North Miami Beach in the World Series -Steve Nicosia makes sure the first time's the charm! NMB High grad Steve Nicosia was the first Charger to play in the World Series, on the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979; @Pirates, #NorthMiamiBeach

With the World Series slated to start tomorrow night between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, i wanted to share a little bit of information I know and have been keen to post about for quite some time, and that time is now, since it's World Series-related and a local South Florida angle.

The first North Miami Beach High School grad to ever play in baseball's major leagues was also the first former Charger to ever play in MLB's World Series, catcher Steve Nicosia 

of the victorious Willie Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates team of 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979, against my beloved Baltimore Orioles, whom I grew-up loving, and was a mini-season ticket holder of when I was living and working in the D.C. area 20 years later, and going to about 20-25 Oriole home games a year at Camden Yards.

I watched every pitch of those painful 7 World Series games from the packed TV room of Briscoe Quad, while I was at IU my freshman year, back when only the affluent -esp girls- had a TV in their own dorm room. Trust me, I knew exactly which of my friends had a TV and what their favorite programs were, but some things need to be watched in large groups.
Even if they're Pirate fans, as most of the people in that room were.

(Did I ever mention to you dear blog readers how many people from the greater Pittsburgh area went to beautiful Indiana University in Bloomington? 

Trust me, it's huge, in part because it's only about 410 miles east of Bloomington -a day trip. The most-famous IU grad from Pittsburgh this far is Marc Cuban, @mcuban.

Nobody I met at IU from Pittsburgh was a better advertisement for what a great school IU was or better company to be around than my friend, Laura Seitz. Laura was a freshman when I was a sophomore, and she lived on the same floor at Briscoe Quad where I already had a LOT of close female friends, and eventually we met and became friends because our personalities really meshed well. Among my male friends, Laura was renown for always turning so many heads when she combined her sporty good looks with her shiny red adidas IU Swimming sweat jacket whenever we went to see a movie or met in-between classes over at the Student Union, or went to an IU soccer game at the-then new Armstrong Stadium, two blocks away from Briscoe. Laura was such a charmer and so honest and level-headed! The sort of friend you can confide in and trust in any kind of situation, no matter how upsetting or awkward, and genuinely feel a great weight lifted off of your shoulders after you've shared the news with her. I always thought she'd make a great psychiatrist, esp. in Left Coast Hollywood, as opposed to the one here north of Hallandale Beach. Just a great friend to have in good times and bad.)

So getting back to the main point of today's post, just to give you some helpful context, Steve Nicosia, who still lives in South Florida with his family, was about six years older than me when he was in high school at NMB, while yours truly was doing my thing over at Fulford Elementary, in 5th and 6th grade his last two years at NMB, when he was such a phenom.

This was back when NMB High School, on the north side of the street from the then-very prosperous 163rd Street Shopping Center, was spanking brand new and had absorbed kids whose older siblings (and parents) had gone to either North Miami or Norland,

depending upon where in Northeast/Northwest Dade their families lived.

So in a rapidly developing area with lots of well-established family and school loyalties and traditions comes a new school into the mix in NMB with neither, and located in an area of the city that was hard by the side of a huge retail complex and on another side, apartments for mostly senior citizens, a demographic which seemed almost of the city at the time.
Not exactly a target-rich environment to develop school tradition!  

What made it controversial from the start, as if that wasn't enough, was its in-vogue educational approach that most parents weren't so crazy about -no letter grades, just passing and failing.
It's hard to get into really good schools with that siort of subjective thing, obviously, regardless of tests scores, so parents and high-achieving kids were not down with the way things were being done

It's hard to imagine now in 2013, but there was no high school in Dade County north of N.E. 135th Street and east of I-95 -or Aventura- until NMB showed-up in 1971 and shattered that longstanding reality of life.

Yes, that's the sort of reality I can still recall, since I walked with my mother and two younger sisters on our way to 163rd Street Shopping Center thru the future NMBHS when it was merely a willowy field, from the nice apt on NE 170th Street I lived in while going to Sabal Palm Elementary for 2nd grade.

When it opened and while Nicosia was there, NMBHS was an "experimental" school, a bit of a fad that the Dade County School Board decided to try out with kids from NE Dade as guinea pigs, as if the fact that it was a gigantic two-story building with no windows wasn't enough of a tip that it wasn't a regular high school, though with cool air conditioning and carpeting everywhere.

(I wrote a fact-filled description of NMBHS in the early years about 6-7 years ago on Wikipedia, an entry that really put some meat on what was then present there, which I regarded as a paltry and unappealing description of the school.

Unfortunately, over the years, the "helper bees" at Wikipedia have taken a knife to the facts I added and turned it into a bland stew last time I checked it two years ago, removing about 75% of what I'd posted, though some scraps remain.

