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SRQ DAILY May 5, 2018

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"Mr. Beruff wanted to ensure the development would be a safe place for his customers to live."

- Peter R. Logan, Medallion Home
 

[Education]  Student Success
Jennifer Vigne, jvigne@edfoundationsrq.org

The Education Foundation of Sarasota County believes that enriching the educational experiences available to Sarasota County students, teachers and schools strengthens all factors of the community and transforms lives.

Central to our work is a shared view that success is not limited to one route per lifetime. Rather, success is achieved when students can proficiently develop and complete their own viable plan for life after high school, and they know that learning does not end with a diploma but is essential to adapt and thrive in a world constantly in flux.

Whether the plan is attending and completing traditional university or technical college, earning a trade certification, directly applying 21st century skills training in a career-path job, or pursuing multiple options, we believe the number of students prepared to complete their personalized plans will grow as our honed approach is imbedded.

Our shared vision is to see more graduates step confidently onto the next stage of their life journey-- qualified, prepared and motivated to succeed in college, career and life.

Currently, the gap is wide between the goal and the reality. Too many students graduate without a plan or the know-how to develop a plan for the next step after receiving a high school diploma. Too few Sarasota County students graduate with the necessary coursework and life skills to succeed in college and/or a vocation.

In response to these needs, the Education Foundation is working closely with our district to open and staff school-based career-and-college centers, called Student Success Centers, to supplement and enhance the personalized guidance of a one-on-one school-based counselor.

Beginning in August, the Education Foundation will have two fully operational Student Success Centers located at North Port High School and Riverview High School. These centers, which are an extension of the Education Foundation and will be staffed and supported by us, will offer resources to improve students’ readiness for college, career and life. Resources include personal advising, writing skills workshops, financial literacy courses, resume/interviewing skills classes and leadership development, just to name a few.

We have developed a new comprehensive website, LaunchYourPlan.com, that offers students access to postsecondary planning information in the format that is most familiar to digital natives. From their phone or laptop, students and parents easily can navigate the website and explore topics including year-by-year checklists for high school students, scholarship opportunities and more.

It is our duty, as an educational thought leader, to explain and advocate for a readiness mindset with the public and to help convey its meaning and importance. Students deserve the opportunity to reimagine their aspirations and understand that achieving success in the 21st century will look different from their parents’ experience.

We will continue to seek input from our community as we hone our approach, and we invite anyone interested in supporting this vision to contact us. We are assembling a volunteer corps to help strengthen our work and we need many hands helping us accomplish this audacious goal. When we succeed, we expect that more Sarasota County students will be ready and motivated to advance from high school onto a postsecondary pathway, fully prepared to participate in our society’s economic and cultural prosperity.

Jennifer Vigne is president of the Education Foundation of Sarasota County. 

[Community]  A Challenge, not a Competition
Roxie Jerde, roxie@cfsarasota.org

Philanthropy is not exclusive, it’s for everyone. Thanks to a number of advances in technology, collective giving is more effective than ever and people are able to come together to make something “big” possible through the power of many. Nothing proved this concept more than this week’s 24-hour Giving Challenge, in which our community’s generosity has never been stronger, raising more than 74,000 gifts from almost 50,000 people.

While the buzz of those 24 hours causes a whirlwind of excitement throughout our community, the real magic is what happens leading up to the challenge. For months, participating nonprofits have been coming together as an organization, pulling their board, staff and volunteers together for an “all hands on deck, full steam ahead” approach to increase their capacity and make the most out of this almost too-good-to-be-true opportunity to raise unrestricted funding and matching dollars from The Patterson Foundation. The creativity we see from the nonprofits as they develop their campaign around the “Be The One” theme is truly infinite. It’s always fun to see what sprouts out each Challenge, like Healthy Start Coalition of Sarasota County’s “Be The Onesie” campaign to help babies.

Each year, the one question we are always asked is who “won” the Giving Challenge? Of course there are always the usual suspects at the top of the leaderboard with dollars raised – Honor Rescue, Cat Depot, Phelan McDermid Syndrome Foundation, etc. – but the question goes deeper than that. The answer is everyone.

While the unrestricted dollars are crucial for a nonprofit’s operation, the Giving Challenge goes beyond the dollars. Thanks to this opportunity, local nonprofits had the chance to build on existing donor relationships, and cultivate new ones through creative and interactive campaigns. They hosted events to bring their mission in-front of the community and bring the Giving Challenge to life. This year’s most popular event theme – yoga!

