Gibson Guimesly, 13, practices his trombone at North Miami Middle School. Miami-Dade schools will get millions of tax dollars to improve student performance. (CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD/MCT)

Gypsy Gallardo, a St. Petersburg activist, analyzes whether Florida’s Race to the Top funding can improve the academic performance of Black public school students – and what we should do next.

BY GYPSY GALLARDO
SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA COURIER

In Aug. 24, we learned that Florida was selected as one of only nine second-round recipients of the Race to the Top education reform grant. That means our state will receive an estimated $700 million of the total $4.35 billion set aside from President Obama’s 2009 stimulus program for educational improvement.

Rep. Jennifer Carroll

Black press notified ahead of selection

COMPILED FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

In a personal phone call to Florida Courier Publisher Charles W. Cherry II just prior to the newspaper’s press time late Wednesday night, Rep. Jennifer Carroll, the lone Black Republican in the Florida Legislature, confirmed that she would be named GOP gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott’s running mate Thursday.

(OLIVIER DOULIERY/ABACA PRESS/MCT)

Should we really care what this man does?

Time to voice your opinion with millions on the line

Editor’s note: The Florida Courier staff has compiled information about the state’s public school systems, including contact information for school superintendents in the newspaper’s circulation area. Listed are school board chairs and the Blacks on the school boards. In addition, there are school board meeting dates and what a citizen needs to do to speak at a meeting.

Last month, the Florida Department of Education released a list of 22 schools that were put on its most critical, "intervene,’’ list. Up from 17 last year, the ranking includes schools that have received Ds or Fs in recent years.

Sharpton: ‘They have the mall, we have the message’

BY HAZEL TRICE EDNEY
NNPA NEWS SERVICE

Thousands of residents in D.C., Detroit and New Orleans participated last weekend in a "Reclaim the Dream" march.

DETROIT (AP) – More than 1,000 documents, including some dating back to the beginning of the Nation of Islam, were found in the attic of a home in Detroit, the city where the movement started 80 years ago, a lawyer said.

2 Floridians have made it their business to help Black children learn

Bearing Jackie Robinson’s burden:  Jackie Robinson was born in 1919 into a family of Black sharecroppers in Cairo, Ga., who moved to California, where they suffered through the racial discrimination of the times.

From the time he was a kid, Robinson was a strong Black male who didn’t "take no mess" from anyone. He was arrested as a teen and court-martialed as an Army officer for refusing to silently accept racist mistreatment. Here’s the Wikipedia story (yes, I checked the references):