WASHINGTON (AP) — In April, Bernie Sanders repeatedly stood shoulder to shoulder with President Joe Biden, promoting their joint accomplishments on health care and climate at formal White House events while eviscerating Donald Trump in a widely viewed campaign TikTok video.

Then just last week, Sanders was bluntly warning that the crisis in Gaza could be Biden’s “Vietnam” and invoking President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision not to run for reelection as the nation was in an uproar over his support of that war.

Such is the political dichotomy of Bernie Sanders when it comes to Joe Biden. They are two octogenarians who share a bond that was forged through a hard-fought primary in 2020 and fortified through policy achievements over the last three years.

Now, in this election year, Sanders will be Biden’s most powerful emissary to progressives and younger voters — a task that will test the senator’s pull with the sectors of the Democratic Party most disillusioned with the president and his policies, especially on Gaza.

Privately, Sanders has felt less enthusiastic in recent days about making the political case on Biden’s behalf as the Gaza crisis worsened, according to a person familiar with Sanders’ sentiments. Still, Sanders remains adamant that the specter of Trump’s return to the Oval Office is too grave a threat and stresses that “this election is not between Joe Biden and God. It is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.”

“I understand that a lot of people in this country are less than enthusiastic about Biden for a number of reasons and I get that. And I strongly disagree with him, especially on what’s going on in Gaza,” Sanders said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

But Sanders continued: “You have to have a certain maturity when you deal with politics and that is yes, you can disagree with somebody. That doesn’t mean you can vote for somebody else who could be the most dangerous person in American history, or not vote and allow that other guy to win.”

That will be the thrust of the message that Sanders will carry through November, even as progressive furor over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza continues to escalate, protests continue to fester and Sanders’ own critiques of the administration’s policy become more pointed.

“He’s not trimming the sails on Gaza, because of Biden,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who succeeded Sanders in the House and joined him in the Senate last year. “Bernie’s credibility is that he’s maintained his solid positions, and then he’s going to make the case why, Biden versus Trump.”

A WHITE HOUSE-SENATE PARTNERSHIP

Few can doubt Sanders’ influence throughout the Biden presidency. Once rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, the two men later joined forces to assemble half a dozen policy task forces that underpinned the party’s policy platform later that year — an unusual endeavor that helped bring the Democratic socialist’s supporters into Biden’s fold.

That laid the groundwork for a burst of ambitious policymaking in the first two years of the Biden administration, from a sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package in early 2021 to legislation in the summer of 2022 that was a mishmash of longstanding Democratic priorities, including cheaper prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries. Sanders, who helped craft those blueprints as head of the Senate Budget Committee, had been directly encouraged by Biden to go big in those proposals, with the assurance that the president had his back.

“You and I have been fighting this for 25 years,” Biden told Sanders admiringly at their joint health care event in April. “Finally, finally we beat Big Pharma. Finally.”

Sanders, like many others who back Biden’s domestic achievements, believes the public is still too unaware of them. He was the one who approached White House officials about doing an event specifically to spotlight a drop in the cost of inhalers.

More than three years into Biden’s term, Sanders’ connections throughout the West Wing are deep. He chats regularly not only with the president, but his top aides, including White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, senior adviser Anita Dunn and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

“He doesn’t mince words,” Dunn said. “He’s very direct with us, pretty blunt, and that’s a good thing.”

DEEP TENSIONS OVER GAZA, CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

It took just hours for Sanders, who announced his own reelection bid Monday, to endorse Biden’s campaign once the president made it official last April. It was an unmistakable signal to his supporters that, despite any misgivings, it was imperative to back Biden without hesitation.

Yet some Democrats are worried that anger among progressives over Gaza is so deep that not even Sanders can persuade them to support Biden. A persistent bloc of voters in multiple primaries continues to choose “uncommitted” or a variant to protest Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, sometimes far surpassing Biden’s margin of victory in those same states in the 2020 general election.

For instance, more than 48,000 voted “uninstructed” in the Wisconsin Democratic primary in early April, which outpaced the roughly 20,700 votes by which Biden outpaced Trump, a Republican, in the battleground state four years ago. Wisconsin’s primaries this year came three weeks after Biden had already clinched the nomination.

“This campaign is in trouble. And Sen. Sanders will do everything — again, everything — that he can to try to pull this man over the finish line,” said Nina Turner, who was a national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 campaign. “I’m not so sure it’s going to work this time.”

