Page 25 - Stan Mcclain News Today

About 15 years ago, Marion County’s healthy economy was fueled by mostly service industry jobs. When the national recession struck in 2008, the local unemployment rate soared into double digits, and at one point was among the Top 5 highest in the nation. Marion County officials, including state Rep. Stan McClain, who was a Marion County commissioner back in 2008, said the board vowed to diversify the local workforce before the next national recession, or other crisis, came to town. Flash fo...

Republicans ban transgender athletes, send bill to DeSantis amid outcry from Democrats Ana Ceballos and Kir Wilson, The Miami Herald Apr. 29—TALLAHASSEE — The Republican majority in the Florida Legislature on Wednesday unexpectedly rammed a ban on transgender athletes in womens and girls sports through the legislative process amid an outcry from Democrats who called foul on the last-minute procedural moves used to get the issue passed in the final days of session. House and ...

Credit dcJohn / Flickr/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Nearly a third of Florida’s more than 6,000 Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten providers are on probation and only about 53% of kids who attended kindergarten in 2019 were deemed ready for it. Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, believes that has to change and her proposal on early learning and VPK is now on its way to the governors desk. Florida’s VPK program was created in the early aughts in recognition that students need to be prepa...

Burns, who has a lawn service, said he has three yards to cut over the weekend. "Im having fun," said the Dunnellon resident, who will turn 100 in January. But while Burns is excited about sitting on his riding lawn mower cutting grass, hes equally ecstatic about one other thing — meeting fellow veterans like himself.  Recently, Burns told Cyndie McQuaig he wanted to meet other World War II veterans. In World War II, Burns, who is Black, was in a segregated group of combat veterans. He sa...

Capitol Watch for Tuesday, March 16 Florida lawmakers began a 60-day session March 2. (Source: News Service of Florida) By ABC7 Staff | March 16, 2021 at 8:04 AM EDT - Updated March 16 at 8:04 AM TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WWSB) - The following bills are being considered by committees in the Florida Legislature March 16: UTILITY PREEMPTION BILL PROPOSED: The Senate Community Affairs Committee will consider a proposal (SB 1128), filed by Sen. Travis Hutson, R-St. Augustine, that would prevent lo...

Coffee is for closers. So is Sunburn, your morning rundown of Florida politics.

MIAMI HERALD An official analysis concludes the bill would impact the right to free speech, but within acceptable boundaries. Opponents say it is severely overreaching. After a long, hot summer of protests against police violence — following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced in September that he would try his hardest to prevent any kind of unrest, of the type seen in other parts of the country, from happening in Florida...

As the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic approaches, the adaptive nature of humans is becoming more clear. But while social distancing and face masks have become a societal norm, the effects of covered faces, especially from a young child’s perspective, must be considered.  With that in mind, the Early Learning Coalition of Marion County (ELCMC) on Thursday accepted 2,592 ClearMasks at coalition headquarters in Ocala. The ClearMasks allow children to see the faces of their caregivers,...