The Florida Botanical Gardens holiday lights are back. With more than 500,000 twinkling lights on display from treetops, along walkways and on the bougainvillea, hibiscus and bromeliads.

The 12th annual Holiday Lights in the Garden has been a much-enjoyed tradition since 2002. This year, the holiday lights will have new lighting displays. Two new fountains will light up with lasers on boths sides of the McKay Creek bridge.

"As people enter and walk over the bridge, they'll see the fountains, with varying degrees of light and intensity. We're excited about it,'' said Chuck Scaffidi, president of the Florida Botanical Gardens Foundation, the all-volunteer, nonprofit group that took over Holiday Lights from the Pinellas County government in 2008.

That's not all that's new, expect more lights on display as the Holiday Lights in the Garden has expanded into the Botanical Gardens Vinery. Created in the spring, the vinery is near the Palm Garden.

"It includes a dozen different types of vines, and people should check it out. It is still a bit immature as far as growth goes, but the trellises will be lit up. They have been decorated, and it's interesting to see," Scaffidi said.

"I think people should check out the dogwood shrubs. They are just gorgeous, large blooms. There's a white, pink and red. Also, in the same area where they are on the Tropical Walk, everybody should also see the Christmas ornament tree. That is what it is really called. It always blooms around Christmastime, and it's budded up now. In a few weeks it'll have a large flower that drapes from the stems. It's pink and really something," Scaffidi added.

The holiday event includes refreshments for sale, live entertainment, and Santa visits..

While Scaffidi has 300 volunteers through the foundation to help with Holiday Lights, volunteers are still needed to help at the display. They expect 60,000 people to visit this season.

Holiday Lights in the Gardens will be held from 5:30 to 9:30 every night from Friday, November 23, 2012 through January 1, 2013. Although it is free, a donation of $2 per adult is requested.

The gardens are located at 12520 Ulmerton Road, Largo.

Holiday Lights in the Gardens 2012

A child was shot in Homestead, Florida while riding on a bus headed to Somerset Silver Palms campus, which enrolls students K-12, Tuesday morning.

It happened at the area of Southwest 296th Street and SW 137th Avenue.

Initial reports from Homestead police indicated that a 13-year old who was shot in the neck. The girl was airlifted to Miami Children's Hospital and her condition is unknown at this time.

Four Miami-Dade Police officers have been seen at Miami Children's Hospital this morning.

At the time of the shooting, Miami-Dade police were unsure if the shooter was on the private bus or if the shot was fired into the bus. Later, police said the shooter is a boy who is also a student.

Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed that they are questioning a boy in connection to the shooting.

It's not clear if the bus was operated by the charter school or an outside bus company.  Local 10 spoke to a mother of a student who was also riding on the bus at the time of the shooting. She said the bus takes students to three schools and the driver had just started it's route.

The Palm Glades Middle School and Summerville Elementary schools will have counselors from other campuses and the principal, Kerri Ann O'Sullivan, walking through all classrooms to make sure everything was running on schedule and students are okay, said Lynn Norman-Teck, spokeswoman for Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools.

Homestead Police have closed Southwest 137th Avenue from Southwest 288th Street to Campbell Drive while detectives investigate the incident.

A teenager was killed in a motorcycle accident on Sunday in St. Augustine around 4:40 p.m.

The accident happened on Woodlawn Road in the Heritage Park subdivision, said Florida Highway Patrol troopers.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers stated that 16-year old Mark Ochkie Jr. was headed northbound on Hefferon Drive, in the Heritage Park neighborhood near Woodlawn Road, when he was rounding a curve before he hit a curb, went off into the median, and hit a palm tree.

He was celebrating his friend's birthday party at his house a few blocks back from the Heritage Park subdivision. Ochkie left to go back to his job to pick something up that he left there. He was riding his 2010 Kawsaki Ninja motorcycle back to his friends house to celebrate his birthday by going out to dinner when the motorcycle accident happened.

The 16-year old, Mark Ochkie Jr. was taken to Flagler General, where he was pronounced dead from his injuries.

There were no other vehicles involved in the crash and FHP say he was wearing a helmet.

According to the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, Ochkie's father is a deputy.

Toxicology reports have been requested to determine if alcohol played a part in the late afternoon crash.