Mitch Landrieu, a national co-chair for the Biden campaign, told CNN that Sanders’ comparisons to the Vietnam War were an “over-exaggeration.” A March poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that 18- to 29-year-olds were less likely to say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the national issue that concerned them most, compared to issues like the economy, immigration and abortion.

But it isn’t just on Gaza that Sanders has been pushing Biden and his aides. He’s urging them to shift campaign strategy to not just contrast Biden with Trump but to lay out ambitious goals on health care, education, child care and workers’ rights.

Biden’s State of the Union address, which his advisers point to as a roadmap for his second term, was a “general start,” Sanders said, but he added that Biden has to do more to inspire voters.

“What I’ve said to the White House is, it’s not good enough simply to talk about Donald Trump,” Sanders said in the interview. “It’s not good enough to talk about your accomplishments, which I have. You got to have a bold agenda for the future.”

Biden’s aides point to specific proposals released around the State of the Union, such as an expansive housing plan that would build or preserve two million homes. Sanders is also now developing new health care legislation in tandem with the White House, which would extend to all Americans the $2,000 annual cap on prescription costs that the Inflation Reduction Act provided to seniors on Medicare.

SHARED VALUES, IF NOT IDEOLOGIES

Biden doesn’t hesitate to point out where he splits with Sanders when given the chance.

“I like him, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist,” Biden said in January 2022. “I’m a mainstream Democrat.”

Yet top advisers to the president, long a stalwart of the Democratic center-left, and Sanders, the undisputed leader of the party’s progressive wing, say the two men share more traits than their ideological stances would indicate.

For one, they both hold a core belief that government should be a force for good. Their political careers are anchored in small, sparsely populated states that exposed them to the most hyperlocal and grassroots of politics. They have a sense of pragmatism about working within the political system’s realities, even if Sanders works to push those boundaries and Biden governs inside of them.

Biden, as vice president, was the rare establishment Democrat who was warm to Sanders during the senator’s first presidential bid. He invited Sanders to the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory to discuss his campaign and policy ideas in 2015 — a time when tensions between Hillary Clinton’s coalition and the ascendant Sanders wing were increasingly embittered.

“I know he felt that while there was a lot of hostility within the Democratic Party and in the top ranks … he felt warmth and positivity from Joe Biden,” said Faiz Shakir, who served as campaign manager for Sanders’ 2020 campaign and remains a close political adviser.

Even as the 2020 debates were fiercely fought, Biden and Sanders never let the disputes turn personal. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., another national co-chair for Sanders in 2020, recalled that when some of his aides wanted to forcefully attack Biden in personal terms, the senator would respond, “Absolutely not.”

‘I’LL BE ACTIVE’ IN 2024, SANDERS SAYS

Now, Sanders is determined to ensure Trump doesn’t win again.

The Biden campaign has made it clear to Sanders’ political team that they want him engaged as much as possible, seeing his longstanding connections with key voting blocs as an asset. Because Sanders campaigned for Biden four years ago, the reelection team also knows well specifically how Sanders would be most helpful for Biden.

It wouldn’t be a surprise, for instance, if Sanders were again dispatched to Michigan, where he stumped for Biden in October 2020, or at union halls to energize working-class voters.

“He knows himself, his team knows him and we know what has worked,” said Carla Frank, the Biden campaign’s director of surrogate operations.

For his part, Sanders is still wrestling with precisely how he can be the most effective as a campaigner this fall and how he can best target the audiences that most need to hear his case for Biden, according to aides.

But “I intend to be aggressive,” Sanders said.

“I see this as an enormously important election that I for one will not sit out,” he added. “I’ll be active.”

___

Associated Press writer Lisa Rathke in Marshfield, Vermont, contributed to this report.

FILE – Merit badges and a rainbow-colored neckerchief slider are affixed on a Boy Scout uniform outside the headquarters of Amazon in Seattle. The U.S. organization, which now welcomes girls into the program and allows them to work toward the coveted Eagle Scout rank, announced Tuesday, May 7, 2024, that it will change its name to Scouting America as it focuses on inclusion. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

IRVING, Texas (AP) — The Boy Scouts of America is changing its name for the first time in its 114-year history and will become Scouting America. It’s a significant shift as the organization emerges from bankruptcy following a flood of sexual abuse claims and seeks to focus on inclusion.

