructure, and that it is not enough to settle for any childcare that enables a parent to go to work. This needs to be high-quality childcare that every child can access. Babies are born learners, and it is well established by brain science that a child's environment and interactions in the first 1,000 days of life, whether positive or negative and long before they enter a kindergarten classroom, are highly formative during this critical period for learning and growth. When those formative early childhood experiences include inadequate nutrition, homelessness on other adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, such as those brought on by a global pandemic, we know that a child's brain and body are changed in ways that are linked to poor health and learning outcomes later in life. Without reliable supports in place to buffer our kids from the stress, that stress can quickly turn toxic. The good news is that ACEs are preventable on a national scale if we are collectively willing to put in the investment worthy of our kids. As the Representative for New York's 16th District and a former educator and school leader, I believe our goal for healthy early childhood development needs to be more ambitious than the prevention of ACEs, which aims to protect our kids from the worse effects of stress and trauma. That should be the floor.…”