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BY SUSAN GODFREY
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Eighteen years ago, an angry black man jumped out of his car at a north St. Petersburg intersection and confronted a dozen white people holding signs.

The man was the brother of 18-year-old TyRon Lewis, who had been shot and killed by a white police officer three weeks earlier – an incident that triggered riots and an estimated $6 million in damages.

The people’s signs offered support for the police, and that outraged Roderick Pringles, 27.

“M—– f—–s, my little brother was killed and y’all are out here with this!” he screamed. “You know what it is like to see your little brother cut open for an autopsy? Do you?”

The next morning, a photo of the confrontation was on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times. It seemed to capture the raw, ragged edges of a city that had been torn asunder by race.

In the years that followed, the city and its elected officials have responded to the riots with studies, action plans and millions of dollars in spending in the city’s poor, predominantly black neighborhoods. Four mayors have made revitalization of those neighborhoods a top priority, and two have appointed black police chiefs.

And Pringles? He is just disappointed and still impassioned.

“Twenty years later, the same thing is still going on,” said Pringles. “Look at Ferguson (Mo.) and New York,” two of the places where unarmed blacks have died recently at the hands of white police.

In St. Petersburg, all the taxpayer money was wasted, he said. The white officer who fired the fatal shot is still a member of the Police Department. People’s attitudes are the same.

“Everything that didn’t burn down (in 1996) should have burned down,” he said. “So many kids are still lost out there.”

The only reminder of his brother’s short life is a gym at 1327 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. S that bears his name, said Pringles.

“He lost his life and that’s all he gets,” said Pringles. “If a hundred people go to that gym, only 15 to 20 even know what the real reason is for the gym.”

Although Pringles was 9 years older than Lewis, he said he and his half-brother were close. Pringles lived with his grandmother and Lewis lived with their mother, but the brothers still saw each other virtually every day.

Pringles lives now in a diverse neighborhood 4 miles from his boyhood home. He works for a company that sells residential and commercial appliances. He never married but dotes on his two teenage sons. He says his passion now is his work. A homebody, he likes to spend down time watching movies.

Pringles, who once considered a career in law enforcement, has had brushes with the law. But since a five-year stint in prison for a 1997 drug conviction, he said, he has turned his life around.

The events of 1996 are never far from his thoughts. He filled three scrapbooks with newspaper clippings about the fatal shooting, the funeral, the riots, the grand jury that cleared the white officer, and some of the changes that those events brought to St. Petersburg.

The half-brother he still grieves for was, by most accounts, a young man aimlessly drifting through life, a minor drug dealer who had an arrest record going back nine years. Lewis had been in foster care for a time, and he once served a year in a juvenile facility north of Ocala.

On Oct. 24, 1996, the day he died, he was driving without a license. There were crack cocaine rocks in his pocket and outstanding warrants for his arrest.

When Lewis and a companion, going east on 18th Avenue S, sped past police at an estimated 70 mph,  two officers – both white – followed him until he pulled up behind another car at a stoplight on 16th Street.

Precisely what happened next is unclear. The accounts offered by Lewis’ companion, the two officers and witnesses were widely divergent.

This much is indisputable: Lewis locked his car doors and refused to get out. One of the officers – James Knight, 35 – pulled out his gun and got in front of the car. When the car started rolling slowly forward, Knight fired three times through the windshield, killing Lewis.

Within minutes, an angry crowd gathered at the intersection. Rocks and bottles began flying, leading to two nights of riots that made St. Petersburg a national story.

Police administrators ruled that Officer Knight had violated policy by getting in front of Lewis’ car, and they suspended him without pay for 60 days. But a grand jury concluded that because Knight “was in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm,” he was justified in killing Lewis.

When the grand jury’s decision was announced three weeks after Lewis’ death, there were two more nights of rioting.

A year later, a Department of Homeland Security report by the U.S. Fire Administration estimated that more than 60 arson fires and looting caused about $6 million in damages.

It was after the second round of rioting, with feelings running high in both white and black St. Petersburg, that Pringles had the encounter with the white people carrying signs in support of the police.

Still reeling with grief and anger, Pringles screamed at them. One, a 59-year-old retiree, yelled back.

“We must support the police,” said Patricia Barber. “They’re trying to do their job. He (Lewis) was a criminal.”

“My brother is in the ground and y’all are talking about support the police,” yelled Pringles. “They executed my motherf—— brother. My baby brother. I hope they come this way next. I hope they come north.”

