“Coal Miner’s Daughter” Hawks Digital Learning | tultican

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” Hawks Digital Learning | tultican

“Coal Miner’s Daughter” Hawks Digital Learning

By Thomas Ultican 12/8/2020

The last Democrat and first woman to serve as Governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, has become one of the nation’s leading advocates for digital learning. She presents herself as a simple country girl from a poor family, but doesn’t mention that her coalminer father became a rich mine owner by the time she was in college. She is known as a powerful political and financial operative with connections that go all the way to the incoming Biden administration.

Creating a New Career

Governor Perdue does have a background in education. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in History, she taught kindergarten in 1970-71, ninth grade 1971-73 and high school 1973-74. She then returned to school where in 1976 she earned a Doctorate in Education Administration. Her thesis was focused on education gerontology.

After earning the education doctorate, she worked in long term care and geriatric services. In 1986, she ran for the North Carolina House of Representatives and won. Four years later she won a state senate seat which she held for a decade before making successful runs for Lieutenant Governor in 2000 and again in 2004. This all positioned her to become North Carolina’s first female governor in 2008.

For Perdue, the wheels flew off the campaign bus in 2012. She was facing tanking polling numbers when members of her 2008 campaign pleaded guilty to finance violations. Greensboro businessman Peter Reichard, the finance director, pleaded to a felony and lawyer Julia Leigh “Juleigh” Sitton, a fundraiser for the campaign, pleaded to a misdemeanor in order to avoid a felony charge. Perdue soon announced she would not be a candidate for Governor in 2013.

The June following her exit from the Governor’s mansion, the Newsobserver.com reported, “Former Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue has recently CONTINUE READING: “Coal Miner’s Daughter” Hawks Digital Learning | tultican

Cybercriminals Strike Schools Amid Pandemic | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Cybercriminals Strike Schools Amid Pandemic | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Cybercriminals Strike Schools Amid Pandemic

Read Stateline coverage of the latest state action on coronavirus.

Just days before the Aug. 3 scheduled start of school, officials at the Athens Independent School District in East Texas received a shock.

Cybercriminals had attacked the district’s entire computer network, encrypting all the data and demanding $50,000 in ransom for its release. Access to everything from teacher communications to student assignments was blocked.

“It was terribly disruptive, to put it mildly,” said Toni Clay, the district’s spokesperson. “We no longer had access to any student information, such as schedules, email addresses, anything that would be stored. Internally, we had no staff information. It was all frozen.”

The plan had been to begin school online for three weeks and then transition to a hybrid model of both virtual and in-person classes. Instead, officials ended up delaying the start of school completely for a week.

Athens is one of at least 16 school districts, from California to New Jersey, that have been victimized in a rash of ransomware attacks since the end of July.

Some have been forced to push back school reopening dates. Others that already started school have had to cancel classes for a day or more.

The attacks have placed a heavy burden on school administrators as they grapple with whether it’s safe for students and teachers to return in person and whether schools are prepared to handle social distancing and other requirements.

School information technology staffs, meanwhile, have been consumed with the transition to CONTINUE READING; Cybercriminals Strike Schools Amid Pandemic | The Pew Charitable Trusts