0 Comments | Tamworth Herald, The, Jul 29, 2010

AREAS of Tamworth which could be affected by a new high speed rail route are to be visited by a senior politician.

Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond MP, has promised to visit communities along the potential high speed rail route.

Tamworth MP Christopher Pincher asked Mr Hammond in the House of Commons about the impact the new High Speed 2 rail-link will have on the communities of Drayton Bassett and Hints.

Mr Pincher said: “I am very pleased Philip Hammond has agreed to visit.”

He added: ” I will be writing to him to invite him to visit Drayton Bassett, Hints and Weeford, on the edge of Tamworth, to see for himself what the impact of a 50 metre wide track will be on local homes, businesses and the environment.”

0 Comments | Florida Times Union, Jul 29, 2010 | by DEIRDRE CONNER

Overlooked and often invisible, troubled elementary-age girls are one group that anti-crime efforts rarely target.

But organizers of an innovative new program hope that will soon change, thanks to an initiative that could have up to $1 million in funding.

Starting in January, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency Center for Girls and Young Women will work with disruptive girls age 5 to 12 in two Duval County schools. The idea is to start early in an effort to keep girls out of the juvenile justice system.

The initiative, announced Wednesday, was awarded a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It will run over four years and provide $500,000, which must be matched dollar-for-dollar by the community. At the end of the four years, the program will continue.

The Weaver Family Foundation is matching the first year of funding. “For too long, young girls in trouble have been almost invisible,” Delores Barr Weaver, founder and trustee of the foundation, said in a statement.

Lawanda Ravoira, director of the center, said a study group, including Weaver and other local leaders, studied the issue of girls at risk since 2008. What they found was an overlooked but pressing trend of girls and young women getting in trouble.

“These things aren’t really talked about,” she said.

Last year, the group found, about 850 Jacksonville girls in grades kindergarten through fifth grade got in enough trouble to receive out-of-school suspensions. That amounts to nearly three in 100 elementary school girls. That rate increases exponentially among sixth- and seventh-grade girls. The findings took even the study group by surprise, Ravoira said.

The project, called “Girl Matters: It’s Elementary,” will begin in George Washington Carver Elementary and North Shore K-8. The schools were selected because they showed a need for early intervention among young girls. Leaders of the schools say

“I’m very happy because our girls will receive some immediate attention,” said Tarsha Mitchell, principal of North Shore K-8.

The grant’s funding partners toured Mitchell’s school and were able to see during their visit that most of the students in the administrator’s office for disciplinary reasons were girls, Mitchell said.

“They got to see first hand a great need for North Shore and the girls that we serve,” she said.

North Shore’s female students, Mitchell said, will now have access to more interventions, including tutoring, counseling and mentoring. There may even be group sessions for female students to talk and share experiences. Mitchell said the program will continue monitoring some students as they matriculate
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