Eighteen years later, Officer Knight is still on the police force. His two-month suspension was eventually rescinded after an arbitrator exonerated him, and state and federal investigators cleared him of wrongdoing. For years, he was not allowed to patrol in the district that includes most of the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods.

In April 2013, Knight was arrested on a misdemeanor drunken driving charge. He now is on what police spokesman Mike Puetz calls “inside duty” at the department, which is “common protocol” during an internal investigation. Puetz said Knight did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.

Sandra Minor, the other officer in the incident, is still on the force, too. Through Puetz, she declined to comment.

Erik Neikens, 48, was one of the white people holding signs in support of the police. He said he was there to defend police and the job that they do.

“Race relations just keep going down and down because that’s how the media portrayed it,” said Neikens, who moved to North Carolina eight years ago. “I lived there for 40 years and I’ve seen it.”

The neighborhoods where Lewis was raised and killed are still marked by unemployment, poverty, crime and distrust of police. But millions of public and private dollars have been invested there.

In the last 15 years, the Midtown area has gotten a public library, a post office, a chain grocery store and a federal credit union. With the help of taxpayer dollars, the iconic Manhattan Casino has reopened, the long-shuttered Mercy Hospital has been expanded into a public health center, an old train station has become an arts facility, and a historic school building has become a Head Start center. The Jordan Park public housing project was renovated, a nine-building Job Corps training facility was built, and St. Petersburg College is quadrupling the size of its campus there.

In 2013, the city staff estimated that major public and private investment in Midtown between 1999 and 2012 totaled $207 million.

Pringles, who scoffs at the impact of those expenditures, said he has two regrets about those days 18 years ago.

He regrets that he screamed at the white woman in the photograph. She was the only one of the sign-carrying people to stand up to him, he said, and he was consumed by anger and grief.

He also regrets ignoring a funny feeling he had while driving south on Interstate 275 about the time his half-brother was killed.

“Something told me to get off I-275 on Ninth Street S, which would have brought me up to 18th Avenue where Ron was, but I second-guessed myself and turned (off) on 28th Street instead,” he said.

“I could have told him to get out of the car or gotten in front of the cop. Either way Ron wouldn’t be dead.”

Tampa Bay Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which includes information from Times files.

BY SUSAN GODFREY
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – She dumps the half dozen newspapers on her desk that she read over the weekend. Joshing friends call her a bag lady, she says, because she is always carrying around a purse, a lunch sack and a work bag with papers spilling out.

She usually works with her back to the door so she can signal – without being impolite – that she doesn’t want to be distracted, and with only a half hour before the important daily meeting she reads another newspaper – the day’s Tampa Bay Times.

Sherri Day, 38, a Times editorial writer, knows what is happening around the area and the country. She has to. She is a voice for a newspaper that is the largest daily in Florida and winner of 10 Pulitzer Prizes. Her job is to influence decision makers and public opinion.

“The bottom line is that we’re trying to influence people, and you have to decide who you’re writing to,” said Day.

At precisely 9:30 a.m. the editorial board members shuffle into a room overlooking the atrium at the Times building at 490 First Ave. S and take seats around a big table.

They are all veterans. Tim Nickens, the editor of editorials, covered state government and politics for the Times and Miami Herald. His deputy, Joni James, another former state capital veteran, once worked for the Herald and Wall Street Journal. Columnist Daniel Ruth came from the Tampa Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. Jim Verhulst, editor of the Sunday “Perspective” section, has held key jobs at the paper since arriving from the Concord (N.H.) Monitor in 1987.

In 2013, Nickens and Ruth won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials that helped reverse the county’s decision to end fluoridation of drinking water.

During the meeting, the editorial board kicks around the news of the day and week and decides what to editorialize on. Everyone gets a chance to say what they think is significant. Topics range from nuclear power plants to government officials.

The relaxed meeting has lots of reflection, lots of laughter. Later in the day, the board sometimes meets with politicians, government officials and business leaders.

“I expect everyone to be prepared for the (daily) meeting,” said Nickens, “by reading the local morning papers and the national news in the Washington Post and New York Times.”

After the board meeting, Day returns to her office and catches up on emails and phone messages while she waits to find out what Nickens wants her to write about for the day. Day said that she and Nickens discuss the direction of the editorial and what explicitly needs to be conveyed before she begins to write.

“I usually like to have a call to action,” said Nickens.

