Tag: science

MINNEAPOLIS — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday vowed to fight a subpoena from the US Department of Justice while simultaneously digging into a key division with former President Donald Trump ahead of a potential presidential campaign.

“I’m proud of what we did on Jan. 6, as difficult as it was,” Pence said after a speech at the Minnesota Club in downtown Minneapolis. “I have nothing to hide and I’m proud of what we accomplished, but for me this is a moment where you have to decide where you stand, and I stand on the Constitution of the United States.”

CBS News confirmed last week that Pence was subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed in November to take over two DOJ investigations into Trump. One of the probes involving Trump’s handling of sensitive government records discovered at his south Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. The second centers around efforts to stop the transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election and interfere with the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

Pence maintained that his opposition to the subpoena was based on legislative privileges instead of executive privileges because of his role as president of the Senate.

“The fact that no vice president has ever been subject to a subpoena to testify about the president with whom they served makes this unprecedented, but that goes to executive privilege,” Pence said. “It’s my understanding that President Trump will fight that, but that’s not my fight. My

GREENVILLE COUNTY, SC (WSPA) – The Greenville County School Board met Tuesday morning, discussing ways to further students’ education in a variety of ways.

A main topic of discussion began with the artistically gifted and talented program also known as the ARMES program serving third through eighth graders.

The program focuses on areas of music, visual art, theater, dance, and creative writing.

The previous program was located in the center of the district at the Fine Arts Center, taking some students 45 minutes or longer to commute.

The school district has now established additional sites where they are replicating the program at both Greer and Hillcrest Middle Schools.

“Our hope is that every school in Greenville County will in some way be represented through the program,” Director of Visual and Performing Arts for Greenville County Schools, Bradley Wingate said. “We want to basically be able to reach any student who is qualified. We started with 350 students last year and with this expansion, we are looking at rolling it out to 1,500 and potentially even more over a period of time.”

Leaders say students are required to go through a rigorous audition process but can be nominated by family, faculty, or friends.

The district says they want to make sure all programs are receiving the proper support and training they need.

Assistant Superintendent for special education Traci Hogan made a presentation on how special education is improving.

“We have about 12,000 students with disabilities in Greenville County Schools, Hogan said.

Des Moines School Board Chair Teree Caldwell-Johnson has had enough of Republican lawmakers meddling in how and what public students are taught.

“Leave our public schools alone, we are doing just fine,” Caldwell-Johnson said Monday in response to a question about what lawmakers can do — besides boosting funding — to help students succeed. “We don’t need your interventions around the curriculum, what we teach, how we teach, who we teach, and Des Moines Public Schools has been in existence for 116 years and we’ve been doing pretty darn well.”

Amid an education-focused legislative session, Caldwell-Johnson joined other frustrated Des Moines Public Schools’ officials during the State of the Schools address in calling on politicians to keep students’ best interests in mind.

Caldwell-Johnson’s remarks came just days after Gov. Kim Reynolds’ released a bill that, if passed, would prohibit schools from teaching about gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade.

The bill would also put any successfully challenged school library books on a statewide list, requiring students in other districts to get parental permission before checking the books out.

Related:Kim Reynolds’ bill: Library book ‘removal list,’ gender identity teaching ban. What to know

Last month, Reynolds signed into law a school choice bill that creates education savings accounts for families who want to send their children to a private school. The money will come from aid that would have gone to the district had the student stayed enrolled.

Earlier this month, she approved a 3% increase in

Vanessa Strahan, the director of secondary education at Theater Aspen, has a long-standing passion for providing young people with a robust theater education.

“When I was in college, I started working with an organization that produced a multi-sensory interactive theater for folks on the autism spectrum or with other developmental disabilities and just really fell in love with seeing those kids experience theater in a way that was tailored to them,” she said. “There’s just something so magical about playing and creating in a room with people who have these wild and huge imaginations and remembering how much theater and arts meant to me as a young person and how much it changed my life. It’s wonderful to witness people going through the same thing that I got to experience, to help provide that.”

Strahan who relocated to the valley about a year and a half ago from the Chicago area to work with Theater Aspen’s education arm, said that while this is Theater Aspen’s 40th anniversary year, the education program is celebrating its 25th year of providing theater education and resources to K-12 local youth.

“Theater education is so important because it builds self-confidence. Putting yourself out there with other people