Carsen Willey, Mark Ochkie Jr's. best friend told reporters, "He came over to my house pretty much every day. He gave me rides to school every day this past year. He was super easy to get along with, like, everybody loved him. He was one of the funniest people I've ever met."

Comments have been fired up on the News4Jax Facebook by the parents allowing the 16-year old boy to have a motorcycle. One comment left by Scotty Boyforever says, "Why would anyone buy a 16 year old a sportbike? I know all motorcycles can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but why give them such temptation with a sportbike? I remember what I was like at 16, and I sure didn't need that type of bike...so sad for his family and friends."

Carol Prettyman Rost responded that she is Mark's Aunt and answered why the parents allowed him to have that motorcycle. "Mark is my nephew and he saved his money from a job he had and he bought the bike with his own money. He was told always to wear a helmet and he was only allowed to ride when he was with someone. He was always told to be careful. He was a responsible boy who had a tragic accident."

Tragic accident indeed. Our thoughts go out to the Ochkie family.

A report was sent to Florida health officials by Dr. Robert Luo of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that a tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was the worse seen in 20 years.

Governor Rick Scott had signed a Department of Health bill that required the closure of A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years on April 5, just nine days before the CDC issued its warning about the tuberculosis outbreak.

In Dr. Robert Luo's report, he wrote that 3,000 people in the last two years have had contact with tuberculosis at Jacksonville's homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and in area jails. However, only 253 people had been located and screened for tuberculosis, and a third of them tested positive for tuberculosis exposure, Luo wrote.

The public didn't learn of the tuberculosis outbreak until June when a man with TB was spotted in a Jacksonville soup kitchen. Officials believed it was contained within the homeless population and it was unclear whether the outbreak had spread beyond areas where the homeless congregated in Jacksonville. That's why Duval County health officials decided not to inform the general population.

"What you don't want is for anyone to have another reason why people should turn their backs on the homeless," said Charles Griggs, the public information officer for the Duval County Health Department.

According to the Post, the tuberculosis outbreak cover-up began in February, "when Duval County Health Department officials felt so overwhelmed by the sudden spike in tuberculosis that they asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to become involved. Believing the outbreak affected only their underclass, the health officials made a conscious decision not to tell the public, repeating a decision they had made in 2008, when the same strain had appeared in an assisted living home for people with schizophrenia."

A decision to keep it under wraps was a bad decision because by April, it had spread to the general public. The tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville has caused 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, according to a report by The Palm Beach Post.

"The high number of deaths in this outbreak emphasizes the need for vigilant active case finding, improved education about TB, and ongoing screening at all sites with outbreak cases," Luo wrote in his report.

Worst Tuberculosis Outbreak in 20 years in Jacksonville

What is Tuberculosis?

Each year, more than 13,000 cases of tuberculosis are reported in the United States. Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that is spread through the air from one person to another. There are two kinds of tests that are used to determine if a person has been infected with TB bacteria: the tuberculin skin test and TB blood tests.

Tuberculosis Symptoms:

General tuberculosis symptoms may include feeling weak or sick, weight loss, fever and/or night sweats. Symptoms of TB of the lungs may include cough that lasts for 3 weeks, chest pain and/or coughing up blood.

Tuberculosis Treatment:

An estimated 10 to 15 million people in the U.S. who are infected with the TB germ with the potential to develop TB disease in the future. If a person gets a TB skin test and it comes back positive, they must take an antibiotic daily for as long as six months.

“To be the Northeast Florida leader in providing effective,
coordinated and integrated multimodal transportation solutions.”
Mission Statement, JTA

I had a great job when I lived out west in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Traveling between Denver, my home base, and San Diego and San Francisco wasn’t a hardship, that’s for sure.

I was single with no family responsibilities, not even a pet, so life was good and I was on the road a lot. I’d fly out of Denver on Sunday and then work in one city and then the other for a couple of weeks, and then I’d head back home to check on the home office.

The amazing thing to me, Floridian that I am, was that I never had to rent a vehicle in the Bay area. I jumped on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) at the airport, which took me within a block or even closer to my hotel. In the morning when it was time to go to the office in Oakland across the Bay, I’d join the throngs of people slipping tokens into the turnstiles and off we’d go. Business people with briefcases, shoppers, families, everyone surging around a geographic area over 200 miles long and 100 miles wide. No parking angst, no traffic snarls. It was a thing of beauty.