Day’s call to action on this day was to the Tallahassee Police Department and Florida State University’s new president, John Thrasher, concerning the possible criminal behavior of some FSU football players. She begins by researching what the board has written on the issue in the past to ensure that its voice is consistent.

Within an hour, Day has most of her editorial finished. She makes her job look easy. Nickens will edit the editorial and decide what day it will run.

Unlike most writers at the paper, Day writes her editorial in longhand before she types one word on her computer. “There is something about pushing a pen on paper that helps my brain work in a way that staring at a blank computer screen doesn’t,” she said. “The physical act of writing longhand makes me do the work. It’s old school. But it’s my process, and it works for me.”

She said she loves learning and writing about new things every day and has found her niche in public health, schools in Hillsborough County and the Department of Children and Families.

These are tough times for metropolitan newspapers like the Times. Day has survived several rounds of layoffs at the paper and, like the rest of the newsroom staff, has taken three 5 percent pay cuts.

She acknowledges that the paper is getting smaller and there is more work for everyone, but says it’s a chance to do things differently.

“Sometimes I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” said Day.  “Even when it’s hard, I’m getting paid to learn something new.”

She grew up in Tifton, a small town (population 16,000) in south Georgia where, she once wrote, “black folks lived on one side of town and whites lived on the other.”

She got a bachelor’s degree from Clark Atlanta University and a master’s from the University of California at Berkeley. For a time, she toyed with thoughts of a career in broadcast news. She landed an internship at the New York Times and stayed there nearly four years, working on the breaking news team and later the business news staff.

She was newly married – to a young man who grew up down the street in Tifton – when she found herself in the middle of one of the biggest stories in American history.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Day, a reporter on the Times breaking news staff, was sent to the scene at the World Trade Center.  As she stood there less than a block away, staring and scribbling notes, the first tower came crashing down.

Day ran for her life from a billowing gray cloud hurtling down the street.

In a highly personal account she wrote for the Tampa Bay Times 10 years later, Day described how she dashed into a sporting goods store and sat huddled with “a collection of strangers,”  watching the wounded come in and police and emergency personnel come and go.

Emerging some time later, Day saw first-hand the damage and destruction of the terrorist attacks. It profoundly changed her.

On the subway one day, she wrote, she saw two Middle Eastern men in conversation and found herself wondering “if they were going to ‘get us.’” Then she caught herself.

“I was ashamed,” she wrote. “How could I, a black woman from rural Georgia, who knew well what it was to be stereotyped because of race, gender and cultural background, allow myself to have such thoughts?”

Day wrote that she decided to live with more purpose and become “a little less brave.” And three years later, she and her husband left New York for Tampa Bay, where she could work for the Times and they would be comfortable raising a family a few hours’ drive from their parents in Tifton.

Day and her husband, a physical therapist, built a house in a demographically diverse neighborhood in north Tampa and she worked several posts at the paper – community news reporter, metropolitan religion reporter, Brandon bureau chief, assistant metro editor in Tampa. She moved to the editorial board in 2013.

Now she balances a daunting schedule as a mother of three small children, church member and voice of the Tampa Bay Times.

BY SALEM SOLOMON
NNB Student Reporter

On Feb. 7, 2014, Andrew Joseph III was one of hundreds of teenagers hanging out with friends at the Florida State Fair. They had gotten free tickets from their school district and were taking advantage of the night out.

As the night wore on, things became rowdy. To restore order, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies responded to what they called a “giant stampede” and ejected 99 young people. One of them was Joseph, 14, who was struck and killed by a car while attempting to run across Interstate 4 in the dark.

For his father, Andrew Joseph Jr., it was both a tragedy and another example of mistreatment of young black men by law enforcement.

“He was officially taken in a police car off of the fairgrounds and simply abandoned,” Joseph Jr. said during an Oct. 9 town hall meeting at the University of South Florida in Tampa. “Why are our children being illegally detained at this fair? Why are they being illegally transported in official police vehicles without notification to anybody? … In the state of Florida, you can’t do that to a dog.”

Across the nation, protesters are voicing anger at a series of deaths of unarmed black males at the hands of police. Although Tampa Bay has not been the center of any of the latest protests, police and community activists agree that the potential exists for an eruption of racial anger.

A divide of mistrust between the police departments of both Tampa and St. Petersburg and the black communities they serve has festered for decades. Issues like racial profiling by police, excessive use of force and harassment are brought up regularly by residents of both cities.