The organization steeped in tradition has made seismic changes after decades of turmoil, from finally allowing gay youth to welcoming girls throughout its ranks. With an eye on increasing flagging membership numbers, the Irving, Texas-based organization announced the name change Tuesday at its annual meeting in Florida.

“In the next 100 years we want any youth in America to feel very, very welcome to come into our programs,” Roger Krone, who took over last fall as president and chief executive officer, said in an interview before the announcement.

The organization began allowing gay youth in 2013 and ended a blanket ban on gay adult leaders in 2015. In 2017, it made the historic announcement that girls would be accepted as Cub Scouts as of 2018 and into the flagship Boy Scout program — renamed Scouts BSA — in 2019.

There were nearly 1,000 young women in the inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts in 2021, including Selby Chipman. The all-girls troop she was a founding member of in her hometown of Oak Ridge, North Carolina, has grown from five girls to nearly 50, and she thinks the name change will encourage even more girls to realize they can join.

“Girls were like: ‘You can join Boy Scouts of America?’” said Chipman, now a 20-year-old college student and assistant scoutmaster of her troop.

Within days of the announcement that girls would be allowed, Bob Brady went to work. A father of two girls and a proud Eagle Scout himself, the New Jersey attorney eagerly formed an all-girls troop. At their first weekend gathering with other troops, the boys were happy to have the girls involved but some adult leaders seemed concerned, he recalled. Their worries seemed to melt away as soon as the girls led a traditional cheer around the campfire.

“You could see a change in the attitude of some of the doubters who weren’t sure and they realized, wait, these kids are exactly the same, they just happen to have ponytails,” said Brady. His daughters are among the 13 girls in his troop and 6,000 girls nationwide who have achieved the vaunted Eagle Scout rank.

Like other organizations, the scouts lost members during the pandemic, when participation was difficult. After a highpoint over the last decade of over 2 million members in 2018, the organization currently services just over 1 million youths, including more than 176,000 girls and young women. Membership peaked in 1972 at almost 5 million.

The move by the Boy Scouts to accept girls throughout their ranks strained a bond with the Girl Scouts of the USA, which sued, saying it created marketplace confusion and damaged their recruitment efforts. They reached a settlement agreement after a judge rejected those claims, saying both groups are free to use words like “scouts” and “scouting.”

While camping remains an integral activity for the Boy Scouts, the organization offers something for everyone today, from high adventures to merit badges for robotics and digital technology, Krone said: “About anything kids want to do today, they can do in a structured way within the scouting program.”

The Boy Scouts’ $2.4 billion bankruptcy reorganization plan took effect last year, allowing the organization to keep operating while compensating the more than 80,000 men who say they were sexually abused as children while scouting.

Angelique Minett, the first woman chairperson of Scouts BSA, gets excited about the future of scouting when she sees the about 20-person youth council from across the United States help guide the program by raising issues important to them, like sustainability, and things that they’d like to see changed, like the fit on some of the uniforms.

“When we think scouts we think knots and camping, but those are a means to an end,” Minett said. “We are actually teaching kids a much bigger thing. We are teaching them how to have grit, and we’re teaching them life skills and we’re teaching them how to be good leaders.”

The organization won’t officially become Scouting America until Feb. 8, 2025, the organization’s 115th birthday. But Krone said he expects people will start immediately using the name.

“It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcomed here,” Krone said.

File – Tesla vehicles charge at a station in Emeryville, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez, File)

DETROIT (AP) — Federal highway safety investigators want Tesla to tell them how and why it developed the fix in a recall of more than 2 million vehicles equipped with the company’s Autopilot partially automated driving system.

Investigators with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have concerns about whether the recall remedy worked because Tesla has reported 20 crashes since the remedy was sent out as an online software update in December.

The recall fix also was to address whether Autopilot should be allowed to operate on roads other than limited access highways. The fix for that was increased warnings to the driver on roads with intersections.

But in a letter to Tesla posted on the agency’s website Tuesday, investigators wrote that they could not find a difference between warnings to the driver to pay attention before the recall and after the new software was released. The agency said it will evaluate whether driver warnings are adequate, especially when a driver-monitoring camera is covered.

The agency asked for volumes of information about how Tesla developed the fix, and zeroed in on how it used human behavior to test the recall effectiveness.

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies automated driving safety, said the letter shows that the recall did little to solve problems with Autopilot and was an attempt to pacify NHTSA, which demanded the recall after more than two years of investigation.

