MARTIN COUNTY — Dorothy McManus got her own personal chauffeured bus from Halpatiokee Regional Park to West Palm Beach to start her work week Monday.

The Stuart resident, who takes a train from West Palm Beach to work in Broward County, had the bus to herself on the inaugural 5:10 a.m. Palm Tran Commuter Express. McManus was the first rider on the area’s first mass transit service offered between Martin and Palm Beach counties on Monday.

Four people hopped on the bus for the service’s 6:10 a.m. departure to Palm Beach County.
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When students take the FCAT this month, the goal is to determine how much they’ve learned this year. But often the real predictor of students’ success occurs when the teacher first walks into the classroom.

National studies show high staff turnover — often filling schools with inexperienced teachers — can impact a school’s overall performance and can impair students’ learning. Researchers say across the country Title I schools, which get federal money because of a high number of low-income students, often have difficulty attracting highly qualified teachers.

This, they say, results in struggling students not getting the help they need and low grades for the schools. In Florida, the state grades schools based on Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores each year, which can translate into more money for the schools.
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Jeff and Kathleen Smith’s two sons were playing in the snow Sunday without a care in the world.
But things could have ended differently for the Smith family had fate not intervened before their flight to Canada last week.
“One of Paddon’s homework assignments was to complete a journal,” Jeff Smith said Sunday. “He drew a picture of a plane … and said ‘my plane crashed today. I wasn’t on it.’ ”
The Sewall’s Point couple and their sons Paddon, 7, and Tanner, 4, were supposed to be on Thursday’s doomed flight from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo, N.Y., but a series of events prevented the family from boarding the ill-fated plane.
The couple still have the family’s four boarding passes to Continental Flight 3407.
“It wasn’t something we did do, but rather, something that we didn’t do,” said Jeff Smith from his cottage in Canada’s Port Elgin, where the family was headed. (more…)