I'll try to remember to re-post that Wiki description I wrote here in the future, which you still sometimes find on the Internet when looking for NMB-related news of the 1970's, esp. re the 163rd Street Shopping Center.)

By almost any reasonable measure, Steve Nicosia was South Florida's most-celebrated HS baseball player between 1972 and 1974.

A result of that was that he was regularly featured on the front pages of the Herald and Miami News sports section, back before there was a Heat, Panthers and Marlins to easily distract everyone from the primacy of high school sports, and people actually going to games to support the kids even if they didn't have kids at the school, because that's what you did.

Just as is true in so many communities outside of South Florida right now.

I know about all those newspaper articles because I cut out every article on him that made it into print, since I was already a news junkie then, reading both papers every day, even when in elementary school at Fulford. (Cutting out newspaper articles -how very old-school!)

Here's a more recent piece on him, from 13 years ago, though the article greatly undersells how big a deal he was down here.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-05-07/community/0005040751_1_middle-school-athletics-twins-nikki His twins later played softball at Michigan State.

The first thing about him that jumped out at you when you looked at him was that he was very un-NMB-like in appearance, in that he resembled nothing so much as a miniature Joe Mauer, a catcher who was just more naturally athletic than anyone else on the field, something that was readily-apparent the moment he was in a position to affect the flow of the game.

He was, as I recall it, a "Natural" in every sense of the word, smooth and completely in-charge on the field and quick with a bat in his hands.

To my mind at least, he was the progenitor for everything that happened later with A-Rod in HS many years later in Miami, with the constant media attention.

If the Internet or USA Today or ESPN had existed back when Nicosia played...

Allen Park, the same City of NMB baseball field next to Fulford Elementary that I played Optimist football, soccer, Little League and Pony League on, was also the field where Nicosia played American Legion ball for NMB Post 257, back when that was really huge down here.

The stands would routinely have a half-dozen MLB scouts taking notes, stop-watches at the ready.

Me being me, I'd naturally try to size up the crowd and figure out who the scouts were and then try to matter-of-factly sit near them and eavesdrop on any baseball scuttlebutt, hoping

that one might be with the Orioles. If only...

It never was on the nights I was there.

I dug up this article on the Internet which was THE best article on him for the longest time.

Miami News

May 25, 1973

The scouts can't stay away

All eyes are on NMB's Steve Nicosia

By Jeff Klinkenberg

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=u9IlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=iPMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4985%2C3240905

Make sure you see the great photos above the article!

I must've stared at those photos for 5-6 years in the manilla folder I kept with all his clippings,

plus the one I cut from the extra copy of the paper I bought and then taped on my bedroom wall. 

To me, what made that black and white photo of him awesome was that because in the original that appeared in the Miami News, you could see all the sweat on his forehead and on the tops of his right shoulder coming out thru the jersey.

That was really something and people always commented on what a great photo it was

Back then, because of the novelty of the whole thing, people who didn't even live in NMB, esp. knowledgeable middle-age baseball fans, would routinely come from all over the area to the games at Allen Park.

They'd come over-and-over and even recognize me, because they'd come to gawk at him because of what they'd read, and then seen for themselves, because he was, literally, like a man-among-boys.

Trust me, that was the one-and-only time something like that EVER happened in NMB!

Chaz Stevens at his popular must-read blog, M.A.O.S. recently mentioned me in relation to my knowledge and love of baseball, which was nice of him, but the truth is that I had to reveal to Chaz recently that I was actually able to go the whole 2013 baseball season without watching a single inning of Miami Marlins baseball on TV, or listen to an inning on radio, even though I really do like their announcers.

Yes, my personal boycott of David Samson & Jeffrey Loria has remained in place since last year's team break-up, and I do hereby declare victory.

As I told many people in my original email about Nicosia, my pre-playoffs pick was the Pirates playing the Red Sox in the World Series, a rematch of the 1903 World Series, Pittsburgh vs. Boston, Cy Young over Honus Wagner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_World_Series

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Other NMB grads whom you may have heard of who came after I graduated in 1979 and my sister Linda graduated in 1982, include Facebook COO and recent author Sheryl Sandberg, actress Garcelle Beauvais and best-selling author Brad Meltzer.

Bee Season! Quality control in South Florida news media continues downward trend: Miami Herald misspells name of spelling champion; Juliette Binoche

Bee Season (2005)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fG_VeR8rVQ

I connected to this film above and the news story below because I was the spelling champ at Fulford Elementary in North Miami Beach in the early 1970's. This was long before spelling champions had mothers that looked like the multi-talented and adorable Juliette Binoche, above. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000300/
Mignon!

