Above is my tweet from earlier this afternoon,
(I lived in what is now Palmetto Bay one summer when I was back from Bloomington for the summer from college at IU -Indiana University- when I lived a few blocks from The Fall Shopping Center on S. Dixie Highway and S.W. 136th Street.)
Dave
SECRETARY IS GRILLED ON POLICIES
By TERESA SMITH, Herald Staff Writer
October 4, 1987
U.S. Interior Secretary Donald Hodel, who is under intense criticism from Florida politicians, got the same treatment last week from Palmetto High School students.
After he gave a brief speech about the Interior Department and what it does, a panel of eight seniors questioned the secretary, who was in Miami on Thursday and Friday, with pointed questions about the environment.
"Oil and water don't mix," said Ketanji Brown, who asked why the department is endangering Florida's irreplaceable reefs by permitting offshore oil drilling.
Under Hodel's plan, waters off the Florida Keys would be leased to oil companies for exploration beginning in 1992. Gov. Bob Martinez, the state's two U.S. senators and environmental groups are leading a fight against the plan.
Hodel said the government's task was to find a balance between energy needs and environmental preservation. "This is a sensitive environmental mix," he said, adding that tankers are a greater threat to the coast than the "remote possibility" of an oil spill from drilling.
"He didn't really answer the question," said David Eckstein, editor of the school newspaper. "He made reference to California oil spills but didn't say anything about the effect on reefs in the Keys."
Ameeta Ganju asked Hodel what he thought about Sen. Bob Graham's proposal to end draining of the Kissimmee River into surrounding farmland, which she said has decreased the number of wading birds 90 percent.
Hodel said he was not familiar with the proposal.
"We thought as Secretary of the Interior he would know about it. But with everything he has to do I guess it's understandable," Ganju said later.
Hodel spiced his arguments with personal anecdotes. His jokes and offhand manner won him laughter and smiles, if not applause, from the audience.
Hodel's dollars-and-cents approach to environmental problems reflected President Reagan's philosophy.
The United States should not stop producing chemicals that deplete the ozone layer in the atmosphere because other countries would then produce them instead, he said, taking profits away from our businesses.
"I think he contradicted himself," said junior Aaron Greenman. "He based all his arguments on an economic standpoint, but at the end he said the main objective was the environment."
PALMETTO STUDENTS EXAMINE THEIR VALUES
JONATHAN KARP, Herald Staff Writer
April 17, 1988
It may be as impersonal as a swastika scrawled on a bathroom stall or as blunt as a teacher telling a black student she will not be considered for a starring role in a play about a white family.
Thursday morning at Palmetto High School, students discussed prejudice in all its forms, from ethnic jokes to the crimes of Nazi Germany. During the three-hour program on values, students heard from community activists and participated in classroom discussions.
"What we're attempting to do as a community and staff is to start thinking about what our values are and how they affect our thinking," said Janet Hupp, chairman of the school's intergroup relations task force.
Hupp said she hopes an emphasis on values will reduce cheating and other unproductive forms of academic competition, as well as promote harmony among students.
Students viewed The Wave, a film about a high school teacher who convinces his students to follow a mass movement based on strength and discipline. After stirring wide support, the teacher identifies the leader of the movement -- Adolf Hitler.
The film, designed to provoke students to think for themselves, drew a lively response in creative writing teacher Stephanie Loudis' class. Some students said they avoid the calculated displays of loyalty at pep rallies and football games. One student said the only group activities he endorsed were singing, and possibly prayer.
But when Loudis abruptly asked all the students to stand up, none of them hesitated except Luis Rotolante, 17, who with his long hair, torn T-shirt and assortment of punk jewelry, embodied the classic rebel.
Loudis complimented Rotolante for questioning authority.
"No one thinks the same way as anyone else," Rotolante said. "People just want to think the same way."
Before seeing the film, students attended three different assemblies. At one, Valerie S. Berman and Fred David Levine of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith led a discussion on racial, ethnic and religious awareness.
Meanwhile, actress Roz Ryan of Miami, a regular on the NBC comedy Amen and mother of Palmetto sophomore Darren Reid, told students to set their goals and stick to them. "You can do anything you want to do," Ryan said. "Just make up your mind and get on down."
Ryan said she started singing in clubs at age 16. Her parents allowed her to perform as long as she maintained a B
average. Now 36, she works three weeks a month in Hollywood and returns to her home in Miami to be with her family. "When I come back here, my husband and son want to know if their dinner is ready and their underwear is clean," she joked.
Ryan's husband, Lance Singleton, also spoke at the assembly and drew hearty applause from girls in the audience when, in discussing teen-age sexual relationships, he said, "Gentlemen, you have a responsibility."
Singleton, a manager for Eckerd Youth Development Foundation in Okeechobee, helps incarcerated youth adjust to life after jail. "If you care about an individual," he told the boys, alluding to birth control, "care about what's going to happen to their future."
The third discussion was led by six students, and focused on the lack of communication among ethnic and racial groups at the school. Although Palmetto is 73 percent non-Hispanic white, 11 percent Hispanic and 16 percent black, those groups do not frequently mix, said panelist Ketanji Brown, 17.
After the discussion, Brown and panelists Stephen Rosenthal, 18, and Guillermo Cano, 17, said they each had seen examples of prejudice during their years in the public schools.
Cano, who is from Nicaragua, remembered being called "alien" in elementary school. Rosenthal, who is Jewish, said he had seen swastikas in bathrooms. Brown said a drama teacher told her she would not have a chance to win a role in a play about a white family because she is black.
"We can be a beginning," Cano said. "We have to start changing these prejudices."
Echoed Brown, "If you don't talk about it, you never deal with it."