(File Photo of Hopewell Area School District Logo)

(Reported by Beaver County Radio News Correspondent Sandy Giordano, Published on November 28th, 2024 at 8: A.M.)

(Hopewell, PA) At Tuesday night’s school board meeting, it was announced that the PIAA approved the cooperative agreement with the schools.

(Photo Provided with Release)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Midland, PA) According to a release from Rick Orienza, the Director of Marketing and Corporate Relations for Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center, their 2024-2025 Clearview Federal Credit Union Subscription Series, Raise Your Voice! goes on with the show The Gift of the Magi, which brings an O. Henry classic story to life this holiday season. Orienza confirms that the Blackbox Theater will be the stage for this production with show dates of December 6-8, 12-15, and 19-22, as audience members will follow two poor lovers, Jim and Della, in their journey in which love is better than anything that people possess. Orienza also states that $20 is the price of tickets, which can be accessed by checking out LincolnParkArts.org or you can contact the Lincoln Park Box Office at 724-576-4644. 

(File-Photo of Rep. Matzie speaking at the Pa. House)

 AMBRIDGE, Nov. 27 – New safety resources and mental health supports are coming to public schools in the 16^th Legislative District thanks to new grants totaling nearly $1.1 million from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, state Rep. Rob Matzie announced today.

“A safe place to learn is the foundation for every other educational resource we provide our students,” Matzie said. “But creating a secure learning environment isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition, and our school administrators are continually assessing safety needs and updating plans. The new funding, which comes from the FY 2024-25 budget, will ensure that the schools in our district are able to meet those evolving needs.”

Matzie said the following funding was awarded to District 16 public schools for safety resources and student mental health programs:

• Aliquippa SD – $122,772
• Ambridge Area SD – $147,195
• Baden Academy CS – $70,000
• Beaver County CTC – $70,000
• Beaver Valley IU 27 – $70,000
• Central Valley SD – $141,117
• Freedom Area SD – $123,809
• Hopewell Area SD – $139,024
• Provident Charter School West – $70,000
• Rochester Area SD – $114,790

In addition to the public school funding, Matzie said the following grants were awarded for Beaver County nonpublic school safety resources:

• $75,000 to the New Sewickley Township Police Department for security resource services to Freedom Area SD.
• $70,000 to McGuire Memorial, which operates a school.
• $63,715 to Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School.
• $33,000 to Beaver County Christian School – Upper.

The awards are part of the $120 million FY 2024-25 budget package signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro supporting improved safety and security and mental health supports for students and staff in Pennsylvania’s public and private K-12 schools. A complete list of funding is available on PCCD’s website here: https://www.pccd.pa.gov/schoolsafety/Pages/default.aspx.

Photo of sign in front of New Brighton Borough Building taken by Frank Sparks, Beaver County Radio General Manager in 2018

The Thanksgiving holiday will not affect refuse and recycling collection in New Brighton Borough.  Aiken Refuse will continue to provide daily service this entire week, including Thursday.

The New Brighton Borough Municipal Building will be closed on Thursday, November 28 and Friday, November 29 for the holiday. Normal business hours will resume on Monday, December 2.

FILE – Pennsylvania Senate candidate Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., takes part in a debate at the WPVI-TV studio, Oct. 15, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