BART took us just about wherever we needed to go, all up and down the Bay area. Then, for shorter distances we could hop on the cable car or electric rail system. Taxis were plentiful and always available in a reasonable amount of time, meaning minutes, not “maybe in an hour” if you were lucky. Heck, even messengers on bicycles were available to make important deliveries around the city, darting in and out between all the other modes of transport people were hanging off or out of. Later, some of us would get together and travel to a great restaurant in another town around the Bay, and off we’d go again, BART ready take us. No one had to worry about having that extra glass of wine, since ‘ole BART was driving. I get nostalgic just thinking about it.

People who lived in the area told me that they had never owned a car. They didn’t need one. As a matter of fact, they said, it was more expensive to own one, considering parking, plus regular upkeep of a vehicle. The mass transit system had too many options, was cost effective, and could get them anywhere any time they needed to go. I checked it out again just now and they’re still right. Routes are extensive, trains (or whatever the form is that you need) run continuously for about 18 hours a day AND on weekends, and fares are reasonable. Why do it alone for more money when the city’s mass transportation system actually takes care of it for you?

Why, indeed. I returned to Florida in 1984, settling here in Jacksonville to be near family. I had an infant, no job, one car between two adults, and a desperate need to make a living. It wasn’t easy in a town with a bus system that is sketchy at best, no mass transit at all at that time, and hundreds of miles to traverse. And when is the last (or first) time you’ve seen someone standing on a curb downtown hailing a cab? Getting around this huge area to find work, shop, or recreate was then, and remains, a monumental headache.

Here’s what I know. If I decided to ditch my car and use the bus system here, I could catch a bus about 2 miles away from my house at the “nearest” bus stop and go directly downtown at 7:05 AM. Until last year, this bus stop had no cover at all. It was just a place on the ground, with a pole next to it marking the bus number. At least now there is a covered bench for about 4 people.

Several restaurants claim the parking areas on the other side of the hedges from this stop, so if I had to drive to the bus stop because it was pouring rain, where would I park my car? Plus, one of the reasons to use mass transit is to NOT use a car if you’re lucky enough to have one at all. Or someone else in the family might need to use it to get to work or go to the doctor’s office that isn’t anywhere near a bus route at all. According to the schedule listed on JTA’s website, I would arrive downtown at Rosa Parks/FCCJ Station at 7:36. Not bad, if it works that way. I think I’ll try it one day soon and let you know.

The schedules on the website are difficult to read and follow, especially if I needed to transfer from that station to go, say, to the airport. In that great job I had out west, I arrived at the airport and jumped on BART, which ran continuously, little wait time between one train and the next. The JTA bus system does offer service to and from the airport. Once an hour. Not very conducive to doing business in the 21st century, especially in a recession when every second has to be milked for a dollar.

If I lived on the Westside and worked near the Avenues Mall, I could catch a bus at 5:48 AM, which would take me downtown, where I would transfer to another bus at 6:50, with a scheduled arrival time of 7:47. But then I would need to get from the Mall to my office in one of the surrounding business centers. How? And what if the bus is late? I’d be late for my 8 AM start time, with my boss chewing me out and maybe writing me up.

Every day... until he fires me.

An effective mass transit system with multiple modes of transportation forming a network across the metropolitan area is a necessity not only for growth, but also for sustaining our city. We had an opportunity to make it so in previous decades and settled for less than that. We’re all to blame for this, taxpayers and short-sighted politicians alike, and now it’s probably too late.

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ABOUT DEBORAH HANSEN: Deborah Hansen writes about education and family. Her latest book is “Broken Strings: Wisdom for Divorced and Separated Families.”    She has lived on the First Coast for over 20 years and is a former member of the Jacksonville Ethics Commission.

More dollars won’t do it. Taking tenure away from teachers (or even giving it back) won’t do it.

Adding another layer of testing certainly won’t do it.

The key to turning poor student achievement around rests on one word: Attitude.

Specifically, parental attitudes toward education. There is a wholesale lack of respect for education in this country and the results of that attitude are played out daily in classrooms, school hallways, restrooms, locker rooms, on school buses, and on playing fields and playgrounds. This is where our problems with lack of educational achievement rest in this country. Not in Washington, Tallahassee, City Council, the Mayor’s office, or even any principal’s office.

