Santa Rosa County takes a much more aggressive stance on incidents of crime and violence in its school system. In fact, it reports 92 percent of the most serious crimes to the…
Bergosh declares campus crime data too complex
Escambia County School Board member Jeff Bergosh wrote on his blog that data in the Florida’s School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting (SESIR) System is “complex and there are many factors that go…
School stories attract web readers
The Inweekly.net website has doubled its readership over the past two weeks. Tarnished Turnaround had more readers in its first 24 hours online than any cover story in the paper’s history. The…
Charter schools aren’t necessarily the answer
ProPublica has published an article on charter schools. We tend to think of charter schools as locally run schools like Pensacola Beach Elementary, but the majority aren’t. The ProPublica article highlights White…
Buzz: Is Florida Senate creating a state income tax?
The Florida Senate approved a system that will require state workers to put in 2 percent, 4 percent or 6 percent in the Florida Retirement System based on how much they earn….
Ingram fights for manure, not ARC
While ARC Gateway Pensacola is laying off staff and eliminating in-home support, day care and supported living services. State Rep. Clay Ingram’s fertilizer bill, HB 457, keeps chugging along. Rarely in the…
PNJ declares fair food safe
First, the rides and now the food at the Santa Rosa County Fair have been declared safe by the daily newspaper. We can all sleep better….just not in a dumpster.
Lessons learned
Today I was asked during a radio interview on WUWF if the suspected sexual assault at Tate High School had triggered our cover story, Tarnished Turnaround. It didn’t, but it spurred me…
A School District that gets it right
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is the public school system (Pre-Kindergarten through 12th Grade) for Montgomery County, Md., a suburban area just outside Washington, D.C. MCPS is the 16th largest school district…
Blog predicts PNJ front page
It doesn’t happen often that this blog publishes first the front page articles of the next day’s 20-page daily newspaper. Yesterday we gave you the actual hurricane report from Colorado St. and…
Tarnished Turnaround: Overnight comments
Our investigative report on Warrington Middle School and the under-reporting of crime and violence in the Escambia County Public School District has already gotten over a dozen emails. Here are two of…
Buzz: Jim Paul asked to run
A source close to Jim Paul told me tonight that the former superintendent has been approached to run in 2012. Many of the teachers that were ardent Malcolm Thomas supporters in 2008…
Tate High is only the tip of the iceberg
Tate High School isn’t the only problem school for the Escambia County Public School District. The first year of Superintendent Malcolm Thomas’ turnaround of Warrington Middle School was filled with allegations and…
Floridians disapprove of Scott, 4-1
“Today, Scott is a four-letter word to many Florida voters, but political popularity can change with time,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The experience of…
Hurricane predictions are in –Five big ones
Colorado State University storm prognosticators Phil Klotzbach and William Gray call for 16 named storms, including nine hurricanes. They predict five of those hurricanes will be major systems, with winds greater than…
Gangs in Okaloosa, Walton counties
The Okaloosa-Walton Gang Reduction Task Force presented yesterday to the Okaloosa County Commission a detailed description of criminal gangs active in Okaloosa and strategies to curtail their activities. Four of the most…
Moby against reduced sentence for Manley
PNJ columnist Mark O’Brien comes out today against Thelma Manley getting a reduction of her 10-year sentence, ignoring the much shorter sentences that others have gotten for far greater white collar crimes….
School board members could lose salaries
Legislation has been proposed by the Senate Education Committee which will eliminate school board members’ salaries for anyone elected, or re-elected, in 2012 and beyond. Instead, they will get $100/mo. stipend. Hmmm,…
LeMieux to run for U.S. Senate
Former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, who served for 16 months after he was appointed to finish the term of Mel Martinez, announced this morning that he will seek the Republican nomination to…
School Violence & Crime rankings
At what high school was a student or teacher most likely to be a victim of battery-2009-10: Escambia High School. Which high school was least likely to report that battery to law…