“It’s pretty clear to everyone watching that Tesla tried to do the least possible remedy to see what they could get away with,” Koopman said. “And NHTSA has to respond forcefully or other car companies will start pushing out inadequate remedies.”

Safety advocates have long expressed concern that Autopilot, which can keep a vehicle in its lane and a distance from objects in front of it, was not designed to operate on roads other than limited access highways.

Missy Cummings, a professor of engineering and computing at George Mason University who studies automated vehicles, said NHTSA is responding to criticism from legislators for a perceived lack of action on automated vehicles.

“As clunky as our government is, the feedback loop is working,” Cummings said. “I think the NHTSA leadership is convinced now that this is a problem.”

The 18-page NHTSA letter asks how Tesla used human behavior science in designing Autopilot, and the company’s assessment of the importance of evaluating human factors.

It also wants Tesla to identify every job involved in human behavior evaluation and the qualifications of the workers. And it asks Tesla to say whether the positions still exist.

A message was left by The Associated Press early Tuesday seeking comment from Tesla about the letter.

Tesla is in the process of laying off about 10% of its workforce, about 14,000 people, in an effort to cut costs to deal with falling global sales.

Cummings said she suspects that CEO Elon Musk would have laid off anyone with human behavior knowledge, a key skill needed to deploy partially automated systems like Autopilot, which can’t drive themselves and require humans to be ready to intervene at all times.

“If you’re going to have a technology that depends upon human interaction, you better have someone on your team that knows what they are doing in that space,” she said.

Cummings said her research has shown that once a driving system takes over steering from humans, there is little left for the human brain to do. Many drivers tend to overly rely on the system and check out.

“You can have your head fixed in one position, you can potentially have your eyes on the road, and you can be a million miles away in your head,” she said. “All the driver monitoring technologies in the world are still not going to force you to pay attention.”

In its letter, NHTSA also asks Tesla for information about how the recall remedy addresses driver confusion over whether Autopilot has been turned off if force is put on the steering wheel. Previously, if Autopilot was de-activated, drivers might not notice quickly that they have to take over driving.

The recall added a function that gives a “more pronounced slowdown” to alert drivers when Autopilot has been disengaged. But the recall remedy doesn’t activate the function automatically — drivers have to do it. Investigators asked how many drivers have taken that step.

NHTSA is asking Telsa “What do you mean you have a remedy and it doesn’t actually get turned on?” Koopman said.

The letter, he said, shows NHTSA is looking at whether Tesla did tests to make sure the fixes actually worked. “Looking at the remedy I struggled to believe that there’s a lot of analysis proving that these will improve safety,” Koopman said.

The agency also says Tesla made safety updates after the recall fix was sent out, including an attempt to reduce crashes caused by hydroplaning and to reduce collisions in high speed turn lanes. NHTSA said it will look at why Tesla didn’t include the updates in the original recall.

NHTSA could seek further recall remedies, make Tesla limit where Autopilot can work, or even force the company to disable the system until it is fixed, safety experts said.

NHTSA began its Autopilot investigation in 2021, after receiving 11 reports that Teslas using Autopilot struck parked emergency vehicles. In documents explaining why the investigation was ended due to the recall, NHTSA said it ultimately found 467 crashes involving Autopilot resulting in 54 injuries and 14 deaths.

A man who tried to shoot a pastor during a service at a Pennsylvania church because “God told him to do it” was thwarted when his gun didn’t fire and he was tackled by a congregant, authorities said.

The chaos at the Jesus’ Dwelling Place Church in North Braddock took place Sunday while the service was being livestreamed, state police said in a news release.

Bernard J. Polite, 26, of Braddock entered the church just after 1 p.m. and walked toward the front while the Rev. Glenn Germany was giving a sermon, police said. The pastor told WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh that Polite smiled at him and they made eye contact just before Polite pointed the gun at him. Germany then ducked out of the way as a male congregant tackled Polite.

Germany and the congregant then worked together to wrest the gun away from Polite, who was soon subdued and held until state troopers arrived.

Polite said “God told me to do it” and that he planned to shoot Germany and “wait to be arrested” so he could go to jail and clear his mind, according to court documents. He faces numerous charges, including aggravated assault and attempted homicide, and was being held Monday without bail at the Allegheny County Jail. State police said they they didn’t know if Polite has an attorney, and county court records did not list one.

The body of a shooting victim was found in a home near the church where Polite had been shortly before going to the church, county police said. The county Medical Examiner’s office identified the body Monday as Derek Polite, 56, of North Braddock, but did not say if he was related to Bernard Polite.

