We have collaborated with community members and organizations to create a comprehensive education policy platform that centers justice and equity for our entire community and state.

We need community schools that are resourced and skilled enough to develop the whole child, not just academically, but also socio-emotionally, artistically, and athletically. Current definitions of school “quality” create a tyranny of quantitative performance measures contingent on overtesting and business modeling. Instead, Fatima envisions building creative learning environments that enable students to choose whatever paths they want to pursue as adults, all while affirming their identities regardless of language differences, legal accommodations, cultural backgrounds, or any other needs they may have.

As a teacher, Fatima will support all teachers and other school-based workers to cultivate these learning environments, with equitable compensation and treatment. Through the passage of a holistic Community Schools Bill, she will advocate for:

• The elimination of standardized tests. 
• The funding, staffing, and training to ensure schools can support the diversity of students that benefit from our public education system and the varied student needs that stem from experiences youth and families have outside of a school’s gates.
• Data disaggregation based on race and ethnicity, so that our school systems can be more nuanced in understanding the experiences of specific communities in public education.
• An overhaul of History/Social Science, Science, and English curricula to integrate principles, lessons, and stories from Ethnic Studies and about climate change to interrupt lessons that perpetuate narratives rooted in white supremacy, environmental racism, colonialism, imperialism & militarism.
• The development, expansion, and funding of outdoor education opportunities across all school districts with the goal of having every student, every year, participate in an outdoor experience which includes climate literacy instruction.
• Implementation of the FAIR Education Act, which would provide schools and districts access to textbooks and curricula that include inclusive histories, and educators the support in building cultural competency and navigating implicit biases to be able to teach the content well. 
• Ensuring teacher education programs require new educators to build knowledge and skill in creating affirmative learning environments, including coursework in anti-oppressive and anti-racism pedagogies.
• Ensuring the reinstatement of affirmative action into California’s higher education system, especially since Proposition 16 did not pass on the November 2020 ballot.

Fatima will also fight to increase funding for public education through a combination of: 

• Revising budget allocations from using average daily attendance to using cumulative enrollment, allocating more money for larger, more diverse student bodies that may experience absenteeism due to systemic barriers in healthcare transportation, displacement, housing, immigration status and more. 
• Ending the privatization of schools
• Pausing the creation of any new schools that contribute to the thinning of student enrollment in our public school system so that we can launch a plan to ensure that the health of our public education system is sustainable and strong in the long-term. 
• Expanding the state’s block grant allocation toward special education funding, alongside advocacy for full federal contributions (currently promised but unfulfilled).
• Re-working funding sources for pension payouts to relieve school districts as a primary source for pensions, while ensuring that employees receive their pensions. 
• Defunding school police and using that additional funding for supports that are currently missing in schools such as mental health supports and additional trauma informed counselors.
• Supporting the overall vision for Schools and Communities First, which ensures corporate accountability for contributing its share of taxes to public schools and services, especially because Proposition 15 did not pass on November 2020’s ballot.

We are focused on championing robust policies of care that will bring the systemic change we need. Fully free and high quality universal pre-K is a critical first step to achieving equity in California. This will help improve outcomes for children, ease burdens on families with young children, increase the ability of parents to enter the workforce, and allow us to to better invest in our incredible childcare workers.

On the opposite side of early childhood education, we must also strengthen our students’ ability to access college, which is why we are proposing tuition-free 4-year public colleges & any other post-secondary training. We know that access to college is critical to being competitive in today’s job market and to earning a livable wage. We also want to equip today’s students with the knowledge to become tomorrow’s leaders in combatting climate change. Lack of access to college right now is a huge form of inequity and systemic racism, and tuition-free 4-year colleges is one step to addressing this issue.

We know that we need increased education spending as a state and ensure a massive reallocation of funds to Black and Latinx schools. We have plans for how we can raise the revenue we need to truly invest in our students, including repealing Proposition 13 for commercial businesses worth more than $3 million, bond measures for infrastructure investments, and raising taxes on the top 1% of our state. I also support the Schools & Communities First Act, as a phenomenal start to raising the revenue we need. For our children and for the success of our future economy, we need to make public education a top priority.