Richard E. Allard of New Port Richey says the schools should teach a course caused Life. ...more

June 3, 2009

For 49 years, retiring Gorrie Elementary School teacher Lori Weiss has taught hundreds of students to read and to jump rope. On Thursday there will be a reception at the school in Weiss' honor. ...more

May 27, 2009

I've always had a major problem with arithmetic. It's on the wrong side of my brain. But I can remember poetry and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose sonnet I quote in the headline, sprang to mind as soon as I got off the adding machine. ...more

November 26, 2008

About 30 Centennial Middle School students cut classes Thursday, but it was all in the name of education. ...more

November 14, 2008

It's happening again. We knew it would. As the presidential race narrows to a handful of states where the two candidates are clawing to get over the top, Florida would be each man's top prize. And the Tampa Bay area is their key to Florida. ...more

October 26, 2008

Sense of community, social responsibility and collaborative teamwork are terms most kindergartners have never heard, and few would understand. ...more

October 15, 2008

I just did the arithmetic based on your front page story about THE Bus. Rounding the average ridership down to 600, given that the county annual payment is $600,000, the county pays an average of less than $1,000 per rider per year. Since THE Bus only runs for five days a week, that's $3.85 per rider per day and 32 cents per rider per operating hour. ...more

June 25, 2008

It's getting ugly out on the presidential campaign trail. Attack ads are heating up, so are tempers. And, as usual, few of the attacks are truthful and fudging the facts is raised to an art form. No one knows this better than Republican candidate Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, who has been surging in the polls for weeks, is taking a pounding in Iowa at the hands of some of the folks who bankrolled the Swift Boat fiasco. A Houston, Texas, home builder, who funded much of the unsubstantiated rumors surrounding the Sen. John Kerry presidential bid, has turned on a Republican. He claims Huckabee was a big spender as governor of Arkansas. It's true Huckabee spent taxpayer money in Arkansas. He admits this, and has a good reason why he did it. His state was one of the worst in the nation on education, and the state's poor school system was infamous around the nation. ...more

December 28, 2007

Two-thirds of doctors in Sarasota County say they will stop accepting new Medicare patients if the federal program's payments do not improve. ...more

December 4, 2007

James R. Flynn, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Otaga in New Zealand, discovered two decades ago that IQ test scores were steadily rising in the developed world despite some evidence to the contrary, such as failing schools and stagnant standardized test scores - a phenomenon called the 'Flynn effect.' ...more

October 28, 2007