First Lady Dr. Jill Biden said North Carolina is a leader when it comes to providing opportunities for students to earn college credit and connect to careers while still in high school. 

Dr. Biden visited North Carolina April 15 to discuss innovative learning programs, like dual enrollment, that are bridging gaps between the classroom and careers.

The visit is part of President Biden’s .

In his , the president allocated $7.2 billion to establish or expand programs that would allow students to earn postsecondary credits through career-connected dual enrollment while still in high school. 

According to a statement from the Office of the First Lady, “The funds would be provided as matching dollars to states to initiate or expand efforts to spur greater enrollment in dual enrollment programs.”

The First Lady’s North Carolina visit included a stop at where she met with educators and students to learn about the college’s dual enrollment efforts. Following the briefing, Dr. Biden visited Pitt’s biotechnology lab and automotive bay and heard from high school students working toward postsecondary credentials.

Dr. Biden then visited alongside Gov. Roy Cooper.

Before welcoming the First Lady to the podium, Gov. Cooper explained how the state’s dual enrollment program,  (CCP), is a tool to help high school students fast track their education and career goals. “That’s why we’re all here today,” Dr Biden said. “North Carolina has been a leader in providing those (dual enrollment) opportunities and is exemplary in transforming high school into a place that prepares students for jobs.” 

More than across North Carolina participated in CCP during the 2022-23 academic year. 

A showed dual enrollment was up 12% from the previous year. The most notable increase was across the Career and Technical Education (CTE) pathway – jumping 21% from the last academic year. The CTE pathway is often aligned with high-skill and high-demand jobs, providing opportunities for students to learn a variety of academic and technical skills.

After her remarks, Dr. Biden and Gov. Cooper joined a panel of educators and dually enrolled high school students from three North Carolina community colleges to discuss their experiences with CCP. 

Panelists highlighted how CCP is a chance to identify career interests and begin earning college credit that will help them in a future job. The four students on the panel are taking college courses aligned with various careers, including EMT certification, business administration, electrical engineering, manufacturing, and computer science.

The students said CCP has given them opportunities to explore careers and the confidence that they could succeed in a college setting.  

“I can be successful in these types of environments,” said Giovanni Robinson, a dually-enrolled student at GTCC. 

As for connecting students to careers, community colleges are doubling down on their efforts to support students by providing opportunities to become pre-apprentices.

and , both represented on the panel, are among many of the state’s community colleges that are coordinating CCP in ways that meet the needs of industry in their communities. 

is one example of cross-sector partnerships that bring together K-12 districts, community colleges, and employers. It’s an approach that leverages dual enrollment and the state’s apprenticeship program to carve out pathways for students to earn college credit, income, and skilled training. 

In her closing remarks, panel moderator Amy Loyd, assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education, thanked the audience and expressed gratitude for the chance to learn from the state. 

“We really are delighted to learn from North Carolina and lift up the great work of your great state as a model and exemplar for all of our country to learn from as we’re thinking about how we create career pathways for all young people,” Loyd said.

North Carolina’s Career and College Promise explained

Career and College Promise (CCP) is a dual enrollment program that allows high school students to take college courses tuition-free in North Carolina. 

CCP includes three pathways: college transfer, career and technical education (CTE), and Cooperative Innovative High Schools (CIHS), which include early colleges. The pathways are structured and provide students opportunities to earn credits that often lead to certificates and associate degrees.  

The state has long been a leader in dual enrollment programs — dating back over 30 years when the first iteration of the program launched.

When CCP was , it was done in such a way that students could earn a credential in less time than would normally be required. And regardless of their path – obtaining a degree, earning college transfer credits, or pursuing a credential to transition to the workforce – students would save time and money, both of which are linked to an increased . 

Research has consistently found that Career and College Promise benefits students, parents, and North Carolina as a whole.

A showed students who participated in CCP had higher high school graduation rates and higher postsecondary enrollment rates than those who did not. The study compared CCP students to a similar group of students who did not participate in CCP over seven years.

