Last October, at the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges, President Obama announced the $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, a new, privately-funded prize to recognize, reward, and inspire outstanding outcomes in community colleges nationwide. 

Yesterday, Dr. Jill Biden and Secretary Arne Duncan congratulated the 120 community colleges that – due to exceptional student outcomes – were selected by the Aspen Institute to compete for the inaugural $1 million purse.  In Round Two, the Aspen Institute will invite these 120 eligible institutions to submit applications containing additional detailed data on completion rates, labor market outcomes (employment and earnings), and student learning outcomes.  Eight to ten finalists will be named in September and – following campus visits by Aspen in the Fall - prize winners will be announced in December.

Excellence in community colleges is critical to reaching President Obama’s goal that the U.S. lead the world in college graduates by 2020 and to preparing the American workforce to compete in the global economy.

EPA Administrator Jackson, CEQ Chair Sutley and Secretary of Education Duncan plant a Texas Live Oak Tree outside of the U.S. Department of Education (Photo by Eric Vance, US EPA)

As the bitter chill of winter retreats, the vibrancy of spring beckons us outdoors reminding us of the inextricable link between the natural world and our daily lives.  In striving to meet the President's challenge to win the future by out-educating the rest of the world, we must cultivate the environmental health of our learning spaces and our students’ understanding of their environment to enable them to meet the challenges of the future.  Today, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality came together to launch the Green Ribbon Schools Program.  This program  plants the seeds to move toward educational excellence for the future by recognizing schools that are creating healthy and sustainable learning environments - both inside and outside the classroom, teaching environmental literacy, and increasing environmental health by reducing their environmental footprint.

Led by the Department of Education, in close partnership with the EPA and CEQ, the Green Ribbon Schools program will incentivize and reward schools that help to ensure that our students receive an education second to none by improving the health and environmental footprint of nation’s schools.  To prepare our children for the clean energy economy of the future, Green Ribbon schools will be those that incorporate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and environmental stewardship into their curricula.

This afternoon the President wrote a letter to leaders of both parties in Congress on the subject of tax breaks for oil companies.  The President's letter comes a day after Speaker of the House John Boehner said that eliminating those tax breaks is "certainly something we should be looking at," adding that, "We're in a time when the federal government's short on revenues. They ought to be paying their fair share."  It comes a few weeks after the President included the proposal as part of his Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future.

The full text of the President's letter is below:

Dear Speaker Boehner, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Pelosi:

I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to eliminate unwarranted tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, and to use those dollars to invest in clean energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Helping every American with autism achieve their full potential is one of this administration’s top priorities. At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, we continue to strive to meet the complex needs of all people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and their families. While there is no cure, early intervention is critical and can greatly improve a child’s development.

Perhaps the biggest step we’ve taken to support those affected by autism and their families happened over a year ago, with the signing of the Affordable Care Act. Now, new insurance plans are required to cover autism screening and developmental assessments for children at no cost to parents. Insurers will also no longer be allowed to deny children coverage for a pre-existing condition such as ASD or to set arbitrary lifetime or annual limits on benefits.

The 2011 White House Easter Egg Roll is here, and you’re invited! Today, the Obama’s will host 30,000 people from all 50 states in their backyard for an Easter Egg Hunt and the traditional Easter Egg Rolling, as well as live musical performances, storytime readings, healthy cooking demos, sports and more. This year's theme “Get Up and Go!” focuses on promoting health and wellness, a central part of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! initiative to raise a healthier generation of kids.

Join the First Family and people from around the country for the 133rd White House Easter Egg Roll on WhiteHouse.gov/live.

View the full live stream schedule below:

Your quick look at the week that was on WhiteHouse.gov.

President Barack Obama holds a town hall meeting at ElectraTherm, Inc. in Reno, Nev., April 21, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Town Hall x Three: This week, President Obama traveled the country to hold a series of town hall meetings. In Virginia, he stopped by Northern Virginia Community College to talk about the importance of education in a 21st century economy. Then it was on to California, and Facebook headquarters, where he answered questions about fiscal responsibility. On the way back to Washington, the President stopped in Reno, Nevada, to meet with workers who are manufacturing tomorrow's clean energy technologies today.

Celebrating Earth Day: To celebrate Earth Day, Nancy Sutley and Heather Zichal, two of the President's top energy and environment advisers, hosted a live chat on the South Lawn of the White House. Energy.gov launched a special Earth Day page, and the EPA shared stories and video of activities around the country.

Your West Wing Week: "My Old Number, Twenty Three"

Each year when Earth Day rolls around, we’re given an opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come in protecting the health and the environment of our communities. This Earth Day, EPA under President Obama's leadership is proud of all the progress we’ve made in just two years to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink and swim in, and the communities where we build our homes, schools and businesses.

In protecting our air, we’ve marked some historic “firsts”: setting the first joint fuel efficiency and emissions standards  with the Department of Transportation that will make American cars and trucks more fuel efficient than ever before, as well as establishing the first new standards for sulfur dioxide in forty years.     

And just last month, we set another first: the first national standards for mercury, arsenic and other air pollution from our nation’s power plants. These standards require power plants to use proven pollution control technology at their facilities, a change that will help prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks a year. For our young people, the new standards will help prevent 120,000 incidents of asthma symptoms and about 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children.

We’ve also taken major steps to revitalize America’s waters. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is setting a new standard of care for the source of 95 percent of America’s surface freshwater. On the Chesapeake Bay, historic efforts are underway to protect waters that touch the lives and livelihoods of 17 million people. And one year after the Deepwater Horizon BP spill that hit the Gulf Coast and my home state of Louisiana so hard, the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, which the president asked me to chair, is developing a plan – not just to continue the important recovery from the largest oil spill in U.S. history, but to take on issues that have plagued the region for years. All that is happening at the same time we are collaborating with local communities to revitalize urban waterways, working with schools and small businesses to lead the world in the next generation of clean water technology, and helping communities put in place green infrastructure and other cost-effective tools that work with mother nature to filter and reduce pollution.

As we protect the water that flows through our communities, we’re also protecting the ground these communities are built on. We’ve been cleaning up communities through swift implementation of the president’s Recovery Act, which funded Brownfields and Superfund cleanups across the nation. To make certain every community – including low-income and minority communities that often face disproportionate environmental challenges – have a seat at the table, we’ve stepped up to expand the conversation on environmentalism.  We've revitalized our Environmental Justice office at EPA, issued agency-wide guidance on incorporating environmental justice into our decision making and, with my good friend Nancy Sutley, Chair of the president’s Council for Environmental Quality, reconvened the leadership of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice for the first time in over a decade.

Our outreach has not stopped there. We've spoken to farmers, clean energy innovators, clergy, teachers, students and environmental entrepreneurs. I've also been able to keep in touch with the next generation of leaders by achieving yet another "first": the first EPA Administrator with a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. Today there are voices calling for protecting our health and our environment that were not part of this discussion two years ago. They know that this EPA serves them. They know that their concerns are our concerns. And they know that we’re going to make sure all Americans get the protections and opportunities they need and deserve.
 
These are just a few examples of our efforts over the last two years. We’ve come a long way, but still have a long way to go to strengthen protections for American families, foster more innovation and safeguard the environment we will leave to our children and grandchildren.

Lisa P. Jackson is the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

A word cloud of feedback from the Advise the Advisor program gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in your feedback (by Wordle.net)

Earlier this month, I asked the public for feedback on energy policy as part of the White House’s “Advise the Advisor” program.  Specifically, we asked for your comments and ideas about President Obama’s goal of reducing the amount of oil we import by a third in a little over a decade, along with the need to both increase our domestic energy production and reduce energy waste.

Thousands of you offered suggestions on how we can be more efficient and rely more on America’s clean energy resources.  Here is a summary what we heard from you:

Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This week, President Obama held townhalls in Northern Virginia, California, and Nevada, to speak directly to the American people about his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity.