12:45pm | U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is stopping in Long Beach this today as part of a two-day Southern California visit aimed at engaging parents, teachers and the community in a discussion about the need for education reform.
Duncan will participate in a roundtable discussion on the need to fix the federal No Child Left Behind Act at Tincher Preparatory this afternoon. Just moments ago he gave the keynote address at the United Way Education Summit in Los Angeles.
According to information provided U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Sara Gast, Duncan is visiting schools in both San Diego and Los Angeles counties during his trip to “echo President [Barack] Obama’s call to Congress to move quickly and fix what is broken in No Child Left Behind.”
Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., has announced that she will be in attendance during the local roundtable discussion at the Petaluma Avenue K-8 school.
According to information provided by spokesman Ray Zaccaro from Richardson’s 37th Congressional District office in Washington, the roundtable discussion will address the the challenges facing K-12 education and the need to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Richardson made headlines recently after it was revealed that a former member of her staff had been questioned by an ethics investigator relative to Richardson’s allegedly making a number of her staffers work on her most recent campaign while on the clock as Capitol Hill aides, which is illegal.
Richardson has denied that she is the subject of another ethics probe, but the staffer said a number of Richardson’s employees were also interviewed and that Richardson paid for a lawyer to be present during those interviews.
Besides her initial denial, the congresswoman has yet to directly address the matter publicly.