Community and Empathy

Community

One of the most encouraging recent signs came in an unusual setting last week.

Elder David Woods, from the Church of God in Christ and now chairman of what is called the Community Empowerment Council, was at a workshop commissioners held to talk about the Downtown Redevelopment Agency, Port St. Joe Redevelopment Agency, whatever moniker is current.

Rev. Woods was in attendance to encourage the expansion of the boundaries of the redevelopment agency to include the neighborhood known as "North Port St. Joe," which has caused county commissioners heartburn in recent weeks.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not the boundaries should be expanded - it is long past time - or whether the redevelopment agency might take a moratorium on collecting its tax dollars from the city and county - a concept worth considering in difficult economic times in the public and private sectors - it was what Rev. Woods said and represented which provided, for lack of a better term, hope for the future of the county.

What Rev. Woods said, in part, is that his organization was devoted to ending the term "North Port St. Joe" saying that the entire community was Port St. Joe, that division of name a symbolic end to the divisions of a city.

That has long been advocated in this space.

Just as the railroad tracks, and even the beds that once contained them, represent a noticeable geographic dividing line, the adding of the word "north" to any discussion about the city is salt to a wound.

The other aspect of Rev. Woods' appearance and remarks that proved encouraging was the sense of leadership in the community the man conveys.

This is an individual who has brought together members of some 16 or so churches each summer for a two-week music workshop culminating in a recording session that is a pleasure to watch and seems to be a treasure to those who participate.

And in representing the Community Empowerment Council, which includes representatives of the ministerial association and community members, he represented leadership the minority community has too often lacked.

When he talked about some people who had struggled all their lives, people who had been left out and behind, who don't know the concept let alone the word "luxury," one had a sense of one who could speak across class lines, who could provide the kind of leadership that a simple drive along some thoroughfares in the community would demonstrate has been long lacking.

Woods could not have put it better when he talked about the mission of his group being to bring Port St. Joe together as a whole, that the only way forward at this juncture in history was by looking at the horizon as a whole, not a town divided by geography and a name.

Empathy

What the next two weeks must be for so many teachers in the public schools.

Starting this past Tuesday and continuing through next week, students around the county would be taking the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, Florida's weak stab at providing school accountability.

Teachers and schools will be graded by the state over the coming months using a formula that attempts to push everything there is to know about a school's performance through a meat grinder to arrive at a letter grade that allegedly indicates just how well everybody did teaching those 2,000 or so students.

The process is one that has come to consume so much of day-to-day learning at schools, particularly after Christmas break when the push to achieve on principals, teachers and students becomes so focused it is a wonder the local drugstores don't sell out of Tums.

Money, sanity and grades publicly displayed for all to see are on the line.

And on top of that, this year there are many teachers who are wondering if this FCAT season, this season of stress, might be the end of their teaching career in Gulf County.

Remember the days not so long ago when the threat was whether Florida colleges would be able to keep up the demand for new teachers in the state?

Those have been replaced with an atmosphere in which young teachers, or teachers new or fairly new to the field, are sweating every day until March 17 in Gulf County to know whether or not they will even have a job come the time in June that FCAT results are released.

And, if they don't, given the climate in public schools around the state, where do they go?

No matter how one feels about the school tax referendum there has to be at least a little bit of empathy for those who are undergoing the most difficult time in the school year at the most difficult time in their teaching careers.