Polite was not known at the church, officials said. He wandered over to the church after hearing music coming from there, according to court documents.

“I am feeling grateful that I woke up this morning and that I am here. It could have gone an opposite direction,” Germany told The Associated Press on Monday. “But God has intervened and I am grateful for him.”

A settlement being discussed in an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and major college conferences could cost billions and pave the way for a compensation model for college athletes.

An agreement has not been finalized and many questions remain unanswered. It is also unclear if new rules could withstand further legal scrutiny, but it appears college sports is heading down a revolutionary path with at least some schools directly paying athletes to participate. Here’s what is known and what still needs to be figured out:

THE CASE

House vs. NCAA is a class-action federal lawsuit seeking damages for athletes who were denied the opportunity, going back to 2016, to earn money from use of their name, image or likeness — often referred to by the acronym NIL. The plaintiffs, including former Arizona State swimmer Grant House, are also asking the court to rule that NIL compensation should include billions of dollars in media rights fees that go to the NCAA and the wealthiest conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and Southeastern), mostly for football and basketball.

HOW MUCH?

The settlement being discussed could have the NCAA paying nearly $3 billion in damages over 10 years, with help from insurance and withholding of distributions that would have gone to the four big conferences. Last year, NCAA revenue approached $1.3 billion and the association projects a steady rise in coming years, thanks mostly to increases baked into the television contract with CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery for the men’s basketball tournament. A new, eight-year deal with ESPN worth $920 million for the Division I women’s basketball tournament and other championship events takes effect in 2025.

The potential settlement also calls for a $300 million commitment from each school in those four conferences over 10 years, including about $20 million per year directed toward paying athletes. Administrators have warned that could lead to program cuts for the so-called non-revenue sports familiar to fans who watch the Olympics.

“It’s the Olympic sports that would be in jeopardy,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said during a March panel in Washington led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “That’s men and women. If you look at the numbers for us at the University of Alabama, with our 19 sports outside of football and men’s basketball, we lost collectively almost $40 million.”

WHO GETS PAID?

Not entirely clear. Presumably, it would start with the athletes in sports that produce most of the revenue: football and men’s basketball players at the biggest and wealthiest programs. Women’s basketball is likely next in line, but it is possible athletes in all sports could see some benefit — but probably not at all schools.

What’s being considered is allowing schools to pay athletes, but not requiring those payments. Schools that don’t rake in millions in TV revenue wouldn’t necessarily be on the hook. There are also unanswered questions about whether the federal gender equity law Title IX would require equal funding for male and female athletes.

WHO MAKES THE CALL?

Getting the presidential boards of four conferences and the NCAA board of governors to approve a settlement is not a given, not to mention the plaintiffs in the House case. Still, the possibility of having to pay $4 billion in damages — and the NCAA has been on the losing end of many recent court cases — has spurred interest in a deal before trial begins in January.

The case is being heard in the Northern District of California by U.S. Judge Claudia Wilken, who has already ruled against the NCAA other landmark antitrust lawsuits and ordered the sides in House to seek a settlement.

EMPLOYMENT AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Settling existing cases is only one step. A new system for compensating college athletes would be needed to avoid similar challenges in the future; for example, anything that looks like a cap on compensation by, say, the four major conferences would be ripe for another lawsuit.

The NCAA has been asking Congress for some kind of antitrust exemption for years, but the emphasis has shifted lately from regulating NIL compensation to keeping the athletes from being deemed employees.

A ruling from an NLRB regional director paved the way for members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team to vote to join a union after being deemed employees, and many have advocated for collective bargaining as a solution to college sports’ antitrust exposure.

Jason Stahl, executive director of the College Football Players Association advocacy group, says lawmakers should create a special status for college athletes that would give them the right to organize and collectively bargain without actual employee status.

Stahl said even though many college athletes are apprehensive about being employees and joining a union, they should have the right to decide that.

“My concern is there would be some type of one-two punch,” Stahl said of a lawsuit settlement followed quickly by federal legislation to codify a revenue-sharing plan that precludes athletes from employee status and the right to organize. “A lot of things I’m hearing about this cap are not things I want to be hearing.”

WHAT’S NEXT

There are so many moving parts that it is hard to say with certainty, though settling House seems to a priority for late spring or summer. The earliest for any true changes noticed on campus would be fall of 2025.