She has been a longtime personal favorite of your faithful blogger since I first saw her on the big screen my first year in D.C. in 1988's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.





Then, five years later, I promptly fell head-over-heels into the deep Bleu end of the pool after seeing her in the Krzysztof Kieslowski Three Colors trilogy of Bleu, Blanche and Rouge.
I even had the posters from the films -in frames from Ikea, of course!

This was when I was in my Juliette Binoche/Irène Jacob phase, having already seen Jacob twice in Kieslowski's 1991 creative wonder, La double vie de Véronique.



Krzysztof Kieslowski, now there was a director who knew how to tell a tale and put it all up on the screen!

That was all facilitated by the two Cineplex Odeon theaters in Georgetown that showed first-run foreign films -and then cap the night off with some good food and drinks with friends.
And then, if we still had some energy left, a stop by our beloved Au Pied De Cochon.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/au-pied-de-cochon-washington

Mon dieu, I miss that!
So chic, so civilized, so much fun!

I see now how much I took it for granted that I could do that with my friends (in the pre-Cell phone era) without even having to think about it, because of my proximity -to the action.
The complete opposite of the situation I'm living in -maintenant.

-----
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/11/2110724/corrections-clarifications-march.html
Miami Herald
March 12, 2011

The name of the elementary school winner of Thursday’s Miami Herald Spelling Bee was misspelled. Reva Dixit won first place at the competition for Miami-Dade and Monroe students.

-----

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/10/2108889/palmetto-middle-students-is-county.html

Miami Herald
Palmetto Middle student is county spelling champ
By Jaweed Kaleem

March 12, 2011

Claire Zuo, a student at Palmetto Middle School, competes in the spelling bee competition of 6th, 7th and 8th grade spellers held at the Parrot Jungle March 10, 2011. Zuo came in first place, which means that she will move on to compete in Washington, D.C.

For the winner of Thursday’s Miami Herald Spelling Bee for Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, the fourth time was the charm.

Claire Zuo, a seventh-grader at Palmetto Middle School, had competed in the Miami Herald’s spelling bee every year since fourth grade, but only this year did she become the champion.

The correctly-spelled word she has to thank for her upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., where she will vie to be the nation’s best speller at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee?

Cerumen – commonly known as ear wax.

While most kids asked and repeated several questions about the words they were given at the Jungle Island competition – “Can you use it in a sentence?” “Can I have the origin?” “What part of speech is it?” – mild-mannered Claire didn’t need many hints secure to her title.

She just spelled it.

“It was easy,” she said afterward as her mom and dad snapped photos of her first plaque and a heavy, unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary that was her prize.

She wasn’t being big-headed. She just knew the word from long hours of studying over the last week and from years of practice that finally paid off. Her focus this year: Latin and Greek roots to words. Cerumen comes from the former.

“And she may have had some help from her secret weapon,” quipped her mom, Sharon Mei.

Every year since her first foray into spelling competitions, Claire has kept a small, oval-shaped silver charm in her back pocket that a teacher at her then-school, Ludlam Elementary, gave to her. It says “Peace” on one side. The teacher who gifted it was the one who first encouraged Claire to start competing.

“Yeah, but it didn’t completely help the entire time,” Claire added.

Claire was the only contestant left and was moments away from winning Thursday when she flubbed the championship word the judges had given her to seal the deal: tracheotomy. That mistake meant there would be a new final round with the four students she defeated coming back up to challenge her.

“I didn’t even expect to get this far,” said Claire, who had to first be deemed her school’s best speller before competing against dozens of middle schoolers from across the county in two successive rounds of elimination: written and oral. Claire said her school didn’t host its competition until Friday, so she only had a few days to brush up.

Not a bad result for such quick prep.

At the national competition in June, she will join Glenn Medina, a 12-year-old from Ramblewood Middle in Coral Springs who won the Miami Herald Broward County Spelling Bee on Tuesday.

Thursday’s second place winner in the Miami-Dade middle school contest was Allegra Hill of Palmer Trinity School. The third place winner was Ryan Diaz of Miami Lakes K-8 Center.

The competition also included an elementary school portion, but it’s only the middle school winner who goes on to nationals. First place was Reva Dixit of Archimedean Academy. Second place was won by Ryan Tie-Shue of Alexander School. Third place winner was Amber Robinson of Air Base Elementary. All are in the fifth grade.

This is the 71st year of the Miami Herald competition, which gives a plaque, a savings bond, a dictionary and an all-expense paid trip to nationals for kids and their parents to first-place winners each year. Winners of Thursday’s competition will also get gift cards from TD Bank.

Claire, who uses mostly free online dictionaries, said she’s glad to finally have a real Merriam-Webster dictionary, which spans almost 2,000 pages.

