November 21st, The Peace Islands Institute hosted Sen Teresa Ruiz (District 29) for Hispanic Heritage Month.
“I am really thankful to you for inviting me to this luncheon”.
“After the storm we were without power for a little while but we are very blessed just to have our homes and to be able to get back to normality. I hope all of you experiencing difficulties have the same as soon as possible. After, redistricting Peace Islands Institute office is in my district. I have the majority of the downtown quarter of Newark. For me regardless of the lines of demarcation, I represent the entire city of Newark. I am born, bread and raised here. I still live here and I’m first generation American and Newarker.
My parents immigrated here, obviously with the same mission as many families come here today; to set and establish themselves with the goal to insure the next generation has a better opportunity for success
One key element for me and my own personal experience was that I was very fortunate to have two-family households. But the greatest equalizing factor that I had was the chance to go to college, to graduate and to have that kind of passport to knowledge in a way. Where now it is even more extraordinary difficult to get employment, but to recognize what access education does for families and for people who are trying to assess the American dream. It gave me the opportunity to explore any career path to be the first Puerto Rican to serve in the U.S. Senate to be the first Latina woman to serve in that capacity. That’s why I give myself to the public-service role that I’m very fortunate to be the chair education committee. In this past year, I passed the Ten-year reform act which was 100 years old law that was never really discussed or attempted to change because it has a lot of pushback from a lot of groups.
Now, I’m exploring the issues of special-education. I have met with a lot of families and parents. Many families have to give up their own livelihoods. They give up their jobs to become advocates for their children. Some families who have access to resources hired attorneys. For the families that I represent, sometimes grandparents and sometimes single parent household becomes very difficult. So my greatest role is to be an advocate for the voiceless down when it comes to education.
The greatest impact that we can have for our children is on the basis of the best quality teachers that we have in front of the classroom. I think that we as a society have done a huge disservice to the profession. We don’t respect them the way that we respect people that are committing themselves to that type of career path. Then we often times forget the support that has to be there, but that is dual fold; support the best, encourage to keep the best, to take the good to better and get the better to great.
My greatest mission is to overhaul the public education system here in the State of New Jersey, to ensure that no matter where we live that when a child leaves their house and if it’s a community school across the street they have the best opportunities to excel. This opportunity to access to quality education.
In the long run that becomes an equalizing factor. I often times go to schools and ask kids, what is it that you want to do when you grow up? and this young woman and I remember when we were signning the tenure bill she says I want to be a millionaire and I said how are you going to get there, she said I’m going to win the lotto and we had this back an forth conversation and im asking her but if you don’t win to see if she gets to another place what is it that you will pursue, she said to me that I will try again, and I asked but if you lose, she said then I’ll keep trying.
I think that one of the greatest moments that we have is that the Peace Islands Institute recognizes while im here for Hispanic history month I think that that’s the greatest key to education is to ensure that all children across the board who are here have access to quality education because it truly emphasizes the opportunity that can unveil us irrespectively what culture or back round that we come from but that the institute reminds us of the importance of cultural competency engaging in law enforcement issues to break down the barriers to who we are manifesting our children to get more engaged with social policy issues trough essay contest and art exposé just to remind us all of us that If I cut myself and you cut yourself we both bleed the same and that’s the greatest mission that we all could be committed too. Thank you for the work and mission that you do.”
Pictures from the Event: