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Richmond, VA - Today, Anne Holton continued her tour of colleges and community colleges across Virginia with a stop in Middletown and attended an “Alternative Halloween” in Winchester hosted by the Essential Pieces organization. In Middletown, Holton toured Lord Fairfax Community College, where she shared Governor Kaine’s strategies to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) curriculum, workforce training, and career and technical education.
“As governor during the worst recession since the Great Depression, Tim had to make tough cuts to get Virginia’s economy back on track,” said Holton. “He worked across the aisle to cut more than $5 billion in spending, including his own salary, but he still managed to make important investments in priorities like education, infrastructure, and health care. Tim knows that to move Virginia and our nation forward, we need to invest in education and strengthen our talented, globally competitive workforce.”
Later, Holton attended an “Alternative Halloween” hosted by Essential Pieces, a group working with families of children with autism and those working with members of the autism community, where she joined children and their families for Halloween stories and games. Organized by Lutheran Family Services of Virginia, Essential Pieces works to assist parents and professionals affected by autism by hosting weekly parent and social groups free of charge.
Holton has dedicated much of her career to family and children’s issues, working as a juvenile and domestic relations district court judge before serving as Virginia’s First Lady. Her signature initiative as First Lady, “For Keeps: Families for All Virginia Teens,” worked to secure permanent family connections for older children in foster care and helped thousands of Virginia children move from foster care to permanent homes with relatives or adoptive families.
“Tim has a remarkable ability to bring people together to focus on solving problems. I had the privilege of seeing it first-hand when I worked with Tim’s administration to bring attention to the Commonwealth’s foster care system,” said Holton. “Tim also made important progress in education and health care during his term— he expanded pre-k enrollment by 40 percent and reformed Virginia’s mental health system. As our next senator, I am confident he will work to bring leaders together from both sides of the aisle to improve education, maintain the strength of our workforce, and create jobs.”
Holton's college tour has made dozens of stops across the Commonwealth including visits to Tidewater Community College (Virginia Beach Campus), Norfolk State University, George Mason University, Northern Virginia Community College (Woodbridge Campus), Dabney S. Lancaster Community College, Northern Virginia Community College (Annandale Campus), Rappahannock Community College, Paul D. Camp Community College, John Tyler Community College, the College of William and Mary, Richard Bland College, Virginia Western Community College, Virginia State University, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College (Parham Campus), Thomas Nelson Community College, Christopher Newport University, Reston Center of Northern Virginia Community College, James Madison University, University of Mary Washington, Germanna Community College (Culpeper Campus), Old Dominion University, Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Virginia, and George Mason University (Arlington Campus).
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