“You can’t find every word online,” she said.

Thursday night's Ben Gamla Charter info meeting with Peter Deutsch was even more absurd than you'd imagine it could be

Thursday night was a bad case of Apathetic African-American Syndrome in Hallandale Beach.
While concerned neighbors in a Northeast Hallandale Beach neighborhood fought for better and more-inclusive schools that reflected the genuine diversity of HB on Thursday night, away from their single-family neighborhood, HB's African-Americans stayed home in droves and watched TV or were otherwise engaged.

After HB Commissioner Anthony Sanders left the Hallandale Jewish Center at 6:48 p.m., wearing his Hallandale High Chargers t-shirt, there was not another African-American face in the large room for the rest of the evening, another 85 minutes or so.
Zero participation at a meeting about schools in Hallandale Beach!

I'lm planning on having some photos and video of Thursday night's one-sided Ben Gamla Hebrew Charter School information meeting up on my blog and YouTube page on Sunday.

Here are the dates re Ben Gamla that we need to be concerned with.

First, the HB Planning & Zoning Advisory Board on Wednesday May 26th at 1:30 p.m. in the Commission Chambers.

Personally, I think we'd all be better off having it in the HB Cultural Center since I don't think there will be enough seats for everyone in the Chambers once Peter Deutsch and his rather obnoxious acolytes from throughout Broward County descend on HB.

I then expect that the application will go before the HB City Commission the following Wednesday on June 2nd and then two weeks later on June 16th.

In his public comments that came towards the end of the meeting, after nearly 65%.of the crowd had already left, rather than at the very beginning as it should have, Assistant HB City Manager Mark Antonio -the man who makes almost $200k a year in salary and benefits- stated that the City Commission would hear the application in "June or July."

Sure, well, except for the fact that the City Commission DOESN'T meet in July, which he already knows, hence my educated guess on June.

On Monday I'll be making the first in a series of formal requests for pertinent documents to and from HB City Hall and Ben Gamla and Peter Deutsch, with my first request for docs that explain why the city allowed this required public meeting to be held in a religious facility, one that was positively sweltering on Thursday night, and which lacked any electrical fans.

People attending were cranky even before the meeting started because of how truly miserable the conditions were inside.

When Deutsch said that there were rules for the meeting that the city had agreed to that I've never seen before -rules that DIDN'T exist with other required developer meetings in the past, including the Diplomat's at the air-conditioned HB Cultural Center in October, with Debbie Orshefsky and Suzanne Friedman- a real murmur went up from the crowd.

Instead of being able to ask questions from your seat, with someone walking around with a microphone, you not only had to sign-in, but walk up to the front of the room.
Because Deutsch brought an electronic three-minute timer with him, he alone controlled the time and flow of the meeting, not someone from the city.

That rather predictably resulted in him letting many pro-Ben Gamla people speak for quite some time after the time limit, while being quick to yank the microphone back if you spoke against his multi-million dollar creation.

Oh, and since he controlled everything, Peter Deutsch got to rebut any time he wanted to, which was constantly, with no time limit.

Naturally, he also consistently mis-characterized what many HB residents actually said.

And I guess I hardly need mention that because so many of the pro-Ben Gamla people at the meeting don't live anywhere near Hallandale Beach -or even necessarily in Broward- most didn't necessarily volunteer where they lived when they spoke, though some did.

Those that did mention that they lived elsewhere often made no bones about NOT caring in the least what locals thought, saying that HB would just "have to live" with the influx of the 600-plus cars of parents coming into this single-family neighborhood, twice-a-day.

While you and I may think that it's important for a public school, whether Charter or not, to have a tangible connection to not only the neighborhood it's located in but to the actual students who live in the city, which here, is well-over 90% African-American, Peter Deutsch and his fan club don't.

They don't even pretend to care about the legitimate concerns of the local neighborhood, the city or the kids who live here, who, in my opinion, are currently poorly served by the Broward County School Board and our local member, Ann Murray, who was NOT present.

Not that Ann Murray being invisible in Hallandale Beach is exactly Breaking News, as regular readers here know well.

The Ben Gamla Mutual Admiration Society in attendance Thursday night really don't view those concerns as either important or legitimate, since they don't plan on having many -if any- of these Hallandale students as BGHCS students anyway.

And as was evidenced throughout the night, whenever this was brought up, boy, are the Ben Gamla Moms ever ultra-sensitive about that self-evident fact!

They were spoiling for a fight from the get-go, and frequently heckled HB residents who made clear this school is not a good fit in THAT location.

Deutsch and Co. are smart and they've clearly done their research for their particular product.
They make no excuses for being about the bottom line.

They are much more interested in what Jewish parents living within a 20-mile radius of N.E. 8th Avenue think of sending their kids to this location, than they are with what the neighborhood thinks of them being located there, or even whether or not their insistence that their plan to actually have their students eat lunch outside, is the appropriate one, since many people find it hard to believe.
For them, it's all about efficiency.
Period.

Sorry, however good their students may do in school or on standardized tests -and nobody from the neighborhood challenged the central premise that the kids do well at the Hollywood location- for the Hallandale Beach location, their concern is solely about marketing, as I and many others have stated repeatedly since last year.

Because HB City Hall really caved-in big time on this meeting, and there was no presentation of basic facts or even a display of building renderings before it started, for people to look at, the meeting was as predictably and demonstrably bad as I expected when I showed-up, something echoed in comments to me by others who attended.

After it was all over, Hallandale Beach residents quite literally couldn't believe the gall of the whole effort.
First, the one to minimize the legitimate interests and concerns of the city, neighborhood and local HB students, and second, the extent to which the whole night seemed an effort by Peter Deutsch to keep existing Ben Gamla parents happy, so they'd have a high school to send their kids to, since many kids are 'aging out' of their facilities in Hollywood and Plantation.

Deutsch is under-the-gun to find a place for theses older kids to go, since it's clear from their own remarks that the Ben Gamla parents do not want to send their kids to Broward public schools, which they constantly disparaged throughout the meeting, with Hallandale's schools coming under a ton of withering put-downs.

One particularly indignant and voluble Ben Gamla father caused a stir amongst the crowd when he publicly stated that he'd much rather send his son to a Madrassa in Pakistan than to send him to a school in Hallandale Beach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrassas_in_Pakistan
Really.

I wonder if Comm. Anthony Sanders heard that particular remark.
I know for sure that Mayor Joy Cooper did.
In case you didn't already know, that's what they think of you and your city, folks.

Frankly, there's no logical reason to think that HB City Hall isn't already trying to "fix" things here as they clearly did for the Diplomat LAC proposal.

To think otherwise would be to deny everything we already know and have learned about the people involved in policy-making at HB City Hall, based on their own track record.

The people there have no qualms about lying to HB's citizen taxpayers or trying to prevent us from accessing public information we are already legally entitled to, and will do so again if they need to.
On that you can depend!

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My Wednesday email and blog post about Ben Gamla also linked to this Carli Teproff story in its first incarnation

Miami Herald
April 28, 2010

POSTPONED: Charter school meeting moved to May 7

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/28/1602750/postponed-charter-school-meeting.html

Carli is a very diligent reporter and was completely on top of the ethical nonsense at North Miami Beach City Hall last year.

I lived in the then-brand new apt. complex just south of NMB City Hall and the next door Victory Park Pool and Tennis Courts in third and fourth grade from 1969-'71, when going to Fulford Elementary.

Back when the Maryland Fried Chicken, Dobbs House and Kenin's Coin Shop were popular haunts of mine and my friends along N.E. 19th Avenue, and directly west of City Hall was a great family restaurant/diner that my family always seemed to be at whenever new episodes of The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family TV shows came on Friday night.
Great Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches!

Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/07/1618532/charter-school-proposed-at-gables.html

Charter school proposed at Coral Gables church meets resistance from city

By Carli Teproff

May 7, 2010

Academica, the company hoping to open a charter school at University Baptist Church, pictured here, went before the Coral Gables Development Review Committee on Friday. (Miami Herald file photo)

For Academica to open a charter school with more than 600 students at University Baptist Church, it will have to address parking, traffic and zoning concerns, Coral Gables' Development Review Committee said Friday.

Members of the city's police, fire, building and zoning, architecture, public works and parking departments queried Academica on a wide of range of issues pertaining to the proposed school at the church, 624 Anastasia Ave.

Company officials have said the pre-K through eighth grade school would open in August, although the city maintains the school needs to secure city approval before opening.

Friday's meeting was the first gathering before a city board. The company has maintained it can open the school at the church without city approval because of a state charter school law. In July, the Miami-Dade School Board approved Academica's application to open a school, dubbed Somerset Academy, although no location was specified.

City Attorney Elizabeth Hernandez has said in order to open up a school with more than 110 students -- which is what the property is zoned for -- the city would have to approve zoning and land use changes.

A group of residents who live nearby have formed a neighborhood association to prevent the charter school from opening with more than 110 students.

Attorney Tucker Gibbs, who is representing the group, said the main concern is the added traffic on the residential streets.

``The DRC brought to light a lot of issues that surround the proposal,'' Gibbs said after the meeting. ``The land use does not allow a school there.''

Academia officials have said they're aware of the neighbors' concerns and will try to work with them.

``The school certainly wants to be a good neighbor,'' said Rolando Llanes, the project's architect.

On Friday the city's Development Review Committee -- which is made up of representatives from each department -- went through the committee's concerns before a standing-room only crowd.

Among the concerns raised Friday:

• The number of students. The charter calls for 675 students; the company has said the proposed school can accommodate 735 students.

The committee said the company needs to clarify the exact number of students who will attend the school.

• Coral Gables Police Sgt. Jesse Medina cited added traffic at dismissal time.

Llanes said the plan was to have three dismissal times, 30 minutes apart, to help ease traffic. He noted a maximum of 31 cars could be in the pick-up and drop-off lanes.

``The responsibility will be on the parents,'' Llanes said.

• Parking. Currently, there are 93 spaces used by the church and its preschool, whose enrollment is capped at 110 students and 18 staff members, as per a 1977 commission mandate.

``One of my main concerns is parking,'' said Sebrina Brown, the city's currency administrator.

The architectural firm working with Academia -- Civica Architects -- said there was ample parking. In a packet submitted to the city, the firm said 58 spaces would be required for a 735-student school. It based that calculation on a state school code requiring one space per staff and one visitor space for every 100 students. That is the minimum parking requirement.

Using that methodology, the firm said it needed 58 spaces, 35 more than UBC now has with its 93 parking spaces.

``We have surplus of parking,'' Llanes said.

Jeanne Ann Rigl, who lives close to the church, came to Friday's meeting to speak to the committee.

While the committee meeting was open to the public, community members could not speak because it was not an open forum.

``We were disappointed no one could speak,'' Rigl said.

The company said it will work with the DRC.

Meanwhile, more than 900 parents have written letters of interest to the school, school officials said, and a parent board has been formed. The company operates several other charter schools in South Florida under the name of Somerset Academy.

Gina Delarosa, who lives in the Gables and has two sons, said she came to the meeting to hear more about the school. She said the city would benefit from a charter school.

``I feel like it's going to be a long process,'' she said.

Coral Gables City Hall, 405 Biltmore Way, 33134

Haitian refugee drama makes HB's moment in national news bitter and futile

I woke up last Tuesday morning at my sister's place in Pembroke Pines, where I was staying for a few days, expecting to finally catch Channel 10's Megan Glaros guest-hosting the weather duties that week on ABC News' Good Morning America, having missed her on Monday.
http://www.local10.com/station/3619791/detail.html

Apparently she'd done that before, but I'd read a nugget in the Herald saying that she'd be doing it and I wanted to see how she interacted with the rest of the ABC crew.


(Megan is from Dyer, Indiana, a.k.a 'The Region," the nickname all IU students use to refer to that part of NW Indiana that's part of the Chicago market, and therefore the part of the state that actually changes its clocks twice a year.


As I understand it, after initially attending T.C.U. in Fort Worth -much like my IU friend Colleen Cole from Elmhurst, IL, who'd earlier been a Horned Frog-turned-Hooosier- Megan , eventually made the right decision to go to IU, where she could dance like crazy!


Have never been able to find out if she was a Red Stepper like my friends Gail Amster and Terri Kearns, who were ridiculously talented dancers.)

Ironically, Megan interned with Tom Skilling at WGN-TV in Chicago and at WRTV in Indy, while I was supposed to intern at Channel 10 down here in the summer of 1981.


That is, until Prof. Don Agostino, a Telecom prof I'd always enjoyed and possibly the then-Dept. Chair, pulled the plug on me.

He told the station's personnel director that though it was a big coup for me to snag a position at the best TV news station in the state -and a Post-Newsweek station at that, which opened up great possibilities for doing something in Washington the following summer- the fact that I was going to be a junior rather than already one, meant that IU wouldn't allow me to accept the internship position,.
Despite her trying to reason with him, since she'd enjoyed success with other IU students in the past at other stations she worked at, and she and I seemed very simpatico, Prof. Agostino said no. I was devastated.

Megan's photo from the Local10.com website. Trust me, it's not PhotoShop, it's just that Megan's an especially good-looking Hoosier!

And then reality interrupted in the form of a small boat with enormous hopes and aspirations, and this area became caught up in a drama that's never really been resolved to anyone's complete satisfaction, certainly not South Florida's frustrated Haitian exile community, which began to grow to large numbers while I was growing up down here in the 1970's in North Miami Beach.

(My fifth-grade home room teacher at Fulford Elementary in North Miami Beach was Anthony Simon, a wonderfully enthusiastic and encouraging first-generation Haitian-American, who was always one of the most popular teachers in school, despite the fact that he taught science, not always every eleven-year old's favorite subject.)

It did prove yet another opportunity for local Miami TV stations to show their chops while ad libbing, always a dicey proposition in the best of times.

