July 13, 2021

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by: admin

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Tags: Charlotte, education, PrePandemic, schools, Secretary, WFAE

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Categories: Special needs education

US Schooling Secretary In Charlotte: Faculties Should Be Higher Than Pre-Pandemic | WFAE 90.7

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited Johnson C. Smith University and a Charlotte Mecklenburg summer school on Monday to talk more about reopening schools than they did before the pandemic.

At Paw Creek Elementary School, northwest Charlotte, he and Congressman Alma Adams watched CMS teacher Lisa Wright guide children with special needs to make s’mores over a tissue paper campfire.

The lesson included fire safety, communication, and counting. It came from a curriculum that was paid for with federal COVID-19 aid. The S’mores, of course, came from staff who delivered them to the mock campfire.

Ann Doss Helms

Lisa Wright uses a tissue paper campfire as part of a Camp CMS lesson on fire safety and counting.

“I love it!” said Cardona. “I love the props.”

Cardona was in Charlotte on a tour to discuss President Biden’s Build Back Better program. He repeatedly said that rebuilding education will require more than going back to the pre-pandemic status quo.

“We really see this as an opportunity to hit the reset button on things that we know won’t work,” he said. “In the past we made gradual changes, but now we can be a little braver.”

Cardona didn’t offer much detail. He says it is up to the federal government to provide resources while local and state agencies make the policy.

Speaking to Johnson C. Smith, a historically black university in West Charlotte, he said federal funds would pay for better technology, more money for Pell grants, and modernizations of old buildings.

Adams and Cardona at JCSU.jpeg

Ann Doss Helms

US MP Alma Adams (left) and US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona speak to reporters from Johnson C. Smith University.

“It’s really about investing in some of these buildings in our HBCUs that are over 120, 130 years old,” he said. “Students at HBCUs deserve the same high quality experience as any other student in facilities that are world-class and state-of-the-art.”

Cardona said schools need to involve families better than they did before the pandemic.

At Paw Creek, he spoke to parents of students with special needs about using long distance connections to help all families stay in touch with schools. And he said in a region with a large and growing Latino population, better family-school connections are important.

“Our stakeholder engagement cannot be what it was before the pandemic. These families, especially Latino families, have been hit harder in many areas, ”he said. “So we have to do more to get these families involved so that they feel safe in our schools.”

Cardona’s parents came to the United States from Puerto Rico and he learned English as a second language.

Now that vaccinations are available and COVID-19 cases have declined, Cardona said it was important to get students back into classrooms.

“A safe and quick return to school is best for all students,” he said at Johnson C. Smith.

But he said in an interview that he doesn’t regret that so many schools have closed for so long in the past year.

“Not at all,” he said. “As the father and husband of an educator, your safety was nothing I would ever compromise.”

Cardona was instrumental in these decisions as the Connecticut Education Officer.

“I think we made the right decisions based on the information we had,” he said. “The point now is to make sure we continue to rely on what science tells us, to reopen schools as soon as possible and as safely as possible, and to make sure it is us once the students are in school doing better than before. “

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