As a product of a public school education for grades K through 12 and now at a private college, I have heard much the past month about reforms being made to education and want to share my thoughts on it.

Betsy DeVos, current Secretary of Education, for public education never went to a public school. I do not believe she understands what goes on in public schools. Yes, I believe some schools need changing but not all. I listen to people around me talk about how bad public schools are and I just want to say don’t categorize them all the same. Sure, I may have gone to school in a good school district even then we had kids that went to private schools so that shows nothing because we also had kids transfer from private schools back to public schools. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for the Orchard Park school district and the teachers there. Each one of my teachers had an impact whether big or small so I am thankful to have gone to public school.

I said at the beginning that I now go to a private college, I didn’t choose it since it was private, though, I chose it because it had one of the top schools for my major and was close to home. This being said, the proposed free college tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools is going to hurt a school I love. I believe that New York State aid should be raised for all students and don’t just make the state schools free for students. Schools such as Canisius are just going to lose more students and probably not have

enough to run since why would you want to go into debt when you can go to college for free. This will just crowd the state colleges when ones like UB already have huge class sizes. Also, there will be more negative stigma on not going to college if it is free, so I believe that the free college tuition should not go into effect instead help all students out even just a bit more.