MORE FROM CELEBRATION LAKE 2

Small alligator swimming

Alligator hiding in the plants

Spring is here!  Red maples showing new leaf color.

2011 Mon. Feb. 7
Lazy morning, lunch here, then we went to drop some books off at Celebration library, went to Starbucks for coffee and treat, went to Target to get groceries and more presents for Daniel’s birthday Saturday, and then took a ride about 12 miles south to see the horse farm that advertises trail rides. While we were in Target, a front came through - no rain, but the temperature when we went in was 78, and when we came out it was 63. Then we went rode south, it got back up to 78, and back down to 62 when we got back. Must be a slow moving front. Lots of clouds, part sun, but no rain.


FL WEATHER: High 79, low 49. Cloudy & windy all day, but no rain.


FL NEWS: Shut Orange charter school now, its ex-teachers urge:
Imani Elementary Charter Academy promised parents a model school when it opened in one of Orange County's poorest neighborhoods in August. The Pine Hills K-through-5 school said it would have the latest technology, field trips, bus service, before- and after-school care, and two adults in every classroom. It has none of these things. The troubled school underscores the limits of Florida's charter-school law, which strips away many of the accountability requirements faced by other public schools. Even when charter schools appear to have broken the law or failed their students, they have multiple chances to improve or appeal, a process that can stretch for months or longer. Six months into the school year, there are no computers at Imani. Textbooks are still missing from some classes. The 88 students, most of them poor and African-American, play in a dirt-and-grass courtyard. There is no physical-education teacher. They make art with shoe boxes their teachers bring from home. And the school is not offering the extra help for English-language learners and special-education students that is required by law, Orange school officials and former teachers say. On Thursday, students sat down to eat cheese-pizza slices from Papa John's for lunch, as they do most days. They'd had breakfast bars and juice in the morning, paid for by a benefactor. Vivene Scott taught in Kingston, Jamaica, for 20 years before becoming a teacher in Florida about 3 1/2 years ago. In Jamaica, Scott said, there were at least enough books to go around. "I never expected this to be happening in the United States of America," said Scott, who no longer teaches at Imani. "I feel we failed them. We failed to deliver a quality education, which they are entitled to." Barbara McAllan, who taught 16 first-graders in a cramped, windowless room until December, feels the same way. "How do you teach first-graders to read without books?" McAllan asked.