Escambia County Administrator Randy Oliver stopped by the IN offices to discuss the 2011-12 budget. The good news is the budget is balanced without a tax increase despite a projected 3.5 percent…
Warrington Middle’s turnaround still hasn’t happened
Warrington Middle is still struggling. The one bright spot was its FCAT reading score for its eighth grade– 8 percent more scoring 3 or higher. The incoming sixth grade class did poorly…
Escambia Middle Schools have similar results in reading
Warrington Middle finished at the bottom Sixth Seventh Eighth Total STATEWIDE AVG. 67 68 55 190 BROWN BARGE MIDDLE SCHOOL 94 95 84 273 RANSOM MIDDLE SCHOOL 74 81 67 222 JIM…
Four Escambia Middle Schools best state average in math
Escambia County has nine public middle schools. Four of them beat the state average for students who scored 3 or higher on the math portion of the test. Warrington Middle finished at…
Little or improvement in FCAT math
As with reading, Escambia School District was below the state average for percentage of students who score 3 or above on the math tests. Seventh grade was 10 points below state average,…
Little improvement in FCAT reading, grades 4-10
The FCAT reading scores show a slight improvement for Escambia County, but all its grades, except for ninth, had a lower percentage of students score 3 or above than the state average. …
Escambia/Pensacola gets EPA brownfield grants
Press Release: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it will award a total of $7 million in Brownfields grants to 10 communities in Florida for the assessment and cleanup…
Test results on local oysters
From Emerald Coastkeepers: Through funding from Gulf Coast Fund and our members, Emerald Coastkeeper has initiated a long-term oyster sampling project. Every six months we are collecting oysters inland of Perdido, Pensacola…
May jobs reinforces moderate growth
From John Peacock, Edward Jones advisor: I want to share our perspective on the May jobs numbers. Below are comments from our investment strategist, Kate Warne. Is the Economy Stalling? The lack…
Another email in support of Koss
Editor: I haven’t written your publication before because I let you slide on most things, but when I noticed that you had Commander Dave Koss, formerly Flight Leader of the Blue Angels…
Jobs budget cuts jobs
Sarasota Herald Tribune reports that the state budget which goes into effect on July—the one Gov. Rick Scott has proclaimed as the jobs budget– will result in the loss of thousands of…
Tropical disturbance in Caribbean
From Sun Sentinel: The National Hurricane Center has called off a planned flight Monday by a U.S. Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter plane to investigate a broad but disorganized low pressure system…
More Clearwire leaving Milton
GeekWire has another take on Clearwire backing out of its expansion commitment in Milton and outsourcing its call center to TeleTech Holdings. The Milton shift was part of a major strategy change…
June 2 Winners & Losers catches heat
We made former Blue Angels loser last week in our Winners & Losers column. Not all our readers agreed. From retired Adm. Robert Kelly: “Hope you might reconsider labeling Dave Koss as…
Palin screws up American History
According to Tea Party sweetheart, Sarah Palin, Paul Revere rode through Boston ringing a bell to warn “the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms.” Once called on her…
Sarasota lose proposed Jackson Lab, 3,000 jobs
Jackson Laboratory, currently based in Maine, had requested for $100 million in state funding, for a proposed biomedical village in Sarasota County. By 2031, the lab would have had an annual economic…
Buzz: Neumann to bail on WEAR TV 3 (spelling corrected)
Reporter Greg Neumann is rumored to be leaving Channel 3. He is heading back to his home state, Wisconsin, to work for a station in Madison. That leaves the station with four…
Hayward appoints pension advisory board
Press Release: As part of Mayor Ashton Hayward’s 20 Solutions for 2011 campaign platform to address lingering pension problems with the City’s various employee pension funds, today the Mayor announced a seven-member…
Buzz: Escambia High in lockdown
A parent just called to tell me that Escambia High School went into lockdown this morning. An armed trespasser was seen on campus. Escambia County Sherif’f’s Office responded. The suspect was chased…
Video saves Hernando teacher from prosecution
This news story from the St. Pete Times has me wondering if the School District should invest in video cameras in the classrooms, at least at the middle and high school levels….