Students in college transfer or CTE pathways were 9% more likely to enroll in a North Carolina public college after high school. CIHS students were 27% more likely to enroll in a North Carolina public college after graduating.

The study also found that economically disadvantaged students and those from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups benefited most from CCP. You can read more about CCP below.

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A group of Hunter High School students and educators welcomed first lady Jill Biden in a visit to the school, part of her whirlwind trip to Utah on Tuesday.

The majority of Hunter High students were dismissed in the afternoon, but some, including choir group The Madrigals and student council members, stayed to perform or to shake the first lady’s hand, sporting school T-shirts and jackets.

At the high school, Jill Biden, who is also a teacher, highlighted educator wellness in one of Utah’s most diverse areas, in front of 140 Hunter High employees in the school’s commons. Posters with teacher appreciation messages decorated the walls.

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In a quick visit to the Beehive State, Biden visited Hunter High School in West Valley City with Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, and Abby Cox, Utah’s first lady. She was also scheduled to attend .

“Today first lady Cox and I are here to tell you that you are not alone,” Biden said, “that we understand, that we are working to honor this profession to give you the support that you deserve.”

Sometimes it feels like the weight to educate people across the country “is too heavy to carry,” Biden said, especially after the pandemic as students have needed support for more issues in addition to academic performance.

She praised the president’s initiatives to address mental health and academic needs of students, including passing a bipartisan gun safety law and a student loans forgiveness program.

“But he can’t do this alone. And here in Utah, he doesn’t have to, thanks to the work of your governor and your first lady,” Jill Biden said, adding that Utah has taken “a big step” to ensure that teachers are properly compensated.

Jill Biden also highlighted the work of Utah’s first lady, Abby Cox, also an educator, to address exhaustion and burnout among teachers and school staff.

Educator wellness is one of Cox’s . As some educators in Hunter work with children in the foster care system and those with intellectual disabilities, the state is working with these communities to ensure their success.

“Dr. Biden and I have this passion for educators in common. She has been an advocate for teachers for as long as she’s been a teacher, and it’s been a long time,” Cox said. “So I love this opportunity that she and I have to come together in a shared purpose and a shared goal of uplifting our educators making sure that you have the tools and resources that you need to be successful.”

Biden touched down on a cold Salt Lake City day and hurried to her motorcade Tuesday afternoon. She arrived an hour later than scheduled, a delay she later attributed to an inch of snow in Washington D.C., a fact she could laugh at in Utah.

Biden was greeted by first lady Abby Cox and her 17-year-old daughter, Emma Kate. Temperatures at the private hangar off Salt Lake City International Airport hovered around freezing at Biden’s arrival, attended by local media.

Following her visit to Hunter High School, the first lady was scheduled to attend fundraising events in Park City.

“It’s super special that we were chosen,” Jordan Martinsen, an English teacher at Hunter High, said during the school event. “(The fact) that she’s a teacher herself makes it a more genuine message because she’s kind of been there and done that.”

While she was receptive to the message, she’s still waiting for more action from the state to address educators’ wellness, she said.

“I love this school, and I love this district. So I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “They talked about a lot of really nice, lovely things. Sometimes that’s not the day-to-day reality, but I did like the message and I think it’s nice to be reminded that there’s people on your side.”

Parallel to West Valley City, which according to the is a minority-majority community, Hunter High’s school body is predominantly composed of students of color, which make up 66% of its population – 50% of them are Hispanic – according to 2022 data.

About 48% of students were also reported to be economically disadvantaged, according to the Granite School District.

“Compensation is a part of meeting teachers’ needs, but it’s also about instructional support,” Granite School District superintendent Rich K. Nye said on Tuesday. “What does it look like to have, say, a literacy paraprofessional in the room, or an interventionist in the room, or a school psychologist, or licensed clinical social worker to be able to meet the needs of the students?”

The district has grown its mental health resources available for teachers through insurance plans or its own wellness clinics, Nye said.

The district has also prioritized strategies to address teachers’ retention concerns, prioritizing the recruitment of educational support professionals, and taking into account their interests and that they represent the communities’ demographics.

Biden, according to her , has championed different educational initiatives to open up more opportunities to all students, such as universal preschool and more affordable higher education chances, including free community college.

In her , Biden walked through Glendale Middle School, located on Salt Lake City’s west side and also known for its, where she met with students and spoke about her commitment to raise teachers’ compensations and recruit more staff of color.

The first lady was set to depart Utah Tuesday night for San Francisco, where she’s scheduled for additional fundraising events for the Biden Victory Fund and other community meetings. Jill Biden will visit San Francisco and Healdsburg in California, in addition to Columbus, Ohio.

McKenzie Romero contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

Such unrelenting attacks — this time against a Bergen County, New Jersey, district —are what brought the first lady as well as some 200 federal cybersecurity officials, school district leaders and tech company executives together for a first-ever White House summit on strengthening school district defenses.

“It’s going to take all of us,” Biden said. 

The breaches have grinded school technology systems nationwide “to a halt,” the first lady said at the East Room gathering, forcing some districts to cancel classes as reams of sensitive student, parent and educator data were stolen and leaked online. In March, a Medusa attack on Minneapolis Public Schools exposed records about child abuse inquiries, student mental health crises and campus physical security details. 

“If we want to safeguard our children’s futures, we must protect their personal data,” she said. “Every student deserves the opportunity to see a school counselor when they’re struggling and not worry that these conversations will be shared with the world.”

Among the new strategies announced Tuesday is the creation of a Government Coordinating Council that will provide “formal, ongoing collaboration” between all levels of government and school districts to prepare for and respond to data breaches. Officials with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the agency would provide individualized assessments and cybersecurity training to 300 K-12 education entities over the next year. 

Tuesday’s cybersecurity event didn’t come with the announcement of any new federal regulations but was instead positioned as the first step in a new-found federal urgency around cybersecurity in schools. The Federal Communications Commission in late July proposed a $200 million pilot program to enhance cybersecurity in schools and libraries that still needs to be approved.

“When schools face cyber attacks, the impacts can be huge,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “Let’s be clear, we need to be taking these cyber attacks on schools as seriously as we do the physical attacks on critical infrastructure.”

In released by the Education Department and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the agencies recommended that school districts implement multi-factor authentication, enforce minimum password strength standards and ensure software is kept up to date. They should also consider moving on-premises information technology services to cloud-based systems. 

“Do not underestimate the ruthlessness of those who wish to do us harm,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “They have proven their willingness to steal and leak such private student information as psychiatric hospitalizations, home struggles and suicide attempts. Do not wait until the crisis comes to start preparing.” 

School cybersecurity expert Doug Levin, who attended the summit, said it was a positive development to see the federal government, and the Education Department in particular, focus on the effects of ransomware on schools. The Education Department has been “mostly absent from these conversations” in the past, said the national director of The K12 Security Information eXchange.

Meanwhile, several companies, including education technology vendors, unveiled new commitments to help facilitate digital security in schools. Amazon Web Services announced a new $20 million grant program to bolster K-12 school cybersecurity while Cloudflare committed to providing free cybersecurity tools to small districts with 2,500 or fewer students. 

Schools are now the single leading target for hackers, outpacing health care, technology, financial services and manufacturing industries, according to a global survey of IT professionals released last month by the British cybersecurity company Sophos.

In the U.S. school district cyber attacks reached a record high of 37 in the month of June alone, , but Tuesday’s event centered largely on a crisis that unfolded in Los Angeles nearly a year ago. 

Last September, a notorious ransomware group carried out an attack on the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, that resulted in some 500 gigabytes of district data being published to the Russian-speaking group’s dark-web leak site. 

A major theme of the White House summit was the politically connected superintendent’s swift outreach to federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That collaboration, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and federal education officials said, set into motion a response plan that mitigated the attack, limited the number of files breached and avoided class cancellations. 

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called it “the Harvard Business School case study on how to get this right.” 

Other school districts should respond similarly, said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. When school leaders suspect they’ve been the target of an attack, he said, it’s incumbent that they “please call us immediately.” In L.A.’s case, the FBI was able to have a team of agents on the ground in less than 24 hours, he said, enabling them to freeze vulnerable accounts and secure sensitive information that had been sought out by the threat actors. 

That coordinated response didn’t prevent some 2,000 current and former students’ highly sensitive psychological evaluations from being leaked on the dark web, an investigation by The 74 revealed. Carvalho initially denied that such records were exposed in the attack, but the district acknowledged they were after the story was published. The district also initially said the attack began and ended on Sept. 3 — the Saturday of Labor Day weekend — but a follow-up investigation determined that an intrusion began as early as July 31, the .

While Carvalho didn’t comment Tuesday on the leak of sensitive psychological information, he said the number of stolen files “could have been much worse,” adding that the hackers “encrypted and exfiltrated very little thanks to our actions.” Among the actions they didn’t take, the schools chief said, was paying the undisclosed ransom demand because “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

First Lady Jill Biden, senior administration officials, school district heads and technology company executives will convene at the White House Monday to kick off a new cybersecurity defense initiative as schools increasingly fall victim to crippling ransomware attacks. 

The Education Department will launch a coordinating council to provide formal collaboration between government officials and district leaders to help schools strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities in the face of attacks that have closed campuses and exposed highly sensitive student and educator information online. The effort was announced by senior Biden administration officials on a press call Sunday evening. 

The council is being billed as the department’s “key first step” in a renewed focus on cybersecurity after multiple districts — including in Los Angeles and Minneapolis — were targeted by cyber gangs. 

At the White House event, federal officials will hear from school district leaders who navigated attacks, including Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who led America’s second-largest school system through a hack last September. That breach, an investigation by The 74 revealed, exposed thousands of current and former students’ highly sensitive psychological evaluations on the dark web.

In addition to the first lady, others expected to attend the 4 p.m. White House summit include Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. 

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies, said the administration seeks to help school districts protect sensitive information about students, parents and educators. In March, a ransomware attack against Minneapolis Public Schools led to a data breach that exposed more than 189,000 files, including records related to sexual misconduct investigations, child abuse reports and district physical security information that’s typically kept private. 

Neuberger called the Minneapolis breach “a particularly vicious example,” citing the disclosure of closely held school security information, which was first revealed in an investigation by The 74. 

Teams of federal cybersecurity experts will visit schools and help them create incident response plans, said Neuberger, adding that districts — particularly small ones — often lack the money and resources to adequately prepare for attacks. 

Schools are now the single leading target for hackers, outpacing health care, technology, financial services and manufacturing industries, according to a global survey of IT professionals released last month by the British cybersecurity company Sophos.

Cindy Marten, the deputy secretary of education, said that government officials and school leaders must make school cybersecurity a priority at the same level as physical infrastructure. She said she experienced firsthand how districts and the federal government can work together to mitigate the harm from attacks. Carvalho reached out to the Education Department after the Los Angeles district was hacked, Marten said, making clear the importance of partnerships.

It can take as long as nine months for districts to recover from cyberattacks, , and can cost them as much as $1 million to respond. 

Several technology companies have also committed to offer schools “free and low-cost resources.” Amazon Web Services pledged to provide $20 million for a K-12 cyber grant program, free security training and incident response help. Meanwhile, will offer free cybersecurity tools to small districts with 2,500 or fewer students. 

Other federal commitments announced Monday include a guide from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Guard Bureau to help schools report cybersecurity incidents and tap into federal cyber defense expertise. 

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $200 million grant program to help districts bolster cybersecurity. 

Children with special needs are among those whose learning has suffered the most because of the pandemic. But that’s not what Juliana Urtubey sees when she looks at her students at Booker Elementary in Las Vegas.

“Our brains work in slightly different ways. Our job is to find all of our students’ strengths,” she said about special education teachers. That perspective, she said, has given her an advantage over the past year. “I was mining for students’ strengths.”

