Popular ‘Blueberry Jamboree’ Festival Won’t Be Held This Year
May 17, 2011
Despite being heralded as a huge success and a two-year attendance of about 10,000 people, the Blueberry Jamboree in Barrineau Park will not be held this year.
“It’s very disappointing, but we were just not able to make it happen this year,” said Brandi Daigle, an Escambia County public information officer. Daigle was the major coordinator behind the original Blueberry Jamboree in June 2009 when she worked for the county’s parks and recreation department. She continued to coordinate the festival in 2010 despite her job moving from parks and recreation to the public information office.
“With my new job, we were just not able to support it this year,” she said. “We talked to the volunteer committee, and they were also unable to support it.”
About 60 vendors took part in each year’s jamboree and most considered it very successful, Daigle said. “We had plenty of vendors who were wanting to come back this year.”
Many of those vendors were small North Escambia area businesses, including many that sold blueberries or other produce products at the Blueberry Jamboree. The event also included the 5K Race for the Blueberries that had about 170 runners and walkers last year, and a Blueberry Bake-Off that had dozens of entries each year.
The Blueberry Jamboree also had several sponsors that supported the event — including the Escambia County Farm Bureau, International Paper, Wind Creek Casino, Navy Federal Credit Union, Winn Dixie and NorthEscambia.com.
“By all accounts, it was a very successful festival,” Daigle said. “We were just not able to make it work this year.”
Pictured above: Scenes from the 2010 Blueberry Jamboree at the Barrineau Park Community Center. Pictured below: Blueberry Dream Pie, a Blueberry Bake-Off winner. NorthEscambia.com file photos, click to enlarge.
Community Delivers Over 100,000 Pounds Of Food To ‘Stamp Out Hunger’
May 17, 2011
Area residents really delivered Saturday when asked to help the hungry during the annual “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive.
MANNA Food Bank brought in over 100,000 pounds of food to stock up for the summer with the help of letter carriers and over 200 volunteers. MANNA serves Escambia and Santa Rosa counties with food distributions in Ensley, Gonzalez, Jay , Milton, Molino, Myrtle Grove and Pensacola.
In Atmore, letter carriers collected 8,973 pounds of food to benefit the hungry through Atmore Christian Care Ministry.
Each year the National Association of Letter Carriers holds the “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive, where U.S. Postal Service employees pick up donations of non-perishable food along their routes.
Florida Approves Move To Digital Textbooks
May 17, 2011
Backpacks for lugging heavy textbooks may be a thing of the past under a budget proposal approved by lawmakers that requires schools to adopt digital textbooks in four years.
Florida would be one of the first states in the country to set up a timeline for a conversion to electronic textbooks if this measure, which was contained in an education budget bill, is signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.
“Everyone realizes that digital seems to be the wave of the future and in many respects, the future is now,” said Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, who helped craft the education budget.
The proposal (SB 2120) requires Florida public schools to adopt digital-only textbooks by the 2015-16 school year, and spend at least 50 percent of their textbook budget on digital materials by that time.
It also permits school districts beginning next year to set up pilot programs to test electronic textbooks.
“Florida is out front in producing a mandated switch to digital,” said Bob Boyd, a lobbyist for the Association of American Publishers, a national textbook industry group. “I don’t know of any that have passed legislation like this that says by a certain date everything should be digital.”
The Florida Department of Education is supportive of the switch, saying that it is coupled with a mandate to begin conducting all statewide assessments online and that is easier to update electronic textbooks.
“We don’t want to set up a situation where the first time a student has access to a computer it’s a test day or a practice test day,” said Mary Jane Tappen, the chancellor for curriculum, instruction and student services for the Florida Department of Education. “They should be comfortable accessing content and interacting electronically.”
Rep. Marti Coley, R-Marianna, who also helped craft the education budget, said it will “meet the students where they are in their learning styles.” Coley said the timeline was needed in order to take advantage of federal grant money available through Race To The Top. A pot of money is set aside for technology upgrades under the program, she said. “The timing was critical to be able to use those Race To The Top dollars now,” Coley said.
But some schools say they are uncomfortable with a hard deadline, especially given the severe budget cuts schools have suffered in recent years, which has left them with little wiggle room to pay for big-ticket expenditures.
Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, said school superintendents are “supportive” of the move towards electronic textbooks. “But the issue is always the same, which is how do you afford it?” Montford said. “We have to be careful that we don’t expect school districts to enter into a program that is not funded.”
Some school lobbyists echoed Montford’s concern, saying it has the potential to become an unfunded mandate.
“In a year when you’re cutting the budget by 8 percent, that doesn’t give you a whole lot of resources,” said Vernon Pickup-Crawford, a lobbyist for several school districts. “It is four years down the road. That gives us some time to start looking at what we need to do and hopefully in four years we can scrounge up the resources.”
While the cost of purchasing the digital textbooks will be about the same as digital textbooks, school districts would also have to pay for the supporting hardware, such as computers or handheld devices such as a Kindle or iPad.
