SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- In the first Syracuse appearance of her campaign, actress-turned-gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon blamed underfunded schools for an arrest that left a Syracuse teen student injured.

Nixon met with a small group of community members at the Southwest Community Center this morning to discuss education, economic development, housing and other issues.

The meeting was closed to the press, but Nixon took questions from reporters on her candidacy for governor briefly after the event.

Nixon, a longtime spokeswoman for the advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education, said parents present at the meeting had raised concerns to her about the conditions of Syracuse schools, including the presence of school resource officers.

Nixon specifically addressed an incident from February 2017 at Nottingham High School, in which Jabari Boykins, 14, was injured during an arrest by a school resource officer. Boykins is diagnosed with autism and bipolar disorder, according to his mother. Syracuse.com reported the incident last week.

Syracuse's Citizen Review Board recently ruled that officer Vallon Smith used excessive force in the arrest.

"When you see a situation that just happened with Jabari here, the school resource officer reacted to him as a threat, partly because that man wasn't trained in understanding that Jabari is bipolar," Nixon said.

Nixon said New York state needs to devote more funding toward training and mental health instead of police in schools.

Nixon has pushed for the state to fully fund "foundation aid," money the Alliance for Quality Education says is owed to schools based on a more than 10-year-old court order. AQE estimates Syracuse city schools are owed nearly $40 million in foundation aid.

"We need that money for a whole host of things ... to improve buildings that have mold, asbestos, lead," Nixon said. "But we also need it to stop the school-to-prison pipeline. We need to have more social workers and psychologists and we need to have people who are trained in conflict resolution."

Syracuse parent and Uplift Syracuse member Misse Ross said Nixon's emphasis on public schools is the number one reason she would support her candidacy for governor. She said she planned to campaign for Nixon and knock on doors.

Ross said she's written Gov. Andrew Cuomo about her concerns every week for five years and received one response on a topic other than education.

"He had this ego competition with Stephanie Miner going on for quite some time and he's taken that out on the children of Syracuse," Ross said. "The things he's held from us in terms of not helping us finance our schools -- those don't hurt people like Stephanie Miner. They hurt people like me in my neighborhood."

Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers courts, government and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992