The lights have gone out on Ed Bielarski’s run for Gainesville mayor as Gainesville City Commissioner Harvey Ward prevailed according to Alachua County supervisor of elections. Bielarski was the former general manager of Gainesville Regional Utilities and was motivated to campaign after being terminated from his position by Ward and …
Read More »The Point, Oct. 14, 2022: Parkland parents upset after school shooter receives life sentence instead of death penalty
“What is the death penalty for if not for the murder and killing of 17 people?” asked one parent.
Read More »Decolonizing the Curriculum, Episode 5: Unsung heroes and heroines in Alachua County
They range in topic and experience but are all interconnected by similar characteristics: their struggles, their perseverance, their strength. These are the tales of unsung heroes in Florida.
Read More »High schools across Florida receive false active shooter phone calls, following disturbing nationwide pattern
Law enforcement across Florida received hoax phone calls of active shooter situations at schools on Tuesday, including at Eastside and Santa Fe high schools in Alachua County. The Alachua County Sheriff’s Office quickly responded to find no real threat. Similar calls were made around Florida on Tuesday, including in Miami, Orlando and Tampa. These calls have been made to around 50 schools across the nation over the past month. This includes Ohio, Minnesota and South Carolina. All the calls were made on the same day in each state as they did in Florida. The FBI is taking the lead in the national investigation and has already begun speaking with the Alachua Sheriff’s Office.
Read More »Florida Standards Assessments’ replacement increases testing time
Alachua County Public Schools began taking standardized tests with the new Florida Assessment of Student Thinking less than a month into the school year. Students in voluntary prekindergarten through 10th grade will participate in this assessment three times a year. Florida Assessment of Student Thinking replaces the end-of-the-year Florida Standards Assessments and monitors student progress in the fall, winter and spring. Each cycle tests students’ knowledge of the entire year’s material in English Language Arts and mathematics, according to the Florida Department of Education. But critics of the new assessment say more time spent testing means less instructional time.
Read More »The Point, Oct. 5, 2022: President Biden scheduled to visit Florida and survey Hurricane Ian damage
Gov. Ron DeSantis is so far working cooperatively with the federal administration through storm recovery.
Read More »Prosecutors drop charges against teen accused in high school bomb threat
Prosecutors in Gainesville have dropped a highly publicized felony criminal case against a teenager they accused of sending a bomb threat to his high school last year. They said they could not determine who was at the keyboard of the laptop used to send the threatening message. The case involved 17-year-old Reginald Javon Copeland Jr., who was among several students accused of sending multiple bomb threats over a week’s time to Eastside High last year. The decision to drop the case against the teen came last week in Alachua County Circuit Court, nearly a year after Copeland was initially arrested.
Read More »More than 1.8 million Florida utility customers without power
Earlier in the day, Gov. Ron DeSantis had called an initial 200,000 outages a "drop in the bucket" compared to total number of Floridians who will be affected by power outages by the time the storm passes.
Read More »Teen accused in high school bomb threat re-arrested over questions whether he would attend court hearing to change not guilty plea
A teenager accused of making a bomb threat at his high school last year is back in jail after his bail bondsman learned that the teen was planning to skip out on an upcoming hearing where he will plead guilty, according to court records.
Read More »The Point, Sept. 23, 2022: Another lawsuit filed over DeSantis’ use of state funds for migrant flights
This legal challenge emerged from a state legislator.
Read More »