When it comes to education, we don’t need a little change, we need monumental, structural, transformative change. I believe the national pay average is a good start, but not nearly enough to appropriately compensate our teachers considering how imperative their roles are in educating Virginia’s children. They are literally holding our futures in their hands and when teachers aren’t stressed due to outside circumstances that more often than not are financial in nature, the quality of education improves and is injected with more care and consideration when molding these young minds. How can we expect teachers to provide the world-class education our children deserve, if they’re worried about paying their bills and putting food on the table? In addition, I will strive to decrease classroom sizes by adding teachers aides to classrooms with more than 15 students, as countless children suffer from COVID learning loss— as well as students that suffer from ADD/ADHD and are falling through the cracks, all while our teachers are stretched thin with overcrowded classrooms and increased workloads here in PWC and Fairfax Counties.

Traffic and infrastructure in PWC & Fairfax Counties are some of the worst conditions in the nation. We need 21st century transportation solutions to resolve the extensive bottlenecking and multiple chokepoints we face here in Northern Virginia. Its challenges are felt on the daily, (hourly) by a great many here in the Commonwealth. I have already begun conversations with local and state officials and organizations as to how to best approach expanding the Metro and BRT to and through Woodbridge— which will assuredly alleviate the congestion along the I-95 corridor. Commuting isn’t just rough on our cars and wallets at the pump, it is also time away from our families.

I want to address our Housing Affordability crisis by crafting legislation that increases income based housing in lower income areas, and dismantle the strongholds select corporations have on our communities, monopolizing the area and slowly raising rents in the process. Effectively freezing low earning families out of the market.

We have an obligation to protect our environment and to do this, we must protect our natural resources, and more high emission vehicles aren’t the answer. 

We must lower greenhouse gas emissions by further incentivizing manufacturers to produce more energy efficient cars, trucks, products and materials— as well as taking on the task of updating building codes and mandate criteria that supports this initiative. For developers to use and install Energy star rated materials. Also, as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, there were tax credits extended to incentivize energy efficiency in order to achieve this very goal.