IssuesPolicy Platform

Strengthening Education

As a longtime teacher and educational leader with a PhD in Educational Leadership and Policy, I have a rare combination of policy expertise *and* practical classroom experience. I will work to make our public education system stronger and more equitable for all students. Investments in our educational institutions are investments in our students and investments in our future.  I support:

• Making sure the Commonwealth fully meets its educational funding obligations.
• Raising the salaries of teachers and ALL other K-12 public school staffers. Virginia is one of the wealthiest states in the United States, but ranks among the lowest in teacher pay.
• Bringing the SOQs (Standards of Quality) in line with what it takes to properly educate our students, and fully funding any state-issued mandates. 
• A robust state grant program for funding school infrastructure and facilities to modernize Virginia’s crumbling school buildings. 
• Reducing gaps in opportunities and outcomes for students of color, special education, English Language Learners, and low-income students. 
• Policies that accommodate and include transgender and nonbinary students.
• Standards of Learning (SOLs) that include Virginians’ complete and shared history and that reflect the lives and experiences of ALL people.
• Reversing disinvestment in our institutions of higher and continuing education and taking the financial burden off of Virginia’s students and their families. 
• Strengthening laws and enforcement of laws that safeguard PK-12 and higher education student and educator privacy, especially of data, and that prevent cyber attacks on and increase cyber security of our Virginia school districts, colleges, and universities.

Expanding Access to Healthcare

As a mother of children with Type 1 diabetes and other disabilities, I know how important it is that ALL Virginians have access to healthcare that is affordable, including providers when they need them, treatment, medications, and healthcare supplies. I support:

• Lowering or capping prescription drug prices, the establishment of a Prescription Drug Affordability Board and an assistance program for prescriptions and healthcare equipment & supplies.
• Expanding access to Medicaid.
• Adequate funding and resources for mental health services including for substance abuse disorders.
• Building capacity for the provision of behavioral and mental health and medical disability services.
• Parity of mental health benefits and services with medical and surgical benefits and services.
• Safeguarding our reproductive rights, freedoms, and expanding access to abortion, contraception, and reproductive healthcare.
• Reducing racial, socio-economic, and gender-based disparities in access to adequate and appropriate healthcare.
• Instituting a medical debt relief program.
• Decoupling healthcare from employment.

Environmental Preservation, Conservation, and Opportunities

We must live within our energy means, develop energy independence, and preserve our environment and natural resources for our children and grandchildren. As a legislator, I will uphold my commitment to environmental preservation, to passing legislation to conserve land and natural resources, and to making renewable energy sources affordable and viable industries. I support:

• Transitioning to renewable energy sources while making renewable energy sources affordable.
• Transitioning away from single-use plastics.
• Staying in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)
• Fair, comparable wages for renewable energy workers.
• Halting new pipelines and gold mines.
• Developing and expanding our public transportation infrastructure including sidewalks, bike lanes, and hiking and walking trails.
• Protecting historic and vulnerable rural communities such as Brown Grove here in the 59th District.
• Exploring possibilities for establishing protective trusts for rural land.
• Connecting the agricultural traditions in the 59th District with creating new jobs and supporting new environmental and bio-based industries. 

Responsible Land Use, Housing, and Development

All Virginians should have stable, affordable housing. Unfortunately, right now, many don’t. We must balance the need for housing with land conservation and responsible development. I support:

• Establishing emergency funds for qualifying tenants who are struggling to pay their rent including re-starting the Virginia Rent Relief Program (RRP).
• Creating & funding a statewide housing assistance program to supplement the federal housing programs such as Section 8.
• Creating & funding housing assistance programs that include energy efficiency updates and other repairs to help residents maintain and stay in their homes.
• Right to Repair policies especially for home appliances and agricultural equipment.
• Providing localities with more tools to raise their own revenues beyond property taxes, and giving localities more power to require & negotiate proffers.
• Incentivizing localities to adopt affordable housing ordinances.
• Protecting transparency and citizen engagement processes around land use and development decisions.
• Campaign finance reforms/limitations, to limit the influence of developers and corporate landlords.
• Exploring regulations/rules on how traffic, water, environmental, and other impact studies are contracted to increase accuracy and reduce conflicts of interest.

Establishing Economic Fairness

ALL Virginians deserve to be meaningfully employed and to earn living wages. ALL Virginians deserve to be compensated fairly for their labor, to have safe working conditions, reasonable benefits, and job security. Our tax dollars should not be used to  subsidize corporations that don’t pay living wages or offer benefits and that rely on the taxpayers to support their employees. I support:

• A $15 minimum wage.
• Paid sick, medical, and family leave for all workers.
• Competitive pay for ALL Virginia’s public servants and employees.
• The right to collective bargaining for employees.
• Repeal of anti-worker laws.
• Tax fairness for middle and working class Virginians.
• Incentives for our small, local businesses including subsidizing a pooled benefits program for employees and a lesser tax burden.

