>For the Cumberland Times-News
Cumberland Times-News The Cumberland Times-News Sat May 28, 2011, 11:07 PM EDT
CUMBERLAND — U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) will be in Allegany and Garrett counties next week.
On Tuesday at noon she will be at the Center for Career and Technical Education in Cresaptown to hear from educators, parents and students about needs of rural school districts. On Wednesday, she visit with the Garrett Engineering and Robotics Society Inc., in Accident, at 10 a.m.
These meetings with educators, parents and students about the needs of rural school districts are the fourth and fifth in a series of eduction roundtables Mikulski has convened in Maryland as Congress prepares to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Mikulski recently was appointed chairwoman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Children and Families. The HELP Committee will play a major role in reauthorizing ESEA.
During the roundtables, Mikulski will ask participants how ESEA helps them improve student outcomes, how it gets in the way and how they would reform it to better meet their students’ needs. In Allegany County, she will visit the Allegany Center for Career and Technology. During the Garrett County visit, she will focus her discussion on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.
During her stop in Allegany County, Sen. Mikulski will also visit the Cumberland Fire Department, where she will tour a fire station and meet with first responders. In the last year, the fire department has received nearly $1.5 million in federal funding to hire firefighters and police officers.
ESEA emphasizes equal access to education and establishes high standards for students. In 2002, the law was reauthorized as the No Child Left Behind Act, which chronically underfunded its mandates and too often applied a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing some of the biggest challenges in education. This year’s reauthorization is an opportunity to provide schools with the flexibility and resources needed to make improvements.
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