Access to Healthcare & Mental Healthcare
Diana’s work with Springdale children and families has shown her, up close, unfair disparities in access to quality healthcare and mental healthcare. It’s simple: kids can’t learn when they’re sick, and adults can’t work when they’re sick. As we create greater access to quality care options, Springdale’s schools and business community will thrive.
Diana will work on legislation that ensures critical state health and mental health resources are available to every family, no matter their primary language. Arkansas could be doing more to partner with schools and churches in providing families with important information about nutrition, mental health, and navigating health institutions and insurance providers. Diana also wants to work on reducing prescription drug prices, capping the price of insulin, and bringing down co-pays for doctor visits or seeing a mental health professional.
Access to Literacy & Education
Springdale shows Arkansas, every day, how members of a diverse community can work together to lift one another up and accomplish community dreams. That starts in our schools, and that starts with making sure every teacher, every family, and every student has the resources they need to engage in world-class education. We need to pay our teachers more, and we need to equip every student in Springdale schools with internet-enabled devices and wi-fi hotspots for home learning.
In Springdale, public-private partnerships between faith organizations, education non-profits, and leaders in our public schools can serve as a model for the whole state - a comprehensive, whole-of-life approach to supporting students as they grow. Our children are Springdale’s future. Every investment we make in them today will build up our city and state tomorrow.
Access to Workforce Training & a Quality Job
Springdale is a city of workers, and every worker deserves dignity, real hope for upward mobility, and a living wage. Our business community is thriving, but it can only be as strong as our workers and their families are.
Diana’s career in education has taught her that education doesn’t stop when you finish school – workers and employers alike benefit from workforce development programs. As the economy changes, the state of Arkansas should play a larger role in empowering people right here in Springdale with skills re-training and assistance in jumping into a new industry.
In the legislature, Diana will work on policies to incentivize small and big businesses to offer more comprehensive benefits to every worker – including health, vision, and dental. Increased state childcare tax credits and tax incentives for employers would create greater access to childcare for Arkansas’s workers. Arkansas is an employer-friendly state, and state lawmakers can do more to ensure Arkansas becomes a more employee-friendly state.