Even local businesses had an opportunity to make an impact. Almost 100 of them partnered with nonprofits to help spread the word about the Giving Challenge. Station 400 in Downtown Sarasota created a special “Be The One” menu to bring attention to the opportunity to have your donation matched during the 24-hours. However, Sharky’s on the Pier in Venice takes home the MVP award for hosting a Giving Challenge fair for more than 20 nonprofits to set up booths at their space and get in front of hundreds of people walking from the parking lot onto the beach. They even generously offered free appetizers and entrees to people who donated $100 or more during the Challenge.

My favorite part of the Giving Challenge is when nonprofits collaborate and partner together in order to maximize their effectiveness. Each year hundreds of nonprofits combine their efforts to host events, help get each other in front of different audiences, and work together to address different causes. For example, this year the Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida partnered with the Library Foundation for Sarasota County to stress the importance of reading to the girls. They hosted a campfire storytelling event that included a book giveaway, facilitated readings, games and s’mores! UnidosNow also partnered with Florida Studio Theatre to create a theatrical piece about the unique experiences Latino students in the U.S. encounter, as well as the common issues they face as teenagers in this country.

Lastly, at the end of the day the Giving Challenge ultimately benefits our community as a whole. The difference this unrestricted funding will make for these organizations and those working right on the front lines of change will amplify over time as they reinvest the impact locally. Follow the dollars contributed and be on the lookout for the stories and impact that will come out of the outpouring of generosity by our community. We truly thank everyone who took the opportunity to be the one to make a difference.

Roxie Jerde is president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. 

[From Peter Logan]  Medallion: We Did Our Homework at Foxfire
Peter R. Logan

SRQ Magazine recently published an opinion article by Ms. Cathy Antunes regarding current litigation between Medallion Home and Mr. John Garcia. Although we were disappointed that neither Ms. Antunes nor SRQ Magazine reached out to us for our perspective, we’re grateful that SRQ has elected to publish “the other side.”

Unfortunately, Ms. Antunes omits several important details in her article. She fails to clearly state, as does Mr. Garcia, that Medallion Home is NOT building on any former landfill. We have NO impacts. Instead we are building on adjacent lands in the same manner that Ashley to the west, and Red Hawk Reserve to the south were built. Ashley was built nearly 40 years ago with some property values today at $1 million! Just like Ashley and Red Hawk, all utilities will be provided to Waverley by Sarasota County.

Ms. Antunes also omits property rights and process. In the previous rezoning application of 2013 by the then-current land owner, that applicant failed to adequately (let alone at all) environmentally test the closed golf course. Having previously watched the 2013 Board of County Commissioners hearing, those commissioners were apprehensive about the unknown. BEFORE making application for the 2014 rezoning, Mr. Carlos Beruff and his team extensively evaluated test results for the closed golf course, utilizing Ardaman & Associates, Inc. (the environmental consulting firm that had been working on the property for the previous 20 years). This testing far-exceeded what is required under state and local guidelines. Mr. Beruff wanted to ensure the development would be a safe place for his customers to live.

Pursuant to Florida Department of Environmental Protection and Florida Department of Health protocol, Mr. Beruff’s team submitted their Site Assessment Report [SAR] in June of 2014. This document, which defined the extent of the environmental concerns and their proposed remediation solutions, was accepted by FDEP that same month; [the SAR] “appears to have adequately addressed suspected impacts to the property pursuant to Chapter 62-780.600 Florida Administrative Code.” Following remediation, FDEP issued their Site Rehabilitation Completion Order on June 30, 2015, meaning the property was safe for residential development.

What Ms. Antunes additionally fails to mention is the constant harassment Mr. Garcia has displayed toward the project in general. She failed to mention the letters he wrote to Governor Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi and President Barack Obama; the complaint he filed with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; the skull-and-cross bone signs he affixed to electric poles along Proctor and Clark Roads; the multiple social media swipes he’s taken; the fact that he was caught on camera trespassing and that he misleads the public about whether Medallion Home is building ON the landfill, which we are NOT. Of course none of this includes the phone calls, emails and letters he directed at local government officials and their staff.

And for all of the crusade Mr. Garcia puts up for the “benefit of his neighbors,” he still lives in Foxfire, next door to the project. If he were so concerned about health, safety and welfare, wouldn’t he have moved his family in 2014 when the rezoning was approved?