Supporting Families

I will represent ALL constituents of the 59th District, from all types of families. Just because someone’s marriage or family is not exactly like mine doesn’t mean it should be invisible or be banned. I will support policies that support families, including:

• A strong, full-funded public education system.
• Access to affordable healthcare.
• Fair compensation, including paid sick, medical, and family leave. 
• Affordable, accessible, and high quality pre-natal, elder, and childcare.
• Marriage equality for LGBTQ people.
• Increasing resources and programs to prevent sexual, dating, and domestic abuse and violence, and to protect victims thereof.

Promoting Positive Criminal Justice Outcomes

The people of the 59th District want public safety networks that serve and protect them, that treat them fairly, and that are representative of their communities. I will work to remove current burdens on law enforcement agencies and shift them, with funding, to where they belong: mental health and social services. I support:

• Fair compensation and better training for first responders, public safety officers, and criminal justice workers.
• Better training for law enforcement officers.
• Full funding of courts, including competitive pay for courts staff.
• Fully funding mental health services and interventions, and increased capacity thereof, when appropriate in place of law enforcement involvement.
• Treating substance abuse as a mental health issue and not a criminal matter.
• Establishing clear & transparent laws for legal use of marijuana and clear guidelines for setting up a legal recreational cannabis market.
• Promoting the use of non-lethal force.
• Providing the option for civilian oversight of sheriff’s offices *and* city police departments.
• Raising the felony larceny threshold.
• Automatic expungement.
• Ending or minimizing jail time for non-violent offenses.
• Ending the practice of trying children as adults. 
• Shifting the burden of enforcing parking and traffic violations to a non-armed civilian agency.
• Higher standards for accepting jailhouse informant testimony.
• Video recording of and prohibition of the use of deception during interrogations.
• Establishing fair guidelines for police lineups and identifications.

Preventing Gun Crime & Violence and Ensuring Gun Safety

We must support responsible gun owners while keeping our communities and children safe from gun violence. Gun crimes, gun violence, injuries and deaths from gun accidents, and deaths by suicide with guns are public health & safety crises. I support:

• Funding programs and initiatives to educate and train people about safe gun use and to prevent gun crimes & violence.
• Expansion of background checks to private and gun show sales.
• Giving families and law enforcement tools to intervene, such as Red Flag Laws, when there is evidence that someone with access to firearms poses a risk to themselves or others while protecting due process.
• Keeping guns out of the hands of violent criminals and domestic abusers.
• Secure firearm storage policies.
• Prohibitions on dangerous weapons, including ghost guns, assault-style weapons and those with high capacity magazines.
• Limiting firearms in sensitive places.

Protecting Voting Rights & Free and Fair Elections

I was raised in a home where civic engagement is expected, where voting is not just a right but a duty. I’ve never missed an election. I will ensure that my constituents never miss one, either, and will work to stop current rightwing efforts to disenfranchise Virginians and to undermine free and fair elections. I support:

• Greater access to voting and other democratic processes, such as early and absentee voting.
• Automatic rights restoration.
• Fully funding voter & elections services and tools.
• Establishing a Voter Protection and Election Integrity Unit to keep elections in Virginia secure and keep election officials safe.
• Public financing of elections.
• Ranked-choice voting. 
• A full-time legislature.

Enacting Campaign Finance Reforms

Virginia is notorious for its weak regulations on campaign and political contributions. This and our part-time legislature heighten the influence of lobbyists and dark money and keep working- and middle-class Virginians from running for and serving in the legislature. I support:

• Limits on political donations, including mirroring federal campaign limits.
• Limiting what politicians can use campaign funds for to campaign expenses–office space, office supplies, campaign materials and needs, transportation, salaries for staff, childcare, and health insurance.
• Stricter disclosure laws.
• Public financing of elections.
• A full-time legislature.

Tax Reform

I am a proponent of tax reforms such that the Commonwealth accesses every viable and reasonable source of revenue possible, while removing burdens on working and middle class Virginians.

Following Through with Broadband Access

ALL Virginians must have access to high-speed internet, especially in more rural areas and districts like the 59th. Without it, our residents, students, families, and small businesses will struggle and will be left at a disadvantage. I support:

• Treating high-speed internet like a public utility.
• Establish full infrastructure for high speed internet, including pushing the electric utility companies in the 59th to do their part to provide broadband access.
• Subsidizing internet bills in rural and other areas that are more expensive to service.
• Increasing funding to the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative to help defray costs of broadband access.