Dayton mayoral candidate A.J. Wagner announced his first major policy push this week, releasing an education plan focused on early childhood development, mentoring and expanded access to college education.

“The only way we’re going to turn around the entire city is to attack the things that are probably causing people to leave here to begin with, and one of them is education,” said Wagner, a former judge who also has an education degree and once taught third grade.

Wagner said for an annual cost of roughly $500,000, every new high school graduate in the city who wants to go to college but can’t afford it, could be enrolled in a two-year degree program at Sinclair Community College.

UD education professor Thomas Lasley, a leader of the Learn to Earn Dayton project, said given the number of underserved high school graduates, plus Pell Grant availability and Sinclair’s low cost, Wagner’s dollar figure is “probably not far off.” Lasley said the plan could be expanded to all of Montgomery County if funding was available.

Wagner said if the plan was Dayton-specific, it would be open to multi-year Dayton residents, and they would have to show progress once enrolled at Sinclair. He said he’s confident the plan could work with some mix of public and private funding.

“Good education is Dayton’s best anti-poverty initiative, Dayton’s best stimulus for economic development and Dayton’s best crime reduction strategy,” Wagner said.

Wagner is running for mayor against incumbent Gary Leitzell, city commissioner Nan Whaley and retired physiologist Eric LaMont Gregory. A primary is set for May 7 to cut the field to two.

Leitzell said Wagner’s ideas look like a 20-year plan that doesn’t address more immediate issues. He also said teens should be taught basic business skills so they can become self-employed as a fall-back option.

“People are complaining that we don’t have jobs. We do have jobs, but we don’t have the people to fill them,” Leitzell said. “What we need to do is market the heck out of the city, so that we attract people to fill these jobs.”

Whaley said Wagner’s ideas are straight from the Learn to Earn initiative, and added that she already serves on the executive committee of that group. She pointed out that Wagner has not specified exactly where the money would come from.

“I think the big piece for the city is the third-grade reading guarantee … considering that one out of three of our kids aren’t at third-grade reading level in third grade,” Whaley said. “So we have to put a lot of focus on that as a community.”

Gregory has said Dayton “must reinvigorate the love of learning” and find innovative ways to push students toward graduation and beyond.

Wagner said if elected mayor he would work with Dayton’s school board and be the schools’ cheerleader. But he said the city can do more before those students even arrive at Dayton Public Schools.

“It starts with early childhood education,” Wagner said, applauding the county’s ReadySetSoar efforts to expand preschool. He said more effort is needed to get low-income parents to read to their children.

“If they’re not ready for kindergarten, they’re not going to be ready for reading in third grade,” Wagner said.

Wagner said his work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters has shown him the value of mentoring, and he said he would push business and community leaders to provide more youth mentors from their organizations.