(Image source from: NBC News)

In a bid to improve teacher salaries across the United States, the Indian origin Senator Kamala Harris has called for the allotment of a large federal investment.

The 54-year-old senator, who represents California, said that presently, teachers are constituting over 10 percent less than other college-educated graduates and that gap is about USD 13,000 a year, the CNN reported on Saturday.

“I’m declaring to you that by the end of my first term, we will have improved teachers’ salaries so that we close the pay gap,” Harris said to a group of supporters in Houston.

“Because right now, teachers are making over 10 percent less than other college-educated graduates and that gap is about USD 13,000 a year, and I am pledging to you that through the federal resources that are available, we will close that gap,” she added.

Harris officially launched her presidential campaign on January 27, 2019, in her home town of Oakland in California. She is said to be a potentially formidable opponent to her eventual GOP incumbent President Donald Trump.

Harris said that her proposal would be the largest ever federal investment in teacher pay.

Though Harris didn’t provide further details about where the funds will come from, the campaign has said they will unveil the details of the full policy plan next week, the report said.

Harris is the first to announce a plan to allocate funding to teachers, a heavily unionized demographic that is reliably Democratic.

Born to Tamil Indian mother and a Jamaican father in 1964 in Oakland, California, her mother, Harris is a graduate of Howard University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer scientist who moved to the United States from Chennai. Her father, Donald Harris, was an academician of economics at Stanford University and moved abroad from Jamaica in 1961.

By Sowmya Sangam