Now that the coalition fighting Florida's class size reduction initiative has a former U.S. senator and former state House speaker helping lead the opposition, the group promoting the amendment has added some star power of its own.

Former Vice President Al Gore is lending his support to the amendment to reduce class size. Today, Gore will join Sen. Kendrick Meek in Miami as Florida's Coalition to Reduce Class Size opens a call center to promote the initiative. Gore is expected to speak in support and to make a few calls notifying potential voters about the amendment that will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot.

"This is something Al Gore talked a lot about during the campaign of 2000," said Gore spokesman Jano Cabrera. "It's only natural he would do what he could to lend his support."

Collier economic official to head workforce agency

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush named Susan Pareigis to head the state Agency for Workforce Innovation Monday. She replaces Tom McGurk, who resigned in July to run for Congress.

Pareigis, 42, has been the president of the Economic Development Council of Collier County since 1995 and before that worked for Lee County's economic development office.

The Agency for Workforce Innovation, which was created when the Department of Labor was eliminated, is responsible for job training programs, welfare transition, unemployment compensation and keeping statistics on the labor force and unemployment.

Bush cited the agency's work on "Operation Paycheck," designed to help laid-off workers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as one of its critical functions.

The program, which has suspended enrollment because it used up all the money lawmakers budgeted for it, attracted far more people than anticipated.

Bush said 8,800 people are either in new jobs they trained for through the program or are about to be certified to start some new type of job because of it. Seventy percent of the trainees are in high-tech jobs they were able to get because of the program's training, Bush said.

Pareigis also cited more than 150 one-stop job training centers as a key function of the agency.

McGurk resigned to challenge U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd in the 2nd Congressional District race in North Florida.

FSU med school firms up structure for third campus

TALLAHASSEE -- The dean of the Florida State University medical school signed agreements Monday with two rural hospitals to train its students.

The agreements give the medical school the infrastructure it needs for its third regional campus. It already has regional campuses for clinical training set up in Pensacola and Orlando.

The new regional campus in Tallahassee will also train upper-level medical students at hospitals in nearby Perry and Marianna.

Students spend their first two years on the Florida State campus in Tallahassee in basic science classes and then spend their next two years at one of the regional campuses in clinical training.

The medical school, which state lawmakers agreed to create in 2000, enrolled its first class of 30 students last year, but it is still awaiting word on its accreditation.

This spring, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education refused to grant accreditation to the new school but later agreed to consider the school's status this fall. A draft report from accreditation officials, which will be considered by the committee next month, gives the school a clean bill of health.

Also Monday, College of Medicine dean Joseph Scherger announced that Dr. Eugene Trowers will work as assistant dean for the new campus. Before coming to Florida State, Trowers was an administrator at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

Elsewhere . . .

NURSE'S AIDE CHARGED: A nurse's aide at the Paradise Manor assisted living facility in Port Orange was arrested and jailed Saturday on four counts of sexually assaulting a 74-year-old, partly paralyzed woman resident. Police said Jamaal Lamier Ward, 20, overpowered and assaulted the woman in her room Aug. 30 and three more times within a week. The victim has been moved to another facility.

AFRICAN CEMETERY: Archeologists are investigating what may be the only African cemetery in the United States, on Key West. Ground-penetrating radar revealed at least nine graves at Higgs Beach, believed to be those of Africans who died in 1860 after being freed by the U.S. Navy from three American-owned slave ships captured off Cuba and brought to Key West. While most of the 1,400 rescued refugees were returned to Africa, 295 died after succumbing to illness due to conditions aboard the slave ships. "This is not a slave cemetery; it's a cemetery of African refugees," said Corey Malcom, director of archaeology for the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society. "I don't know of any comparable sites in the New World."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk