Governor McCrory Signs Bills Promoting Technology in Public Schools On March 15, Governor Pat McCrory acted on his commitment to transform North Carolina’s education system by signing two bills to help expand digital learning initiatives and promote technology in the classroom. “This legislation will help fundamentally transform the way our children learn in our schools through technology,” said Governor McCrory at Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw. “I thank the bill sponsors as we continue to work together to empower our …
Vance County Schools Committee Meeting Dates
Vance County Board of Education Committee Meeting Dates: * Community Relations, Thursday, March 21st, 5:30 pm * Personnel Committee, Tuesday, April 2nd, 8:30 am Note: All meetings are held in the Superintendent’s Conference Room.
Wednesday Open Line
Ask many Americans where their food comes from, and they’ll answer the supermarket, while clothing comes from the mall. That’s why this is National Agriculture Week — an annual program focused on students across the nation, the consumers of tomorrow. They’ll learn that from pizzas to cosmetics, from clothing to orange juice, agriculture gives us what we eat each day, and much of what we wear and use. In 1920, there were nearly 6.5 million farms in the U.S., and …
VGCC volunteers contribute to success of UNC-TV fundraiser
Vance-Granville Community College recently sent a group of 35 volunteers to Research Triangle Park to continue the college’s tradition of helping UNC-TV with the public broadcasting network’s on-air “Festival 2013” fundraiser. This was the ninth consecutive year that the college participated in the Festival. Students, faculty and staff members traveled to the UNC-TV studio on March 2. They manned the phones and performed other tasks for several hours, all the while proudly wearing VGCC Vanguard apparel. One of the participants, …
Attorney General Roy Cooper: This “Operation” Saves Lives
Attorney General Roy Cooper is encouraging all North Carolinians to scour their medicine cabinets and take their unneeded medications to an Operation Medicine Drop location. More than 250 of these prescription drug take-back events are scheduled across the state this week. Disposing of old medications this way keeps them out of the hands of young people who might be tempted to abuse them, and it also helps to keep our rivers and groundwater cleaner. Last year, more than 15 million …
VGCC Photography class in April
Vance Granville is currently registering for an Audio, Video & Picture Editing class to be taught on the Henderson campus. Please call 252.738.3417 for additional information or to register this course. Mike Leonard, Computer Service Technician in the VGCC Information Technology Department, is the instructor of this hands-on course. Students will learn how to edit video, audio and image files using FREE software available from the Internet. Topics covered will be: converting file formats; cutting, joining and enhancing a file …
Six NC stores fined for price-scanning errors
RALEIGH — The N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Standards Division has collected fines from stores in Charlotte, Delco, Elkin, Smithfield, Vanceboro and Winston-Salem for excessive price-scanning errors. The NCDA&CS Standards Division conducts periodic, unannounced inspections of a business’ price-scanner system to check for accuracy between the prices advertised and the prices that ring up at the register. If a store has more than a 2 percent error rate on overcharges, inspectors discuss the findings with the store manager …
White House: Previewing President Obama’s Trip to Israel
In the first foreign trip of his second term in office, President Obama will visit Israel, the West Bank and Jordan. The trip is an important opportunity to meet with the new Israeli government and speak to the Israeli people, as well as meet with the Palestinian leadership and the King of Jordan. We asked Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, to preview the upcoming trip and some of the issues the President would be discussing in …
Tuesday Open Line
Banks had operated in America for about a half century before someone tried to make an unauthorized withdrawal. On this date in 1831, Edward Smith committed the first bank robbery in the U.S. — hitting the City Bank on New York’s Wall Street. He entered the bank after it closed, using a duplicate set of keys, and got away with $245,000 — a huge sum at the time. But he was caught, convicted and spent five years in New York’s …
Henderson-Vance Spring Litter Sweep Week April 15-20
The Vance County Appearance Commission and the Henderson Community Appearance Commission are asking the local community to get involved in the fifth annual Henderson-Vance Spring Litter Sweep during the week of April 15-20, 2013. The appearance commissions are sponsoring the week-long activities designed to get community residents involved in improving the appearance of Henderson and all of Vance County. The local effort this year is once again part of the North Carolina Spring Litter Sweep, which is scheduled for April …
Congresswoman Renee Ellmers: The SKILLS Act
This week, the House passed the H.R. 803 the “Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act to cut red tape and help more Americans get back to work. I discussed the SKILLS Act on several local radio shows this week and spoke in favor of the bill on the floor of the House. Below you will find a link to my speech and to additional information about the bill. In Energy & Commerce subcommittee hearings this week, we …
N.C. Pesticide Board announces March case settlements
RALEIGH — The N.C. Pesticide Board recently approved the following settlement agreements for respondents in Beaufort, Bladen, Brunswick, Craven, Edgecombe, Nash, Northampton, Onslow, Pitt, Robeson, Stanly, Wake and Wayne counties. Keith Lee Adcox of Lumberton agreed to pay $1,000 for applying herbicides Gramoxone Inteon and Envive in a manner inconsistent with the labeling to a wheat field in Lumberton. The herbicides damaged crops in an adjacent field, and the labels state not to apply under conditions favoring drift. Willis J. …
Senator Richard Burr Newsletter
While some in Washington seek to encroach on the Second Amendment rights of law-biding Americans, I will continue to fight to ensure these rights are honored and protected. Yesterday, I introduced legislation that would end the arbitrary process through which the government strips veterans and other Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) beneficiaries of their Second Amendment rights. This legislation would protect the rights of veterans and their families by ensuring that only a proper judicial authority is able to determine who …
White House Weekly Address: Time to Create the Energy Security Trust
President Obama discusses the need to harness American energy in order to reduce our dependence on oil and make the United States a magnet for new jobs. He highlights his all-of-the-above approach to American energy — including a proposal to establish an Energy Security Trust, which invests in research that will help shift our cars and trucks off of oil. This week, the President met with the Sultan of Brunei, his Export Council, Intel Science Fair finalists, and Israel Channel …
Monday Open Line
On this date in 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Hawaii Statehood Bill that passed through Congress the week before. In a plebiscite held in June, Hawaiian voters validated the federal act, opting for statehood by more than 94 percent of the vote. On August 21st, Hawaii became the 50th state, and our current national flag debuted. Hawaii was annexed by the United States in July 1898 and was organized as a territory two years later. In the 1900 Census, …
Reader Submission: Decency in Vance County Schools (Contains Explicit Language)
Editors note: Be warned, this article contains explicit wording. This is a cut and paste from my child’s latest ninth grade reading assignment from “Go Ask Alice”. My child is 14 and is in ninth grade. What about decency? This is not the education that my tax dollars are paying for my child to receive. If my daughter walked into class and proclaimed “Another Day Another blowjob” she would be immediately suspended or expelled. The teacher assigned this book without …
10th Sustainable Energy Conference Offers Informative, Prestigious Lineup
RALEIGH – A Nobel Peace Prize winner, the leader of one of North Carolina’s most dynamic energy product innovators, the sustainability chief of one of the nation’s top craft brewers and the Electric Vehicle Manager with Nissan Leaf in Tennessee, will highlight presentations at the N.C. Dept. of Commerce Energy Office’s 10th annual Sustainable Energy Conference in Raleigh April 15-17. “The state’s clean energy sector has been identified as one of the top national growth trends, vaulting North Carolina into …
Vance County NC Cooperative Extension Updates
If you have ever considered raising produce for the wholesale market, you may have wondered about GAP Certification. In order to provide answers, I have invited Dr. Chris Gunter, NCSU Extension Vegetable Specialist to Warren County on Monday (3/18). He will be at the Warren County Extension office at 1 pm for an informal “Question and Answer” session. If you would like to attend, please contact me to let me know (213-6095 or e-mail). Also, note the following pesticide recertification …
Friday / Weekend Open Line
A number of various causes are recognized in March. Two of these seem to go hand-in-hand — National Nutrition Month and National Frozen Food Month. The goal of the first is make consumers aware of just how easy it is to eat healthy meals. And one of the ways this is possible is because of frozen food. Developed by Clarence Birdseye, the first commercially available frozen food was fish in 1925. Frozen food became increasingly popular as refrigerated freight trains …
Vance County Schools Revisions to Student Assignment Policy
The Vance County Board of Education Monday night approved revisions to its Assignment of Students to Schools Policy stating that the board will no longer approve out-of-county requests for students to attend schools outside of Vance County. The revised policy, unanimously approved by the board, states, “No new out-of-county releases will be processed/approved by the Vance County Board of Education beginning with the 2013-2014 school year and thereafter unless the parent making the request is employed by the school system …