In years past, both cities have had racially fueled violence growing out of incidents involving police.

In St. Petersburg, riots exploded in 1996 following the shooting death of 18-year-old TyRon Lewis and the subsequent decision of a grand jury not to indict the white police officer who shot him. After the shooting and again after the grand jury’s decision three weeks later, rioting, looting and arson did an estimated $6 million in damage.

In Tampa, there were three nights of riots in 1987 after a 23-year-old, mentally disabled black man named Melvin Hair died in a police choke hold. In 1967, an unarmed, 19-year-old black man named Martin Chambers was shot in the back and killed by Tampa police chasing three robbery suspects. It sparked three nights of rioting.

Today, officials in both cities hope to avoid a repeat of that history.

On Dec. 5, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman promised reforms to address racial unrest sweeping the nation. Along with the city’s deputy mayor, Kanika Tomalin, and Nikki Capehart, its director of urban affairs, he announced a series of actions to celebrate diversity and promote racial sensitivity in city government.

“While we recognize that unrest is a part of St. Petersburg’s history, we also recognize that today is a new day. This is a new city,” Kriseman said. “After the grand jury decision in Ferguson, several residents assembled peaceably downtown in protest, and our police officers demonstrated professionalism and respect. This was a welcome and stark contrast to the rioting and disturbances we saw on the news.”

Reforms include a “park, walk and talk” initiative by the city’s new police chief, Tony Holloway. All 550 officers in the Police Department are required to spend one hour per week walking around neighborhoods and chatting with people there.

The city plans to hold community conversations about diversity early in 2015 and follow-up conversations throughout the year as part of an outreach.

Tampa is also responding to the national issues. During the meeting on Oct. 9, police Chief Jane Castor told the audience at USF that the Tampa Police Department is taking bids to buy body cameras for its officers to wear at all times while on patrol. The department will begin by putting 20 cameras in each of the three districts of the city.

“We would never, as everyone saw in St. Louis instance, in Ferguson, bring armored vehicles out in those circumstances,” she said.

Critics, however, say that reforms addressing racial unrest or plans to cut crime rates in communities are just a continuation of pulling political tricks from old, tired books. Some even argue that the appointment of certain city officials will not change circumstances on the ground.

One of the strongest voices was Tampa Bay Times opinion columnist Bill Maxwell. He wrote that the root causes of problems lie in “high unemployment, high crime, low graduation rates, a high number of single-parent homes, a high number of out-of-wedlock births and a disproportionately high number of incarcerated males, especially the young.”

Maxwell, a veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, also suggested that Tomalin and Gaskin-Capehart – both born and reared in St. Petersburg – might not be the right fit for the difficult job since the problems in Midtown are “generational and systematic.” Change, he wrote, might need to come from residents themselves, not from city officials.

Gaskin-Capehart responds that it’s not about talking the talk but walking the walk.

In a presentation to a journalism class at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, she said that “you can be tough in your words but you also have to be, in your actions, approachable enough to address the issue … I have to get in there and roll up my sleeves, and that’s not what I see enough of from his (Maxwell’s) generation.”

BY SALEM SOLOMON
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – They grew up in the same St. Petersburg household, but at first glance sisters Lynae and Ramona Brayboy couldn’t be more different.

Lynae, 33, pursued a career in medicine and couldn’t wait to get away from a place she considered limiting in many ways. “It would have been a lot harder for me to become what I am today staying in St. Petersburg,” she said.

Lynae attended a local religious school, Keswick Christian High School, where she remembers encounters that were “very racist, mean and rude.” Eventually, she came to view education as her way out. Opportunities were scarce and “a lot of us who were interested in science, there wasn’t much for us in St. Petersburg,” she said.

This go-getter attitude would take her to college at Florida A&M University to earn a bachelor’s degree in biology in 2002 and then to Temple University, where she earned a degree as a doctor of medicine in 2007.

Ramona, 27, took a different path. She graduated with honors from St. Petersburg Catholic and then earned a bachelor’s degree in international business from Florida International University.

However, she chose to stay in her hometown. She married her teenage crush, Damon Reio, and they work side by side – she in a beauty salon, he in a fitness center – in a building her parents own on St. Petersburg’s historic 22nd Street S. Her clients come from all over town.

“People like to leave and they get their claim to fame once they got out of St. Pete,” she said. “But I think there is anew movement of people here that embraces St. Pete as paradise and want to make it great.”

Despite their differences, the Brayboy sisters share the determination and work ethic of two women who figured prominently in their early years.

It was their mother, Carolyn Brayboy, who demanded that her daughters succeed in school and aim high in their ambitions. And it was their beloved grandmother, Mary Brayboy Jones, who opened her home to them and nurtured them through childhood.

Carolyn, the daughter of sharecroppers who never graduated from high school, wanted a better life for her children. She came to St. Petersburg when she was in sixth grade because at the age of 11 or 12, she said, her family’s landowner asked her mother, “Isn’t it time to take that girl out of school so she can work in the fields?”

Her mother decided to come to Florida to visit an uncle during Christmas and stayed.

One of the first African-American students to attend St. Petersburg Junior College, Carolyn earned a bachelor’s degree and MBA and worked for 39 years at IBM.

Now, in her “retirement,” she and her husband are spending $800,000 to buy and restore old buildings along 22nd Street S, called “The Deuces” when it was the main street of the black community in the days of segregation. It is a daunting task.

The matriarch of the family and the girls’ grandmother, the late Mary Brayboy Jones, was a trailblazer in her own right. She was a registered nurse for 42 years who worked at Mercy Hospital on 22nd Street S during the segregation era. She later worked at Mound Park Hospital (now Bayfront Health) and Eckerd College post-segregation.

“During Lynae’s childhood in the medical clinic,” began her father, Elihu Brayboy. “Lynae spent a lot of time playing nurse and being around the doctors,” Carolyn added, finishing his sentence. They said that Lynae wanted to be a doctor when she was 8.

The grandparents played an integral role in the children’s lives. “[Jones] also helped us raising Lynae and Ramona,” said Carolyn. “Here we are newlyweds; we didn’t know how to raise children. My mother did the laundry and his mother did the cooking. They told us that ‘all you had to do is work.’”

Originally from the small town of Bertrandville, La., Jones also catered meals for the African-American community. “I was the only child but she cooked like she was cooking for 10 people,” said Elihu Brayboy.

“Her willingness to share the food is kind of how it started, word of mouth. People would come and ask, ‘Ms. Jones, can you do me a Christmas cake?’ or ‘Would you do our Thanksgiving dinner?’ That’s how her intimate friends around the city asked.”

Over time, Jones began to cater to musicians who came to town because of a family friend who was a promoter.  She catered for the O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, Earth Wind and Fire, and others, the Brayboys said. “But these were the names that were consistent repeats.”

Elihu and Carolyn Brayboy recently opened Chief’s Creole Café at 903 22nd St. S, where they continue Jones’ tradition of hard work and Southern cooking.

Although the sisters cherish their family memories, St. Petersburg means very different things to them.

Despite her unhappy memories as a schoolgirl in St. Petersburg, Lynae – the doctor – said there were some positive aspects. “There was a program that I liked in St. Pete, a program called the McKnight program. It was one way I had access to black culture. It was a program for middle and high schoolers, and being in that program allowed me to meet black kids who are also academically strong,” she said.

Her academic achievements enabled her to travel the world. She went to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for a Spanish language immersion program and a year-long biomedical research at the University of Mali in West Africa on a Fulbright scholarship where she made use of the French she learned in high school.

In Mali, she met a man whom she would later marry and who would become the father of her daughter. Her husband “came to the States and didn’t like the culture and so they divorced,” said Carolyn. This meant that she had to build her career as a single mother.

Lynae currently works as a physician in Providence, R.I., in the Division of Reproduction and Infertility at Women & Infants Hospital. She is a three-year fellow there and has been awarded a Physician Scientist Award to participate in the Reproductive Scientist Development Program, a national career development program for reproductive physician-scientists based in academic institutions. She began the program in July.

Ramona, on the other hand, sees a bright future for herself and her family in St. Petersburg.

“It’s nothing like it was when I was growing up so; it’s a new day and I represent the beauty of this age,” she said.

Fresh out of college, she said, finding a job was almost impossible. Her solution was to pursue her passion for fashion and take training at Aveda Institute, a beauty school with branches across the nation including one in St. Petersburg.

Today, she tries to break the lingering effects of segregation by serving a diverse group of customers. “The majority, say 80 percent, of my clientele is Caucasian. I do have great love for all hair textures, especially, of course, mine,” she said.

Her husband, Damon Reio, shares the sentiment. “What we do is not specific to the African community; it is about broadening out and giving everyone an opportunity to see what 22nd Street is all about,” he said.