On Thursday, the Council of Chief State School Officers named Urtubey the 2021 National Teacher of the Year. Surprised with flowers from First lady Jill Biden, Urtubey is the third special educator to receive the honor. Advocates said having a special education teacher as spokeswoman for the field over the next year could help as they push for an increase in federal funding for children with disabilities. But Urtubey said her focus will be much broader. Her message is that all students deserve a “joyous and just” education in schools where they feel a “deep sense of belonging.”

That starts, she said, by incorporating children’s culture into classroom lessons and their experiences at school.

“To me, as a Latina, our public institutions can’t separate our students from their families,” said Urtubey, who moved with her parents to the U.S. from Colombia and was trained as a bilingual teacher in Arizona when the state passed a law requiring English-only instruction. “I think about the tremendous loss of language and culture in this country.”

At Crestwood Elementary, where she worked before Booker, she helped that became an outdoor classroom for the school and another way to make immigrant families feel welcome.

Ciara Byrne, founder and CEO of Green Our Planet — which works with schools to teach science, technology, engineering and math through school gardening — remembers how plain and uninviting Crestwood looked in 2014 when she first talked with Urtubey about being part of the program.

“She was just full of beans and talking about how she was going to transform it,” Byrne said. “Within three years, there were murals all over the place.”

Many were painted by mothers of the “gnomies,” a student garden club that meets on Friday mornings. In fact, when Byrne wants to show the nonprofit’s work off to potential sponsors, she takes them to Crestwood, which not only has several planter beds, but also butterfly, bee and pollinator gardens.

Jose Silva was assistant principal at Crestwood at the time. He took notice of Urtubey’s “caring approach” and her expertise in working with special needs students. Now he’s principal at Booker, where he said her dedication to the school extends to her colleagues.

With the title of learning strategist, Urtubey coaches other classroom teachers on providing instruction for students with special needs and has served as a mentor to new teachers. But even veteran educators said they benefit from working with her.

Rosie Perez, another special educator at Booker, called Urtubey when she was working on a certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. They had never met before, but Perez said she “instantly noticed her amiable and warm-hearted personality.”

“I am in the 19th year of my teaching career and am still eager to learn,” Perez said, adding that she “could not think of anyone better to begin this step in my career, to learn and grow along with, but Juliana.”

‘Through a lot of loss’

Urtubey’s positive outlook doesn’t mean the past year hasn’t been traumatic — for families and teachers. “We’ve been through a lot of loss,” she told CBS This Morning host Gayle King, after she learned she was the winner.

In an interview with The 74, she noted the past year has probably been the most difficult in her teaching career — a sentiment shared by those in the special education field nationally. An American Institutes for Research released last fall showed that 58 percent of districts have found it challenging to comply with the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act during the pandemic. And almost three-quarters said it was “more or substantially more difficult” to accommodate students’ individual learning needs.

Urtubey, Nevada’s first recipient of the national award, said her emphasis on students’ social and emotional connections made the loss of in-person learning less disruptive. “Our classroom community just translated over” to a remote format, she said. She worked with school nutrition staff to make sure meal distribution worked for families’ schedules and tracked down students who moved during remote learning.

Her “resilience is indicative of how hard special education teachers have worked this year,” said Dennis Cavitt, president of Council for Exceptional Children, a membership and advocacy organization. But he added that her recognition also comes as advocates are pushing for funding to address shortages of special education teachers and a lack of diversity in the workforce. President Joe Biden has asked for a $2.6 billion increase for special education.

“Having Juliana in the spotlight this year will help carry that message forward and energize the entire education community around those goals,” Cavitt said.

Urtubey said she doesn’t know if she’ll return to Booker after her year on a national stage. But she’s working with Silva and Green Our Planet to create another community garden — what she described as a “10,000-square-foot outdoor oasis” — and leave a lasting mark on the school.

“I’m definitely going to stay connected to my Booker family,” she said.