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Today on Context Florida: School inequity, the working disabled, boss phishing and political posturing

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Today on Context Florida:

Julie Delegal discusses school inequity in Florida, which is getting serious scrutiny on several fronts. Now is the time to take a good look at whether the changes we’ve endured — mass privatization, real-dollar funding decreases, high-stakes testing, and loss of local school board authority — gets us closer to carrying out our constitutional duty to our children. Meanwhile, the Legislature has all but completed its power-grab from local school districts with a new, inter-district, open-enrollment scheme, and is sending public tax dollars to develop private real estate assets — in the form of charter schools.

Don’t look now, says Darryl Owens. A storm is coming. A perfect storm. And hundreds of thousands of capable wannabe workers could be lost. There is new research from the Florida Chamber Foundation revealing the shameful marginalization of employable Floridians with disabilities. The report found more than 700,000 of the 1.13 million Floridians between 16 and 65 with disabilities may yearn to work — yet find themselves sidelined. That should trouble all Floridians, warned Dr. Susanne Homant, president and CEO of The Able Trust, a Tallahassee-based public-private partnership that helps Floridians with disabilities secure worthy employment and partly funded the research.

Blake Dowling warns us of “boss phishing” and other new cyber scams. Boss phishing is when an organization receives an email pretending to be from the boss of a company asking accounting to send money ASAP to an account. All the training and information in the world may not help you when the threat comes knocking at your door. A lot of tech info references going to the cloud. It’s not just us law-abiding folks who are taking email and other business functions to the cloud. Criminals are flocking to the cloud as well.

Ed Moore asks if we have had enough yet. Are we tired of the political posturing, pettiness and pandering? More cannot help but think back to an earlier time, not far back in our history, but just far enough to where the public would have been aghast at what now is offered by those seeking to serve in the nation’s highest office. Specifically, he recalls the magic of John F. Kennedy and the words he uttered while running for president, imploring us to do more and be more. Kennedy touched the magic that lived within each of us.

Visit Context Florida to dig in.

Phil Ammann is a St. Petersburg-based journalist and blogger. With more than three decades of writing, editing and management experience, Phil produced material for both print and online, in addition to founding HRNewsDaily.com. His broad range includes covering news, local government and culture reviews for Patch.com, technical articles and profiles for BetterRVing Magazine and advice columns for a metaphysical website, among others. Phil has served as a contributor and production manager for SaintPetersBlog since 2013. He lives in St. Pete with his wife, visual artist Margaret Juul and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @PhilAmmann.

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