During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.

Even the best parents have to spend so much time making ends meet that they cannot help their kids with homework or afford the extra tutoring that wealthier students enjoy. To address these unjust disparities, we need an early education revolution.

I can't solve the poverty problem, but there are things you can do to mitigate its effects on kids.

You can bring people together around the issue of economic fairness. I don't want to be a mayor that goes into one neighborhood and gets jeered, and goes into another neighborhood and gets cheered.