Knows us. Fights for us. ALL of us.

Paul Newell is a proud product of New York City’s excellent public schools - from P.S. 41 to Stuyvesant High School. While many of our kids enjoy that excellence today, we are failing too many others. Newell will work to make excellent schools available to every New York family – regardless of zone or zip code. He’ll stand up for:

• Fighting School Overcrowding: It is an inexcusable failure of planning that allowed our communities to grow faster than our schools. Newell will ensure that school seats grow with our neighborhoods.
• Quality Middle Schools: Many parents feel that they have found a quality school for their children at the elementary level, but are concerned by the lack of quality options at the middle-school level. All neighborhoods – and all parents – have the right to an excellent, local public middle school.
• Fully Funding CUNY: World-class public higher education is an essential part of New York's success. Both Paul's parents graduated from CUNY - enabling them to break in to New York's middle class. Funding CUNY is a state responsibility. Newell will work to ensure that it remains so, and that state funds for CUNY grow along with New York's needs.
• Fighting the Privatization of our Schools: Too many of our public goods are under threat of privatization.  If we allow education to become the next, we lose our credibility to call ourselves a meritocratic society.  Newell will oppose further efforts to privatize or schools and undercut the education professionals who work in them.

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Paul Newell’s father immigrated to New York City at the age of 16 from a Europe destroyed by war. Here, he found opportunities that never would have been available to a poor, Jewish kid in the old country. He went to school, worked hard, fell in love, and married Marla Nussbaum – herself a child of immigrants. Here, they built a home for themselves, Paul, and his sister Sonya. Marla and Roger Newell instilled in their children a love of country, an immigrant work ethic, and a belief in social responsibility.

The Newell family story is far from unique in our neighborhoods. No community on Earth has been more defined by the immigrant experience than Lower Manhattan. Almost half of all American families has an ancestor who arrived in the 65th Assembly District. Today, with a White House opposed to everything our communities believe in - it's more important than ever that New York stand up for our neighbors - and protect them from deportation. 

• Pass the DREAM Act: Education is the single most vital link in keeping the ladder of opportunity open to new Americans. Newell will fight to make higher education available to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status.

• Make New York Language-Accessible: Whether they speak Cantonese, Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin, Bengali, or Ukrainian, all New Yorkers should have access to all state services.

• Achieve a Humane Immigration Policy: Newell will stand up for a national immigration policy that recognizes and honors the vital role immigration plays in our country’s success.

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