Quanda Francis, one of the dozen candidates running for the new congressional district covering parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, wants to take on the city’s education services if elected.
“I feel like right now, we are not doing a good job of, again, identifying student stress, identifying student learning styles. We have so many students that are not educated to the fullest potential,” Francis told Erroll Louis on “Inside City Hall” Thursday. “We’ve been servicing poverty for way too long and now poverty’s become very expensive.”
Francis, president of the consulting company Sykes Capital Management, added that her platform is dedicated to education, especially bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning in grades 8 to 12.
“And without being introduced to coding as early as kindergarten, we cannot ensure that again they’re going to have the digital skills they need to participate in a 21st century economy, to confidently enter a STEM profession,” she said. Francis mentioned that people have told her it’s hard to find coding talent, so she’s viewing this from a legislative point of view.
She said that technology is growing at a fast rate that “can be sustainable” if the next generation has the skills to contribute to the 21st century’s economy.
Francis also ran as a Democrat in the 2021 primary election for mayor before dropping out to run as an Independent. She received a 0.34% of the vote in the general election.