Photos provided by CCBC

(Center Township, Pa) Community College held their 55^th Annual Commencement last Thursday, May 2^nd. The college had several unique graduate stories emerge, including husband and wife nurses, five female Mascaro Construction Technology & Management grads, and a young man named Carter Denelle, who walked in Commencement because as of December 2024 he will have finished all of his flying and has earned his Associate Degree as a Professional Pilot. He achieved this by combining his College in High School credits, CCBC’s high school aviation academy courses, and additional dual enrollment courses. He will also graduate from Beaver High School this June after graduating from college.

Gas prices are a penny lower in Western Pennsylvania this week at $3.835 per gallon, according to AAA East Central’s Gas Price Report.

The national average for a gallon of gas has remained steady over the past week at $3.65. Lackluster domestic demand and lower oil prices have helped stabilize prices at the pump. Today’s national average is six cents more than a month ago and 11 cents more than a year ago.

The currecnt average price for a gallon of gas in Beaver County is $3.88.

Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published May 6, 2024 2:33 P.M.

(Rochester Township, Pa) Western Pennsylvania democratic campaign coordinators opened a new office in Rochester Township on Sunday. The office will be dedicated to mobilizing and organizing voters and communities ahead of the November election with the goal of reelecting Joe Biden, Bob Casey and democrats across the ballot.

Congressman Chris Deluzio was in attendance for the opening. During his speech he said, “I think were going to hold the line, I think there are more people in this country, in Western Pennsylvania, in Beaver County, who believe in the promise of America,  who think we can govern ourselves. We can have elections where we respect the consequences, and when we do that by the way, we’re gonna win.”

Nikki Lu, state campaign manager for the Pennsylvania Democratic coordinated campaign said:
“We’ll continue to highlight the contrast between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ work to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors, help create 500,000 good paying jobs in Pennsylvania alone, and protect our democracy and reproductive freedoms, and Donald Trump’s threats to repeal the Affordable Care Act, cut Social Security and Medicare, and be a dictator on ‘day one.’”

The office is located at 426 Adams Street Rochester, PA 15074.

(Pittsburgh, PA) Provident Charter School (PCS) proudly announces a groundbreaking milestone in its innovative approach to education. PCS, a free public charter school designed for children with dyslexia, is thrilled to celebrate the achievement of its first black belt recipients in Tae Kwon Do. This honor marks a significant moment not only for the students but also for the school, as it underscores the effectiveness of its unique curriculum.

Since its inception in 2016, Provident Charter School has distinguished itself by offering a comprehensive educational experience tailored to the needs of students with dyslexia. Central to its approach is the integration of Tae Kwon Do, a martial art renowned for its focus on discipline, perseverance, and self-control. Under the guidance of Grandmaster Zang, students at PCS have embraced this holistic approach to learning, demonstrating remarkable progress and personal growth.

The journey of these exceptional students began humbly as white belts, but through dedication, resilience, and a commitment to excellence, they have risen to the esteemed rank of black belt. By embodying values such as perseverance, compassion, and self-control, these students have not only mastered the physical techniques of Tae Kwon Do but have also cultivated essential life skills that will serve them well beyond the confines of the dojo.

On June 3, 2024, Provident Charter School will proudly bestow black belts upon its inaugural group of recipients. This ceremony represents more than just a symbolic achievement; it is a testament to the transformative power of education when combined with innovative approaches tailored to the individual needs of students.

“We are immensely proud of our students’ accomplishments and the dedication they have shown throughout their journey,” said Maria Paluselli, CEO. “This milestone not only reflects their personal growth but also reaffirms our commitment to providing a holistic and empowering educational experience for children with dyslexia.”

As Provident Charter School continues to pioneer new approaches to education, the achievement of its first black belt recipients serves as a beacon of inspiration for students, educators, and communities alike. Through a steadfast dedication to innovation, inclusion, and excellence, PCS is shaping the future of education one black belt at a time.

Story by Sandy Giordano – Beaver County Radio. Published May 6, 2024 12:34 P.M.

(Aliquippa, Pa) PA State Police were on patrol  Saturday night and attempted to stop a vehicle operated by 37 year old Zachary Constantine at Tyler and Division Streets.  The report stated the officer pursued the vehicle for 1 1/2 miles  and Constantine was found to be impaired and in possession of  suspected marijuana and heroin. He was taken into custody and refused to take a blood test at Heritage Valley Hospital. Charges are pending against Constantine and will be filed at the district justice’s office.