Given my longstanding preference for Local10 anyway, because of Michael Putney and Glenna Milberg's consistently top-notch professional performances, and the so-so performance of their news competitors at other stations in not only covering the story, but putting this in perspective in a way that was different from the connect-the-dots interviews with "the usual suspects," I think Channel 10 once again did by far the most complete job for the entire day.

At 6:30 p.m., ABC Evening News with Charlie Gibson even picked up on Michael's slightly incredulous query about where exactly was DHS in all this, in this case, the U.S. Coast Guard's seemingly obliviousness to the approaching craft.
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Miami Herald
March 29th, 2007
Desperate trip was a journey to futility
By Fred Grimm

The numbers don't calculate: 102 people stuffed into a wooden sloop the size of a Biscayne Bay day cruiser, sailing for 22 days and 800 miles through the Windward Passage.
So many. So far. It makes no sense. Until a key element is added to the formula.
Desperation was what sent these boat people on a round-trip journey to futility. Desperation explains why they made a mad run aboard a Haitian sloop built in another century to haul freight from one island port to another. It was never meant to carry human cargo. Never meant to sail far from Haiti. Its single mast was a rough-hewn tree trunk, slightly crooked, rigged with hemp ropes and tattered sails and desperate hopes.
The boat listed in the sand Wednesday on Hallandale Beach, testament to a reckless rage to reach Florida. And if anyone needed proof of the risk involved in such an adventure, the body of a passenger had washed ashore 300 yards south of the boat.
The drowned man was covered in a maroon blanket and strapped to a rescue board. Six Hallandale Beach firemen, like pallbearers in a wretched funeral, carried the body away. The dead man may be the only passenger allowed to stay.

MARCHED INTO BUSES
The surviving 101 were herded into the beach fire station, under the city's famed beach-ball water tower. Later, most of them were led out of the fire station in the most forlorn perp walk ever, before a gauntlet of cops and immigration officers and law-enforcement firepower out of proportion to the weary, dejected refugees filing meekly into the waiting buses.
They wrapped themselves in sheets. Some, inexplicably, had been provided blankets with the colors and sports logos of Florida State or North Carolina State universities. And they were off on the second leg of their unhappy journey. After a brief stay in a federal lockup, they will almost certainly be sent back to Haiti. Moments after they arrived, their official designation became deportees. All that misery? All for nothing.
The buses pulled away, leaving their sloop beached in the sand, still smelling of overloaded humanity. Anyone staring down from the condo towers or strolling along the shore was forced to contemplate the 800-mile distance between the brain and the heart when it comes to U.S. immigration policy.
It's one thing to accept that the U.S. can't simply throw open its doors to unfettered immigration (though some might argue that's an apt description of current policy).
But the notion of deporting the desperate refugees who survived a three-week journey on that rotting boat just hurts the soul.

BAFFLING POLICY
Any such landing on Florida's shores brings attention to the stark unfairness of the wet-foot, dry-foot preference lent to Cuban refugees. Though in today's anti-immigration climate, Washington's notion of fairness might mean deportation for Cubans, rather than leniency for Haitians.
Wednesday's landing came 25 years after another Haitian sailboat, the La Nativite, floundered in the waters off Broward County and 31 bodies washed ashore on Hillsboro Beach. Two were pregnant women so far along in their third trimester that the Broward medical examiner changed the official death toll to 33. It was the catastrophe that brought on the policy of interdicting would-be Haitian refugees at sea.
Interdiction staunched an exodus that had been bringing 1,500 refugees a month to Florida, many of them on primitive sailboats through dangerous waters.
In 1980, at the height of the exodus, lyrics to a popular song in Haiti proclaimed "the teeth of the shark are sweeter than Duvalier's hell.
"Duvalier's long gone, but the old sloop on Hallandale Beach tells how little life has changed on the island. The teeth of the shark, and the likelihood of deportation, even if you survive an 800-mile voyage, still seem sweeter than Haiti's hell.
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Miami Herald
March 29, 2007
HALLANDALE BEACH: A desperate landing, a plea for compassion - More than 100 Haitians came ashore in Hallandale Beach, prompting activists to protest the treatment of Haitian migrants
By Trenton Daniel and Kathleen McGrory

