Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg wants to raise teacher pay, stressing that educators need to be paid “like doctors” and honored “like soldiers.”
POLITICO reports that on Saturday Buttigieg pitched spending $700 billion over the coming decade to subsidize “universal, affordable full-day” child care and pre-kindergarten programs — and that’s just part of an education proposal the centrist Democrat unveiled as he counters his left-leaning opponents in the presidential primary.
The South Bend, Ind., mayor would spend billions to triple federal funding for K-12 schools with high percentages of students from low-income families. He’d ban what his campaign describes as for-profit charter schools. He’d boost teacher salaries with federal cash. He’d expand the power of the Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate federal anti-discrimination laws.
“Every child in America should have access to high quality education, and we need to support our nation’s teachers for the work they do within and outside the classroom,” he continued. “If we honored our teachers a little more like soldiers and paid them a little more like doctors, this country would be a better place.”
