Tyler Gazzaniga

Tyler is a student at the University of California, Berkeley and is a former Campaign Intern at Evolve.

Why is education important to you?

 My parents have always stressed the importance of a high quality education, and I consider myself very lucky because of it. I know from personal experience just how much children are shaped by their classroom environments. It is during those early years that kids learn essential critical thinking and social skills that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives, and our current education system simply cannot provide our youth with what they need. This leads kids to being at an immediate disadvantage; one that becomes harder and harder to overcome as the years go by.

How has California's lack of education funding negatively impacted you? 

 I consider myself very fortunate that I was able to attend a well-funded public school district in my K-12 years. However, both of my parents have been educators at a neighboring school district that is drastically underfunded. I often joined them at work during the summer months at their year-round schools, and going from my relatively affluent and adequately resourced classrooms to see their overcrowded ones less than 20 minutes away where the vast majority of students are not reading at grade level was extremely eye-opening. The disparity that I saw has stuck with me throughout my life, and has allowed me to understand the difference that a fully funded education experience can have in someone’s life.

How has the increasing cost of college impacted you?

I began to run into a serious dilemma my senior year when applying to colleges. My parents have been able to provide my sister and I with a good life, and were smart about their savings. However, they are still working with a teacher’s salary. This put me in a situation where I was not able to receive financial aid, but my parents were in no position to fund my college education without a second thought. It has been a struggle for my family and I to afford the rising tuition and housing prices, and has only added to my frustration that these rising costs are putting students that are trying to better themselves at immediate disadvantages when they leave college to begin their lives.