Gutiérrez asks what city can tell parents amid federal pressure

Your flowers.

And is there just considering with the federal government's decisions on kind of like reining in, you know, executive order, making English the primary language, which just sounds, you know, insane to me.

What can we tell parents?

That want to enroll, right?

And like Gail says, I support her.

We want more of our students to like enroll in public education.

What can we tell them that feels more than like we have a commitment in our handbooks?

I know that you guys, that it sounds like you're proving it, right?

Day to day in schools, but what can we do to codify that more?

How can we really lean into that in a more concrete way for parents?

I will just start by saying that.

No matter what stance our federal government takes, multilingual children will always be honored and valued in our early childhood system and our entire education system.

And we will always prioritize ensuring that they can show up and learn in both their home language and in whatever other languages they might be learning in school and that we see multilingualism as an asset and a strength.

I think this is in, there are many ways in which we can codify this and the ways that we as an administration talk about early childhood education and our goal of providing culturally competent settings for every child, whatever that may mean to their family,

as we continue to expand access to specific programming, really emphasizing and making clear to families, as we do today, when they browse their options for programs that they can

learn in a variety of languages, continuing to support families when they apply for early childhood education programs to do so in whatever language they are most comfortable speaking.

Families can apply to early childhood programs in over 200 languages and receive the support to do so today.

I think to Councilmember Brewer's point, we absolutely can continue to talk about multilingualism as an asset and to promote that, of course, to families whose children speak another language at home.

and would therefore really benefit from that modeled instruction, but also to families like mine who do not speak another language at home and are opting into dual language programs because we see it as a value for our children to learn another language in a city like New York.

So in sort of both policy and in the ways we continue to talk about our programs, the way we engage with families and the way we speak as a city about our work, we will continue to emphasize the asset that multilingualism is.