Peter R. Logan is president of Medallion Home. 



[SCOOP]  SNAC Announces Measures to Combat Nursing Shortage

Leaders from the Suncoast Nursing Action Coalition (SNAC) and community partners from area hospitals and nursing schools will gather at a milestone event to share joint measures they are taking to combat a serious shortage of nurses impacting hospitals and nursing schools here and across the nation. Held during National Nurses Week, the briefing will include highlights from SNAC’s 2018 report detailing challenges unique to Florida and the Suncoast region, and what steps local hospitals and nursing schools are taking to meet the region and Florida’s future nursing workforce needs. Among other initiatives, SNAC will share details about several new nursing programs that soon will allow nurses to complete four-year bachelor’s (BSN) degrees in their home town (rather than move to other communities to complete their BSN training); also, thanks to local philanthropists and foundation support, SNAC will announce its latest round of nursing scholarships, bringing the total awarded to local recipients to $214,000. 

Sarasota Memorial Healthcare

[SCOOP]  FST Announces 2018 Young Playwrights Festival Winners

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) is proud to announce the winning plays of this year’s Young Playwright’s Festival. For 27 years, FST has honored thousands of young playwrights from all around the world through its WRITE A PLAY (WAP) program. Over the course of the 2017-2018 season, FST received plays written by over 5,500 young playwrights between the ages of 5-18—the most submissions the program has received in a decade. This year’s winning plays, The Boy Who Liked Pulling Hair! & Other Winning Plays and will be performed for school groups during the week from April 3 to May 18 in FST’s Keating Theatre. The Boy Who Liked Pulling Hair! & Other Winning Plays will also be playing to the public on Saturdays at 11AM from April 14 to May 12 in FST’s Keating Theatre as part of the Saturday Children’s Series. Please contact WRITE A PLAY Coordinator Hannah Bagnall at 941-366-9797 for tickets, show times, or other questions. 

Florida Studio Theatre

[SCOOP ]  Evolving/Revolving

Evolving/Revolving, the final show of Sarasota Contemporary Dance’s four-performance series of the 2017-18 season is comprised of diverse new works by past company collaborators and dancers, Annamaria Diamant, Doug Gillespie, Kristin O’Neal, Brian Fidalgo and Erin Cardinal. This performance will also feature a restaging of one of their Artistic Director’s solo works performed by long standing company member Elisha Byerly from the 2014 Re:Imagining Georgia O’Keefe, commissioned by the Ice House. Evolving/Revolving celebrates the company’s past and future by presenting new, impactful, and popular works at the Jane B Cook Theatre located at the FSU Center for the Performing Arts. 

Sarasota Contemporary Dance

[KUDOS]  2018 Homeless Veterans Stand Down

 Coming to aid of veterans and the homeless has been an ongoing commitment for JFCS of the Suncoast, and last Saturday, the organization is partnered with more than 30 national, community and county organizations to host a special Homeless Veterans Stand Down at the Florida Department of Health. The free event for homeless veterans provided them with a variety of complimentary legal, health and employment service offerings along with backpacks filled with non-perishable food, personal care items, clothing, blankets and more to assist homeless veterans. 

JFCS of the Suncoast

[SCOOP]  Classical Music Celebration

A unique gathering of performers from around the world including renowned classical musicians, a full orchestra and an aerialist will perform at the first ever Classical Music Celebration in Sarasota presented by ESFM Entertainment and InterMedia Productions. Billed as Music for the Senses, this musical event benefitting the Payton Wright Foundation will feature classic guitar duo CARisMA who tour with Andrea Bocelli. Tickets range from $19 to $79, with VIP tickets for $149 

Classical Music Celebration

SRQ Media Group

SRQ DAILY is produced by SRQ | The Magazine. Note: The views and opinions expressed in the Saturday Perspectives Edition and in the Letters department of SRQ DAILY are those of the author(s) and do not imply endorsement by SRQ Media. Senior Editor Jacob Ogles edits the Saturday Perspective Edition, Letters and Guest Contributor columns.In the CocoTele department, SRQ DAILY is providing excerpts from news releases as a public service. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by SRQ DAILY. The views expressed by individuals are their own and their appearance in this section does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. For rates on SRQ DAILY banner advertising and sponsored content opportunities, please contact Ashley Ryan Cannon at 941-365-7702 x211 or via email

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