“There is some cost savings, but most of the cost goes into producing the materials,” Boyd said. He explained that the cost of producing textbooks comes from the research and development, not printing costs. “My industry does not own a printing press,” Boyd said, explaining they had no stake in traditional textbooks.
Coley, meanwhile, believes that “in the long run it is cheaper to provide content through digital technology.”
Other lawmakers said they were concerned that going digital would leave students who don’t have access to the Internet at home further behind. “I am very concerned that there are children in low income families who don’t have computers or don’t have all the same resources that other children do,” said Rep. Marty Kiar, D-Davie.
The digital textbook proposal was born from separate education budget bills the House and Senate produced earlier in session which grappled with the issue in different ways. The Senate wanted a slower approach, using only an optional pilot program. The House wanted a more aggressive switch to digital textbooks, requiring school districts by the 2013-14 school year to spend half of their textbook dollars on digital materials.
The two chambers compromised, extending the deadline by two years and including the pilot program.
There are hints already that lawmakers intend to revisit the issue in upcoming sessions, perhaps delaying the deadline by a few years if the pilot schools find that digital textbooks aren’t helping students.
So far there is only one school in Florida that has gone all-digital: Clearwater High School in Pinellas County. That school issued a Kindle e-book reader to each of its students this school year to use as digital textbooks. Publishers say they are content neutral and have no preference about which device schools use.
“There will be time for the Legislature to amend the time period if nothing is found to have worked,” Simmons said. “It’s so far off, we’re talking about 2015 and this is 2011.”
No matter what lawmakers decide on timelines, it’s clear the state is ready to leave traditional textbooks behind – literally. The bill makes another seemingly minor tweak that eliminates all use of the word “textbook” replacing it with the more neutral “instructional materials” to include digital materials.
By Lilly Rockwell
The News Service of Florida
Pictured: The Amazon Kindle, which retails for $139.
Northview Vs. West Florida Spring Game Moved To Thursday Night
May 17, 2011
There has been a schedule change for the Northview High versus West Florida spring football game.
West Florida will host Northview at Woodham Middle School on Thursday, May 19 at 7 p.m. (a change from Friday night).
Also in spring football action, Washington will be a Tate Friday night at 7:00, and Jay will travel to Rocky Bayou on Thursday, May 26 at 7 p.m.
Grant Plants Trees At Quintette Park, Other Parks And Roadways
May 17, 2011
Thanks to funding assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service through the Florida Division of Forestry’s Urban and Community Forestry Grant, Escambia County Water Quality and Land Management Division recently completed the planting of over 200 native canopy trees throughout the county. These trees have been added along county roadways and parks including Lexington Terrace, Chimes Way, Beulah and Quintette.
Canopy trees have been proven to provide many economic and environmental benefits, including reducing stormwater runoff, improving air quality and cooling the ambient air temperature. Part of the $20,000 grant funding was also used for a CITY Green Urban Canopy Study and tree giveaways at Arbor Day and tree care workshops.
Second Escambia Shopping Center Shooting In Less Than A Week
May 17, 2011
For the second time in less than a week, a shopping center in Escambia County has left a person injured and landed someone behind bars — both of the incidents over a female.
About 2:20 Saturday afternoon, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shooting in a shopping center on Chiefs Way in Warrington where Kenneth Andrews, 27, had been shot in the shoulder. He was transported to a Pensacola hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Payton L Roberts, 22, fled the scene of the shooting, according to deputies, and was later found hiding in the closet of a home on Chestnut Street. The weapon believed to have been used in the shooting was found in the water tank of a toilet. Roberts was charged with aggravated battery, discharging a firearm in public and firing a public missile into an occupied dwelling for the shooting. He was also charged with armed burglary, trespassing and resisting arrest for the incident on Chestnut Street.
One of the shots fire by Roberts shattered a window at the St Vincent De Paul Thrift Store with people inside, but no one was injured.
On Sunday, May 8, Gary Winston Smith, 57, of Rockaway Creek Road, Atmore, was arrested at Piggly Wiggly in Davisville and charged with aggravated battery in connection with the shooting of Garland Rodney Johnson, 45, of the 2400 block of West Highway 4. Smith fired a single round at Johnson as he approached in the store parking lot.
Pictured top: A North Escambia man was shot just outside the Piggly Wiggly on Highway 97 in Davisville on May 8. NorthEscambia.com file photo, click to enlarge.
Ernest Ward Spring Play “The Bachelor King” Tonight
May 17, 2011
The Ernest Ward Middle School drama class will perform their spring play The Bachelor King at 6:00 this evening in the school gym. Admission is $3 in advance or $4 at the door.
The Bachelor King is a hysterical spoof of several popular reality TV shows. When poor King Evian uses his last dying words (as he falls out the window) to pass royal succession not to greedy Prince Daft but to Yokel, a foolish hillbilly, everyone agrees Yokel needs a wife to help him run the kingdom.