As an educator with fifteen years experience in the classroom and another ten at the district level, I believe most parents value the concept of education. However, our society has lost the ability and perhaps the will to convert that conceptual value into very concrete messages for our children. Simply put, we must be much clearer and we must convey those messages to parents first.

“Get involved in your child’s education.” This facile phrase is repeated in every article or TV program on the topic. It sounds good, and of course it is a true statement. Most parents would agree with it. However, I am convinced from years of working with parents that many don’t know how to DO it. Therefore, we have failed as educators in a very basic way. We assume our audience knows what we mean. It appears they don’t.

So, what do we mean? These are the beliefs and subsequent actions that parents must take if we have any hope at all of putting this train wreck called education back on the track of  actually educating future citizens before it is all too late. And that time is fast approaching. They must become the soup of life for children as they grow and the head off to their first day of school.

To My Children:

1. School is a place for learning. Nothing else.

2. We have free public education in this country, which is NOT the case in many other countries. It is also mandatory.

3. The primary purpose of going to school is to learn to read, calculate, think, and accumulate knowledge for your future. The reason is so you will be educated enough to participate in society in positive, productive ways.

4. Our democracy demands an educated citizenry. Without it, you will be open to negative forces and influence spawned by ignorance, which means society as a whole will suffer from your ignorance.

5. Each member of the family has a job to do. Your job is school. Jobs are often boring, tedious, and not fun. However, it is still your job.

6. You must attend school every day it is in session, unless you are ill or contagious. And I will decide that for you.

7. You are expected to get to school on time, just as I arrive at work on time. If you have difficulties with this, you must be prepared to accept the consequences. And I will not take those consequences for you.

8. As in nearly any job, you have a supervisor. Yours is called “the teacher.” This person studied and worked to attain that position; therefore, their authority is inherent in their job and must be respected by you. If you “have problems” with your supervisor, there are procedures to follow to address those problems. However, their authority remains intact throughout that process. Arguing, swearing at, defying, or raising your voice at the supervisor is not part of that process and will not be tolerated by either that person or me.

9. Proper comportment (behavior) at school is required. This means appropriate dress (non-revealing, clean, and in good repair), moderated tone of voice, courteous language and non-aggressive behavior toward your classmates and all adults you come into contact with.

10. When in the classroom, you will sit where directed and focus on your supervisor for instruction and directions at all times. You will remain there until instructed to leave. You will do all work you are given to the absolute best of your ability. You will ask questions in an appropriate way when you don’t understand something. You will NOT understand much of what is presented, which is normal and why you are on the job in the first place.

11. You will be required to do some of your work at home. This, too, is part of your job, and the work must be completed regardless on other activities like sports, dance, or play. YOU are responsible for this work, not me. I have my job to focus on. You need to focus on yours.

12. If you need supplies for your job, you must ask me in a timely manner. The night before is not timely. If you lose your supplies once I purchase them for you, you must be prepared to face the consequences at school. I will not accept those consequences for you. I will not bring supplies to school for you. I will not bring “forgotten” items to school for you. Remember: This is YOUR job and therefore, your responsibility.
This is tough work. It takes courage and fortitude. And many parents are simply unwilling to accept their part in this process. Many fall victim to the disease I call “the exception to the rule becomes an all purpose excuse” disorder. Yes, there are poor teachers, poor principals, poor superintendents. But they are the exception and we cannot use them as an excuse to lay our responsibilities down and give up. This victim mentality has given us several generations of children who treat teachers and school in general as the enemy….and mom and dad are right there supporting them in that erroneous idea.

Our society is suffering from the lack of focus on what is necessary to educate our children: Hard work, discipline, and a foundational respect for education. The walls are crumbling around us, lawmakers are getting involved with no real understanding of what they are doing, teachers are victimized every day, children ARE left behind, and the media salivates over it all. And the only thing that will turn the tide is a reversal of the attitudes within the walls of every home in this country concerning the value of education.

And parents are the messengers.

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ABOUT DEBORAH HANSEN: Deborah Hansen writes about education and family. Her latest book is “Broken Strings: Wisdom for Divorced and Separated Families.”    She has lived on the First Coast for over 20 years and is a former member of the Jacksonville Ethics Commission.