Jill Biden to visit Connecticut on Wednesday
First lady Jill Biden will come to Meriden next Wednesday in a visit that will highlight the in-person reopening of public schools across the country.
First lady Jill Biden will come to Meriden next Wednesday in a visit that will highlight the reopening of public schools across the country.
Biden will visit Meriden, hometown of Miguel Cardona, who is expected to be confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Education by then.
“The White House has informed us of the visit and the Governor is honored to host Dr. Biden for one of her first trips as first lady,” said Max Reiss, spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday morning. No further details were available Friday. Cardona has made reopening the nation’s schools for in-person education during the coronavirus crisis a priority. He has spoken about the importance of clear federal guidelines and funding for school across the nation to reopen safely, as well as close collaboration with public health officials and educators.
“I think the American people are going to see that the national strategy is going to be driving a lot of the efforts at the local level,” Cardona said in an interview in January with WNPR’sLucyNalpathanchil on the station’s “Where We Live” program.
Biden, a professor of writing at Northern
Virginia Community College, is expected to continue to make education a priority as she serves as first lady.
At a virtual fundraiser last summer, Biden spoke about being a political spouse and the opportunities the role presents.
“Being a political spouse was never in my plan ... but I realized that being a Senate spouse and ... being a spouse of the vice president, I was given a platform,’’ Biden said at the time.
“And I promised myself I wouldn’t waste it ... I focused on using my platform to lift up communities who were important to me such as military families and community college students and little by little I became more comfortable with it,’’ she said.