By MARC LEVY Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The drubbing Democrats took in Pennsylvania in this year’s election has prompted predictable vows to rebound, but it has also sowed doubts about whether Pennsylvania might be leaving the ranks of up-for-grabs swing states for a right-leaning existence more like Ohio’s.
The introspection over voters’ rejection of Democrats comes amid growing speculation about Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a contender for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
Widely expected to seek reelection in the 2026 mid-terms, Shapiro was considered a rising star in the party even before he garnered heavy national attention for making Vice President Kamala Harris’ shortlist of candidates for running mates.
Some Pennsylvania Democrats say 2024’s losses are, at least in part, attributable to voters motivated specifically by President-elect Donald Trump. Many of those voters won’t show up if Trump isn’t on the ballot, the theory goes, leaving Pennsylvania’s status as the ultimate swing state intact.
“I don’t think it’s an indicator for Pennsylvania,” said Jamie Perrapato, executive director of Turn PA Blue, which helps organize and train campaign volunteers. “I’ll believe it when these people come out and vote in any elections but for the presidency.”
Pennsylvania’s status as the nation’s premier battleground state in 2024 was unmistakable: political campaigns dropped more money on campaign ads than in any other state, according to data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Plenty of that money was spent by Democrats, but their defeat was across the board. Democrats in Pennsylvania lost its 19 presidential electoral votes, a U.S. Senate seat, three other statewide races, two congressional seats and what was once a reassuring advantage in voter registration.
Some of those losses were particularly notable: Democrats hadn’t lost Pennsylvania’s electoral votes and a Senate incumbent in the same year since 1880. The defeat of three-term Sen. Bob Casey is especially a gut-punch for Democrats: the son of a former governor has served in statewide office since 1997.
An echo of what happened everywhere
The same debate that Democrats are having nationally over Harris’ decisive loss is playing out in Pennsylvania, with no agreement on what caused them to be so wrong.
Some blamed President Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native, for backtracking on his promise not to run for reelection. Some blamed the party’s left wing and some blamed Harris, saying she tried to woo Republican voters instead of focusing on pocketbook issues that were motivating working-class voters.
In Pennsylvania, finger-pointing erupted in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia — where Trump significantly narrowed his 2020 deficit — between the city’s Democratic Party chair and a Harris campaign adviser.
The nation’s sixth-most populous city is historically a driver of Democratic victories statewide, but Harris’ margin there was the smallest of any Democratic presidential nominee since John Kerry’s in 2004, and turnout there was well below the statewide average.
Rural Democrats suggested the party left votes on the table in their regions, too. Some said Harris hurt herself by not responding forcefully enough in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state against Trump’s assertions that she would ban fracking.
Ed Rendell, the former two-term governor of Pennsylvania and ex-Democratic National Committee chair, said Trump had the right message this year and that Harris didn’t have enough time on the campaign trail to counter it.
Still, Rendell said Pennsylvania remains very much a swing state.
“I wouldn’t go crazy over these election results,” Rendell said. “It’s still tight enough to say that in 2022 the Democrats swept everything and you would have thought that things looked pretty good for us, and this time we almost lost everything.”
That year, Shapiro won the governor’s office by nearly 15%, John Fetterman was the only candidate in the nation to flip a U.S. Senate seat despite suffering a stroke in the midst of his campaign, and Democrats captured control of the state House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years.
Bethany Hallam, an Allegheny County council member who is part of a wave of progressive Democrats to win office around Pittsburgh in recent years, said the party can fix things before Pennsylvania becomes Ohio. But she cautioned against interpreting 2024 as a one-time blip, saying it would be a mistake to think Trump voters will never be heard from again.
“They’re going to be more empowered to keep voting more,” Hallam said. “They came out, finally exercised their votes and the person they picked won. … I don’t think this was a one-off thing.”
The ever-changing political landscape
Shapiro, assuming he seeks another term in 2026, would likely benefit from a mid-term backlash that has haunted the party in power — in this case, Republicans and Trump — in nearly every election since World War II.
The political landscape never stays the same, and voters two years from now will be reacting to a new set of factors: the state of the economy, the ups and downs of Trump’s presidency, events no one sees coming.
Rendell predicted that Trump’s public approval ratings will be badly damaged — below 40% — even before he takes office.
Democrats, meanwhile, fully expect Republicans to come after Shapiro in an effort to damage any loftier ambitions he may have.
They say they’ll be ready.
“He’s on the MAGA radar,” said Michelle McFall, the Westmoreland County Democratic Party chair. “He’s a wildly popular governor in what is still the most important battleground state … and we’re going to make sure we’re in fighting shape to hold that seat.”
In 2025, partisan control of the state Supreme Court will be up for grabs when three Democratic justices elected a decade ago must run to retain their seats in up-or-down elections without an opponent. Republicans have it marked on their calendars.
Democrats will go into those battles with their narrowest voter registration edge in at least a half-century. What was an advantage of 1.2 million voters in 2008, the year Barack Obama won the presidency, is now a gap of fewer than 300,000.
University of Pennsylvania researchers found that, since the 2020 presidential election, Republican gains weren’t because Republicans registered more new voters.
Rather, the GOP’s gains were from more Democrats switching their registration to Republican, a third party or independent, as well as more inactive Democratic voters being removed from registration rolls, the researchers reported.
Democrats have won more statewide elections in the past 25 years, but the parties are tied in that category in the five elections from 2020 through 2024.
Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is hard to predict that Pennsylvania is trending in a particular direction, since politics are evolving and parties that lose tend to adapt.
Even when Democrats had larger registration advantages, Hopkins said, Republicans competed on a statewide playing field.
Hopkins said Democrats should be worried that they lost young voters and Hispanic voters to Trump, although the swing toward the GOP was relatively muted in Pennsylvania. Trump’s 1.8 percentage-point victory was hardly a landslide, he noted, and it signals that Pennsylvania will be competitive moving forward.
“I don’t think that the registration numbers are destiny,” Hopkins said. “That’s partly because even with Democrats losing their registration advantage, whichever party can win the unaffiliated voters by a healthy margin will carry the state.”
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Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter

(File Photo)

Pittsburgh, PA – The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), Allegheny County Safety Partners, Allegheny County Airport Authority, Allegheny Health Network Life Flight and STAT MedEvac partnered to highlight the importance of sober driving and wearing a seat belt ahead of the holiday season, especially the day before Thanksgiving, also known as “Blackout Wednesday.”

“Blackout Wednesday,” one of the largest drinking days of the year, kicks off the Holiday Season Impaired Driving Campaign, which runs through January 2, 2025. During this time, the southwest region of PennDOT and their safety partners will work together to deliver lifesaving messages to the public to encourage positive actions that can help reduce impaired driving in Pennsylvania.

The event was hosted at the Allegheny County Airport, with safety partners gathered in front of a STAT MedEvac helicopter, used to transport crash victims to life-saving treatment. The safety partners shared safety tips for celebrating the holidays responsibly and making good decisions that will save lives.

Drivers are reminded to recognize how drugs, even prescribed medications, along with alcohol, can impact their ability to drive safely. Someone is considered alcohol-impaired with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher. Additionally, drugs can mimic the same inebriation symptoms as someone with a .08 BAC, or sometimes worse.

According to PennDOT data, from the day before Thanksgiving 2023 to January 2, 2024 there were 998 crashes in Allegheny County, resulting in 11 fatalities. Of those crashes, 105 were impaired driver related, resulting in five fatalities.

Motorists were also urged to buckle up each time they enter a vehicle. As many Pennsylvanians will travel during the holiday season, they are reminded the Pennsylvania law requires drivers, front-seat passengers, and any occupant younger than 18 to buckle up when riding in a vehicle. Children under age 4 must be properly secured in an approved child safety seat. Children under age 2 must ride in a rear-facing car seat until they outgrow the maximum weight and height limits designated by the seat manufacturer. Booster seats are required for children ages 4 to 8.

Collectively the agencies are urging the public to plan ahead and be safe this holiday season, as safety is everyone’s responsibility.

The Allegheny County Safety Partners consist of the AAA East Central, Allegheny County Health Department, Allegheny County Police Department, Children’s Hospital Injury Prevention, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Pennsylvania DUI Association, Pennsylvania State Police, Pennsylvania Traffic Injury Prevention Project, and Port Authority of Allegheny County Police Department.

For more information, visit www.PennDOT.pa.gov/safety.

PennDOT’s media center offers social-media-sized graphics highlighting topics such as seat belts, impaired driving, and distracted driving for organizations, community groups, or others who share safety information with their stakeholders.

For regional updates, follow PennDOT on X and join the Greater Pittsburgh Area PennDOT Facebook group.