Education, Opportunity & Jobs
Nate’s top priority is public safety. (You can read more about his plan here). But Nate is also focused on education, opportunity and jobs. You can read more about his policies below.
Nate’s top priority is public safety. (You can read more about his plan here). But Nate is also focused on education, opportunity and jobs. You can read more about his policies below.
Nate’s top priority is investing in Baltimore City schools. Our schools receive almost half of their funding from the State of Maryland. During Nate’s first term in 2019, the Maryland State Legislature will be revising the state formula that determines exactly how much funding our city gets relative to other jurisdictions. Nate will be a strong advocate for policies that recognize the need of Baltimore City and invest in our young people.
Where we invest in education matters just as much as how much we invest. Nate will focus on:
Education policy is complicated, but one thing is simple: kids should never have to sit in freezing cold classrooms or sweat in burning hot ones. Nate is making a simple promise: No school in our district will have to shut down again for a single school day because our heating and air conditioning systems don’t work. Nate will make it a priority to make sure that every single school in the 46th District is prepared for any weather conditions and will hold school administrators accountable.
What happens after school matters just as much as what happens in school. Today, only 15% of Baltimore City public school children have access to after-school programming. Nate will work with nonprofit organizations, companies, and city, state and Federal agencies to expand after-school programming opportunities, especially for low-income children. As part of that effort, Nate will help to re-open recreation centers, like the rec center in Cherry Hill.
Summer jobs program provide tremendous benefits for young people: they provide structure outside of school, reward hard work, impart job skills, and open up new opportunities. Each year, Baltimore City struggles to find funding and job placements for the tens of thousands of young people that apply. Nate will make summer jobs a priority, building on his work at the Obama White House where he helped secure hundreds of new paid jobs at Federal agencies for Baltimore City youth.
Baltimore is blessed to have several local breweries, including nine members of The Brewers Association of Maryland, serving up world-class local beers. Our neighborhood breweries create jobs, spur neighborhood revitalization and repurpose industrial spaces, and as importantly, make terrific beers. Our state legislature should be fighting for our local small businesses – not backing the big four beer monopolies. That’s why Nate is proposing to eliminate unfair regulations on microbrews and fight for our hard-working community entrepreneurs in Annapolis, building on the work of the Reform on Tap Taskforce.
Entrepreneurs and small business owners create jobs and keep resources in our neighborhoods and our city. When elected, Nate will focus on policies that encourage entrepreneurship and business creation, including subsidizing child-care for low-income entrepreneurs and enacting the Angel Investor Tax Credit. As an advocate and booster for Baltimore, Nate will also work to bring private investment into the city.
Economists have calculated that to cover even basic living expenses, a single adult in Baltimore City needs to make almost twice the minimum wage. If elected, Nate will fight for a statewide $15 minimum wage. Such a wage would help lift 98,000 workers out of poverty in Baltimore alone, creating a virtuous cycle of growing wages and spending.
Baltimore has always thrived because of the its strategic location on the Chesapeake Bay. Today, the city sits along major highway and freight rail lines with one of the best deep-water ports in the country. That’s why the city has seen such strong job growth and investment from companies like Amazon and why we are seeing a revival of the old Sparrows Point as a new center for logistics and light manufacturing. The State of Maryland can help to drive this growth by investing in the city’s infrastructure. As a first step, we need to renovate the Howard Street Tunnel to allow double-stacking of freight rail cars.