Our City's Youth: Beyond Education and into the Community

Sacramento County, CA

March 7, 2000 Election

Our City's Youth: Beyond Education and into the Community

By Julie Padilla

Candidate for Mayor; City of Sacramento

This information is provided by the candidate

The City needs to take charge of after school education day care, neighborhood, recreation and youth counseling centers.

As much as the law and moral dictates will allow, we cannot allow another generation of Sacramento's children to grow up in one of the worst urban school systems in the state, and certainly in the nation. Regardless of the recent press hype about our revitalized school system, it is still in desperate shape, and not for lack of funds. SCUSD and the GHSD have over $6500 per kid, per year, to spend on educating them. That's $195,000 per year for a classroom of 30 students. That's a lot of money that needs to be spent efficiently, ensuring that more dollars go directly into the classrooms rather than into administrator salaries. I intend to use the mayor's position as a bully pulpit in order to aggressively push the city schools to continue to improve. I intend to remind everyone that every day we squabble another child is lost. Over 60% of our African American and Latino students are failing! SCUSD has over 3500 students that have failed to learn enough English to be educated in English, even though they have been there over 5 years. That is unacceptable. If the city school scores don't improve I intend to ask the State for help. I will not allow the status quo to continue without all of us being a thorn in their side and a supporter as well. Good intentions are not enough; results are what will count. If I sound harsh it's that the current realities for our students are so bleak and poor. Over 75% of the SCUSD students are persons of color. My job will be to help convince all Sacramentans to help them out.

My number one priority as mayor is to get our kids off of the streets and into productive after school activities. We need day care centers so that parents can either work or get the training they need in order to work. We need neighborhood centers that bring the community together and offer youngsters intelligent alternatives to joining gangs and just "hanging out." We need counselors and counseling centers that help troubled teens and offer them real guidance when it comes to the serious issues of teen pregnancy, contraception, parental abuse or neglect, drugs and/or alcohol. And, it would be my extreme pleasure to oversee the formation of and to chair a "Youth City Council" that would function in much the same way as the city council, that would have a budget (subject to approval), and that would have members appointed to represent different districts within the city. We need to recognize the importance of our city's youth not only when it comes to problems but solutions as well.

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