MIAMI – Obama for America-Florida this week launched Educators for Obama to amplify President Obama’s record on education and engage educators across the state in the campaign’s organizing efforts.
“I support President Barack Obama on his education agenda because he allows all of the stakeholders to have input,” said State Rep. Dwight Bullard, who teaches at Coral Reef Senior High School. “Teachers, parents and students all have a place at the table when it comes to formulating policy.”
President Obama believes a good education is an economic imperative that cannot be a luxury for just a few. Education leads to good jobs, it keeps our middle class strong and is the key to ensuring the U.S. out-innovates the rest of the world.
That’s why President Obama has made education a top priority since taking office. When tight budgets forced states to lay off thousands of teachers, President Obama acted immediately to keep 300,000 educators in the classroom. He expanded Head Start and Early Head Start access to an additional 64,000 children across the country so that more kids start kindergarten prepared for success. And his landmark Race to the Top initiative is investing in state innovations to raise graduation rates and close the achievement gap for 22 million students.
To help make college more affordable, President Obama created and extended a tax credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college and expanded Pell Grants to help nearly 4 million more students.
His jobs plan would support 325,000 jobs for teachers and educators in our schools, including 22,000 in Florida, preventing state and local layoffs that undermine our schools and communities.
But Mitt Romney has a very different vision. Romney opposes smaller class sizes, which help students get the individualized attention they need from teachers, particularly in the earliest grades. By his second year as governor of Massachusetts, schools saw the second-largest percentage cut in the nation on per-pupil education spending, and throughout his term, the cost of college skyrocketed.
Mitt Romney would abandon a generation-long national commitment to trying to improve our schools and would place budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest ahead of good schools and affordable higher education.
To learn more about President Obama’s education record and to join Educators for Obama, visit: http://www.barackobama.com/educators.
