TAMPA -- The Democratic candidate for state education commissioner proposes requiring parents to sign contracts with their children's public schools to increase parental involvement.

"Parents are a child's first teachers," George Sheldon said Wednesday. "They are their child's greatest educational influence."

Sheldon said he would start requiring contracts with parents at Florida's low-performing schools.

He also proposed hiring full-time "parent involvement coordinators" at schools.

Sheldon's opponent is Republican Charlie Crist. The winner will finish the second half of the four-year term of current Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher, who is running for insurance commissioner. Starting in 2003 the education commissioner will be appointed, not elected.

Governor touts legislative candidates

ORLANDO -- Gov. Jeb Bush's face is appearing in mail boxes all over the state.

The state Republican Party sent out a letter from the governor urging GOP voters to support Republican candidates for the Legislature. Candidates mentioned vary according to region.

The letter is attached to a color photo of Bush and a mail-in ballot request card.

"Your vote is important to the success of our Republican team," Bush says in the letter.

Florida GOP Chairman Al Cardenas wouldn't disclose the cost of the mailing or how many letters were sent out.

"It's part of our ground attack," Cardenas said. "We send the piece, we call people and we urge them to vote."

Florida Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch said the party also plans to mail similar pamphlets using well-known Democrats.

School principal charged with assaults

TAVARES -- An elementary school principal is facing felony domestic violence charges for allegedly hitting his wife and pulling a loaded gun on her and their two children.

David Cunningham, 43, is charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, two felony counts of aggravated child abuse and one misdemeanor count of leaving an unsecured firearm within reach of a juvenile.

Cunningham has been the principal at Rimes Elementary School in Leesburg since 1995.

Police reports state that Cunningham shoved his wife Mollie into a dresser and hit her Monday night. When their 11-year-old son tried to help his mother, Cunningham hit the boy, court documents said, then got a .38-caliber revolver from a bedroom and forced the family onto the kitchen floor.

After her father left to take her mother to the hospital, the couple's 16-year-old daughter called 911 and told dispatchers she feared for her mother's safety.

When officers stopped the Cunninghams' car, they denied anything was wrong. However, detectives charged Cunningham after talking to the children, who refused to recant their accounts of the incident despite their mother's pleas.

Lake County school officials said they plan to meet with Cunningham.

Alleged Army spy's trial set for May

TAMPA -- Trial is set in the spring for a retired military intelligence officer whom prosecutors accuse of selling national defense secrets to the Soviets during the Cold War.

At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew scheduled trial for early May for George Trofimoff.

Trofimoff, 73, of Melbourne was civilian chief of the Army Element of the Joint Interrogation Center in Nuremberg, Germany, from 1969 to 1994 and was a colonel in the Army Reserves. Soviet bloc defectors were debriefed for military information at the center. The center was closed in 1995, when the Soviet Union crumbled as the Cold War ended.

An indictment accuses Trofimoff of photographing documents from classified files and smuggling them to KGB agents in Austria.

Trofimoff was working part-time in a supermarket bagging groceries when the FBI arrested him on a single espionage count in mid June.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said he is the highest ranking U.S. military officer ever indicted. He had been under investigation for seven years.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk