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Around the state

Panel votes to move school start dates back

By wire services
Published March 7, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - School starting dates would be delayed from early and mid August to no more than a week before Labor Day under a bill approved Monday by the Senate Education Committee after the panel narrowly rejected a compromise.

Committee Chairwoman Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, voted for the bill but predicted it eventually will be killed without her compromise, which would set starting dates no earlier than two weeks before Labor Day. She said she planned to offer the compromise again.

Senate Bill 306 next goes to the Education Appropriations Committee. A similar House Bill 177 has cleared one committee.

School district officials oppose the legislation because it would remove local control.

Start dates have been creeping earlier, in part because districts want to give students more time to prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, taken in February and March.

Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Aventura, said she initially sponsored the bill because she was worried that children are getting obese partly because they didn't have enough time to run around in the summertime.

The bill also has drawn support from Florida's tourism industry, which sees early starting dates as a threat to its bottom line by reducing the summer vacation season.

HAVANA - Cuban migrants who reached an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys only to be sent home began a new effort to reach the United States: filling out paperwork Monday at the American mission in Havana.

Under U.S. migration policies, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay, while those stopped at sea usually are sent back. The 15 migrants in early January reached an old bridge that the U.S. government said didn't count as dry land because chunks are missing and it no longer connects to U.S. soil.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno in Miami last week ruled that the Cuban refugees "were removed to Cuba illegally," and ordered U.S. officials to "use their best efforts" to help them return to the United States.

There is no guarantee that the Cuban government will let them come back. Cuba requires citizens to get special government permission to leave.

The U.S. government could still appeal Moreno's ruling.

MARIANNA - About 70 years ago, Wesley Mayhall took an important piece of paper that didn't belong to him. This week he's giving it back.

One summer, he and a teenage buddy were exploring an old vacant house when they heard adults approaching.

Mayhall grabbed a piece of paper before he ran out the door - a handwritten bill of sale for a slave named Mary, who became someone's property for $350. He tucked it away for decades.

Now, Mayhall, 83, has decided to give it its rightful place in Jackson County's historical record. On Wednesday morning, he will give the document to the Chipola Historical Society.

"It's getting kind of old, I'm getting kind of old, and I don't want it to be thrown into the trash without someone knowing what it is," said Mayhall.

WEST PALM BEACH - A woman whose 4-month-old daughter died after being left in the back seat of a hot car while the woman was passed out in the vehicle was sentenced to five years in prison Monday.

Melisa Wildman, 30, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter of a child. Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga also sentenced her to 15 years' probation.

Wildman told police she had consumed Xanax, four or five beers, cocaine and marijuana, in a 12-hour period before her baby, Savanna, died in April 2004.

A sheriff's officer and paramedics found her unconscious in her car hours before her baby died. She was allowed to drive away, although she had two outstanding warrants against her. She returned to her apartment and passed out again in the car with her baby in the back. When she woke up, the baby was dead, she allegedly told police.

[Last modified March 7, 2006, 06:02:57]