“Support Public Education” – Education Issues Action Team Meeting
Nikki Rivera of Families for Strong Public Schools will be the featured guest at the September 20, 2022, 4:00 p.m. Educational Issues Action Team. Please plan to join us on Zoom and take part in a robust conversation about the importance of public schools. Click here
Families for Strong Public Schools (FSPS) is a 501c4 organization that is dedicated to centering our students in education policy by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to support a strong public education agenda at all levels of government.
Families for Strong Public Schools believes:
Schools are the foundation of our communities and teach our children to be good American citizens. Public schools are about much more than personal achievement. They prepare children to work together to advance not just themselves, but our communities.
We must put our kids first when making decisions about the future of our schools. We know students deserve a quality education that offers them every opportunity to succeed. Our children are our future and they are counting on us to work together to ensure our schools are the best America has to offer.
Our children’s educational success requires listening, collaboration, and understanding at all levels. By working together as parents, teachers, families, and within government, we can create educational spaces that truly serve their primary goal: supporting and educating our children.
What we do:
In partnership with public education advocates across the state of Florida, Families for Strong Public Schools is organizing and empowering parents, grandparents, teachers, community leaders, and public servants to advocate for public education policies that prioritize student success for all our children, support our teachers and school staff, and ensure that Florida public schools have the resources to provide safe, welcoming, and enriching spaces where all children are valued for who they are.
Tampa Bay Regional Organizer – Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, Manatee – Nikki Rivera
nikki@strongflschools.com
Raised in Massachusetts, Nikki Rivera moved to Florida in 2018 to pursue a master’s degree in sociology from the University of South Florida. For over 12 years she has served as an educator in a variety of capacities, with students and parents of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities. She has taught swimming for the YMCA, JumpStart preschool with AmeriCorps, adult ESL classes for a Boston based immigrants’ rights organization, and a variety of undergraduate courses as a Teaching Assistant at USF. For over 7 years Nikki has also served as a community organizer as well, empowering community members to mobilize grassroots campaigns around parent-school partnerships, school testing, vaccine access, student debt, educators’ wages, food insecurity, affordable housing and homelessness, affordable healthcare, voting rights, cultural empowerment, racial justice, and (de)colonization. She brings years of experience facilitating connections between parents and community leaders and fostering spaces in which a diversity of experiences and perspectives can be shared. Nikki finds inspiration in storytelling, and believes it plays a key role in helping us to better understand the experiences of others. In her free time, Nikki enjoys spending time in her garden, growing herbs and vegetables that are hard to come across in grocery stores. She loves turning these humble, and sometimes unfamiliar, homegrown ingredients into flavor inspirations for her partner, who is a chef by profession and by heart. Through both food and travel, she enjoys learning about cultures of the world, especially indigenous and antiquated societies.