Reminiscent of The Bachelor, his staff brings in eligible young ladies to vie for the new king’s hand, including Agatha Peabody, a high-society matron; Priscilla Tradewells-Ayers-Hollander-Morley, a four-times-married gold digger; Sally Valley, a ditzy cheerleader from L.A.; Crushin’ Kanisha, a New York City gangster-type; and Jane Claxton, a true-hearted cowgirl from Texas.
The five ladies are tested on their abilities in true American Idol fashion (no talent necessary, of course!), followed by a Survivor challenge. Of course, Yokel has other problems to deal with — the price of gasoline has skyrocketed, jobs are being outsourced overseas, the stock market has tumbled and his self-appointed personal advisor Frederick Pilfer is busy draining the royal treasury. Worst of all, the vengeful prince hatches a slew of unsuccessful, harebrained assassination plots against the new king.
Carla Gohagin Wasdin
May 17, 2011
Ms. Carla Gohagin Wasdin, 46, passed away on Sunday, May 15, 2011 in Atmore.
Ms. Wasdin was a native of Fort Seal, OK, and a resident of Atmore for most of her life. She was an employee of Wind Creek Casino, a loving mother and grandmother, loved gardening and flowers and attended the baptist church.
She is survived by her fiance’, Jim Lovell of Atmore; her daughter, Mallory Wasdin and Randall Rolin of Huxford; two grandchildren, Brodie Rolin and Autumn Rolin; father, Carlos and Faye Gohagin of Huxford; mother, Jeanette and Kenneth Baggett of Walnut Hill; three stepbrothers, Michael Baggett of Robertsdale, Tim Baggett of Summerdale, and Kenny Baggett of Tampa; a sister, Neely and Gary Baggett of Walnut Hill; and a number of nieces and nephews.
Funeral services will be held Thursday, May 19, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. at the Petty-Eastside Chapel Funeral Home in Atmore with Bro. Mark Peacock officiating.
Burial will follow at Pleasant Grove Cemetery.
Visitation will be held Wednesday, May 18, 2011, from 6:00 until 9:00 p.m. at the Petty-Eastside Chapel Funeral Home.
Pallbearers will be Michael Baggett, Gary Baggett, Tim Baggett, A.L. Thrower, Bob Corrzana, Jerry Johnson and Doug Emmons.
Local Man Wins College Rodeo Championship
May 17, 2011
Colter Prescott was recently awarded the title of Team Roping Heeler Champion of the Ozark Region for College Rodeo.
Prescott, formerly of Jay, is a recent graduate for Southern Arkansas University where he received his degree in agriculture business. He will represent his college at the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, WY, in June 2011.
Prescott also excelled in other events this year at the college rodeos with thrid place All-Around Cowboy, fourth place Tie-Down Calf Roping and sixth place in the Steer Wrestling event. He is the son of Jeff and Marsha Prescott of Jay.
Pictured: Colter Prescott with his Ozark Region Champion Saddle and Team Roping Heeler Championship Belt Buckle. Submitted photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Escambia Health Department Pushing More Fruits, Vegetables For Preschoolers
May 17, 2011
The Escambia County Health Department Nutrition Division and the Early Learning Coalition are piloting a nutrition education program for 3- and 4- year olds in 15 local child care centers, which will result in increased fruit and vegetable consumption among preschoolers.
The nutrition education program aims to teach healthy food choices and lifestyle habits to preschoolers in order to prevent and reduce the incidence of obesity in the upcoming generation.
Child care centers are the target for the program because the development of food habits and preferences occurs between ages 2 and 5, making exposure to healthy foods during this time important. The opportunity to try new foods provides an immediate health benefit and builds healthy food habits for the future.
“Prevention and early intervention are major weapons in the battle against obesity,” said Versilla Turner, Nutrition and WIC director at the Escambia County Health Department. “When a child is overweight, it’s not just baby fat. Childhood obesity often persists and the longer a child is obese, the more likely he or she is to have weight problems as an adult.”
Escambia County Health Department’s nutrition educators conducted a survey six months after the preschoolers’ participation in the program. Results indicated that participating families, on average, began consuming one additional serving of fruit and one additional serving of vegetables daily.
In the nutrition education program, a nutrition educator teaches lessons on fruits and vegetables, breakfast, water and physical activity. The program uses puppets, movies, music and dancing, and touching, feeling and tasting real food to help children associate healthy eating with fun. Additionally, OrganWise Guys, a curriculum based on a cast of characters named Hardy Heart, the Kidney Brothers, Pepto the Stomach and Sir Rebrum, the brain, is incorporated into the program to allow children to become familiar with different organs in the body.
At the end of the daily lessons, the preschoolers take their lessons home. The nutrition educators’ goal is that children will initiate conversations with parents about healthy habits and increase their consumption of a variety of fruits and vegetables.