Hoyer, Palombi Agree Education Is Key.
Congressman Steny Hoyer and his challenger, Chris Palombi, don’t see eye-to-eye on some issues, but both men agree that education is key to the future of the 5th District.
Both have personal connections to teaching. Palombi is a former teacher and Hoyer’s late wife, Judy, was an early childhood educator. Hoyer said her passion for early childhood education stays with him. “I believe if you get children early… that’s why we need pre-K. Not just kindergarten. We need early childhood education.
Because the scientists tell us a baby out of the womb is a sponge. They start learning right then. I think we need to continue to invest in our children in education. Number one investment we can make as a society.”
Empowering Teachers
Palombi said the 5th District is lucky to have great schools, but there is still room for improvement. The first-time candidate has a lot of ideas. “What I hear from teachers is there’s too much federal standardized testing. They want to have the ability to teach, to teach to the students’ abilities. I agree with that. We should empower teachers. I learned myself in the couple of years that I served being a teacher, it’s an overwhelming task.”
Palombi is also keen on vocational education. “Making sure we are setting our students up for success. Maybe they don’t want to go to college. Maybe they want the hands-on work to go right from college. I think that’s a great benefit for our workforce and our economy.”
Palombi is also a proponent of school choice. “Just because they live within a particular zip code, that should not dedicate that student to absolutely having to go to that school where they live. They should have the option; they should have some flexibility and options for them. And again, students learn in many different ways. We want to make sure that we are just not empowering the students but empowering the teachers and the quality of education is top-notch. Not just throughout our country, but throughout our district as well.”
Palombi also favors investing in improvements to broadband to ensure all children have access to digital education options. We need to make sure that we have some federal funding to make sure that we can accommodate and help everybody as much as possible, so we can make sure that everybody can prosper.”
The Best Investment You Can Make
Hoyer agrees that education is a great investment in the 5th District’s Future. “Because educating the next generation, of course, predicts what you’re going to be as a nation, investing in education is the best investment you make. Fredrick Douglass, born a slave in the state of Maryland, Talbot County, and became a free man said, ‘It is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men.’ A very profound thought. What he meant was, the Bible says, ‘If you train up a child in the way they shall go, they will not depart from it.’ I don’t know if that’s always true, but I know that if you don’t train up a child with the values and the skills and the information that they need to succeed in society that they won’t be successful and your society won’t be successful.”