On Day 10, they ran out of food.
The 102 Haitians -- many bruised and scraped from the crowded conditions aboard their flimsy 40-foot sailboat -- endured their perilous journey for 12 more days with toothpaste and saltwater, all anyone had.
The famished migrants, 12 children among them, spotted the pre-dawn glint of Hallandale Beach's high-rise condos on Wednesday. As the boat lurched closer to land, some jumped off, sloshing through waves and staggering ashore.
'They were afraid, trembling and crying, 'Are they going to send me back?' " said Marie Erlande Steril, a North Miami councilwoman who said she helped interview migrants at a nearby fire station after they made it to shore. "They were complaining about how much they risked their lives."
Indeed, one man didn't make it, washing up dead on the sand. Paramedics pried a second loose from a shipboard rope and carried him to the beach on a stretcher.
The migrants told authorities they had spent 22 days aboard the vessel. Their landing spurred local Haitian leaders to protest what they say is unfair treatment of Haitian migrants, who typically are returned to their impoverished homeland.
The boat, with a tiny dinghy attached, left the northern coast of Haiti more than three weeks ago -- possibly from Port-de-Paix but most likely the island of La Tortue, officials said.
It landed around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday near Hallandale Beach Boulevard, behind a row of high-rise condos and hotels including the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa, which dominates the shoreline in nearby Hollywood.
A crowd of hotel guests and condo dwellers quickly gathered. Wielding binoculars, some stared down from balconies.
News choppers hovered overhead, broadcasting the scene into living rooms in a live reminder of 2002, when 220 Haitians splashed onto Miami's Rickenbacker Causeway.

DEPORTATION LOOMS
Unlike some other immigrants, Haitians are not eligible for Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which temporarily suspends deportations and enables recipients to get work permits.
Haitian community activists from Pembroke Pines to Miami on Wednesday renewed their demand that the Bush administration grant undocumented Haitian migrants temporary immigration status so they can avoid deportation.
In Little Haiti, about a dozen Haitian leaders gathered Wednesday afternoon to decry the wet-foot/dry-foot policy, which requires most migrants picked up at sea to be repatriated, But the policy allows Cubans who make it to land apply for residency. Others often are sent back.
"It's unsafe and unfair to send any Haitians back to their country," said Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami. "There is no rule of law to speak of.
"No decision has been made on where Wednesday's migrants will be detained, said Barbara Gonzalez, a Miami spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She noted they could be housed anywhere in the country.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick B. Meek wrote letters to Julie Myers, the head of ICE, and to Michael Rozos, the agency's field office director in Florida, asking that the migrants not be sent to detention centers outside South Florida.

DRAMATIC LANDING
Early Wednesday's scene was one of desperation and drama.
The boat was run-down, with its sail tattered and its blue and white paint chipped.
"The vessel was obviously unseaworthy and grossly overloaded," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Jennifer Johnson. "Nobody should have embarked on a voyage of that length on a vessel like that."
Before the sailboat reached land, a few passengers jumped into the water and swam several hundred yards to shore. A local lifeguard waded in to help.
Those who remained onboard crowded the deck and watched -- until the sailboat ran aground about half an hour later. That unleashed a mad scramble through waist-deep water.
At that point, police, fire rescue and Coast Guard personnel arrived. Ambulances rushed in.
"It was intense," said Hugo Paez, who ran down to the beach with his camera. "You could tell they really wanted to come to this country."
All told, Hallandale Beach Fire Rescue ushered 101 migrants to a firehouse at Hallandale Beach Boulevard and State Road A1A; the man who died was covered with a maroon blanket and taken away on a stretcher. The survivors were given food and water, said Andrew Casper, a police spokesman.
Dozens of migrants, many draped in white blankets, a few in camouflage, crowded into the firetruck bay.

IN POOR CONDITION

"Some of them looked very, very bad," said Kenol Obnis, a Diplomat hotel waiter who rushed to the firehouse after he saw the boat from a fourth-floor window. Bruises marked the backs of some, he said.
Steril, the North Miami councilwoman and a native of Haiti, also pitched in at the firehouse after seeing the dramatic landing at home on TV.
Steril's cellphone enabled migrant Jean Monestime to call his half-brother Ricardo Francois, a Hollywood delivery driver. The brothers had not seen each other since Francois made a 2001 trip to Port-de-Paix.
"He told me he's here, he didn't die," Francois, 43, said outside the firehouse, waiting to catch a glimpse of his sibling. "I don't know what they're going to do to him."
Seven men and four women were taken to the hospital, with three listed in serious condition. Others were dehydrated and weak from hunger, police said.
Police and paramedics later escorted the remaining migrants onto large passenger buses, some bearing U.S. Department of Homeland Security insignias. The migrants were taken to the Border Patrol facility in Pembroke Pines.
Not all boarded the bus.
Police officers were seen isolating one man, taking him to an underground parking garage.
"Sa ou gen?!" Obnis yelled in Creole, meaning, "What's the matter?!"
The man didn't respond and vanished into the garage.
Onlookers suspected the man may have been singled out as the ship's captain, but a Border Patrol spokesman said authorities had not found that person.
"I do not believe the captain has been positively identified," said Victor Colón, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.