Reio is a grandson of Omali Yeshitela, the founder of the Uhuru Movement, an organization based in St. Petersburg that pushes for an end to what it calls the oppression of African people.

The fitness center and beauty salon strive to have a diverse clientele. This is something that their grandmother instilled as a family value.

“People would come by and ask what medication to take or ask her to check their blood pressure; she was the medical liaison,” Lynae said. “My grandmother helped a lot of women in St. Petersburg. I only found out at her funeral that she used to deliver babies for couples who couldn’t afford the hospital, and I never knew that.”

Jones died on Sept. 13, 2005. “It’s sad that she is not here to see that I finally got to where I am,” said Lynae. “I gave up being close with her, to be able to do all of this.”

It has been 10 ten years since their grandmother’s passing. But the journey for the Brayboy daughters and the rest of the family has come full circle.

When Jones died, they couldn’t fly to Louisiana because of Hurricane Katrina. However, on Dec. 20 the family held a formal memorial for Jones in Louisiana to celebrate the life and legacy of their beloved matriarch.

BY SALEM SOLOMON
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Seated in her bright office with sunshine streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, Vicki Krueger stared at two computer monitors.

On one, a live webinar being filmed next door showed the image of a reporter and a host talking about “Interviewing: The Art of the Two-Way Conversation.” Questions from an online audience around the world popped up second by second.

On the other, Krueger, 53, was receiving a flurry of emails about an afternoon meeting with the marketing department of her employer, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. The Poynter is a nonprofit school for journalism.

“I have 4,000 unread emails in my inbox. There’s a lot of triage every day,” she said. On a giant white board she managed a complex, color-coded schedule for Poynter classes the rest of the year.

It was a busy day. Her head was still buzzing from a morning meeting with the institute’s board of trustees.

“They are the Poynter’s governing board; they come quarterly and they get updates on a bunch of different stuff,” she said. “I usually have two to five minutes on a couple of initiatives that we’re doing at NewsU.”

NewsU is an online learning platform for professional journalists, educators and those who are interested in the craft of journalism. Krueger said that her role is to be the digital bridge and help “traditional journalists, mainstream media or legacy media” understand the world of digital media.

This, said Krueger, is vitally important as journalism migrates online and journalists are asked to master a wide variety of tasks including social media, multimedia and other skills. Journalists today can’t afford to define themselves only as scribes or broadcasters.

“You just don’t know what the world will look like in 10 or 20 years, so just do what’s interesting and turn it into something,” she said.  “I think the best journalists are lifelong learners.”

NewsU helps journalists prepare for the future in a shifting environment. Founded by Howard Finberg in 2005, NewsU now offers 300 courses on everything from old-fashioned reporting to newfangled multimedia techniques. It boasts more than 250,000 registered users, including about 15 percent from outside North America.

“We want to leverage the power of the Internet so that people can have access on-demand, and we know that people are used to learning online so we want to make it as available as possible,” Krueger said. “One of the important roles that we play with e-learning is to be a resource or a library so that they can come back and have access.”

Krueger earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University. Early in her career, she never imagined a job like hers would exist.

She moved to Florida in 1987-1988 from Indiana with her husband, Curtis. They met at the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, where she was a copy editor and he was a reporter. She says that Curtis knew one of the first things he needed to know is that copy editors are serious about spelling people’s names right.

She joked that if “you misspell my name, I will break your leg.” Curtis overheard and asked, “So, you’d break my leg, huh?”

“So, that’s how we met – by threatening to break his leg,” she said. They have been together since 1988. “We were one of five couples to meet and marry from that newsroom,” she said.

She worked for five years on the copy desk at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). He still works there, covering Pinellas County courts.

Following maternity leave, she asked Poynter if there was something she could offer because of her background in copy editing and love of working in a newsroom. Krueger’s work at Poynter started with part-time copy editing.

She edited books between 1993 to 2004, including memoirs and spirituality books. As her two sons grew older, she said, her work “evolved with their little lives.” Pictures of Jimmy, 21, and Jackson, 19, are displayed in a corner of her office.

Soon enough, she would start working through Poynter’s high school program, which brought in working journalists as consultants to area high school newspapers.

“There was a makeup composition room down at Poynter and the kids could come and print out their stories, and they could paste everything up and then they would take it and print it,” she said. “Poynter has had a long history in investing in the scholastic press.”

Krueger understands the importance of building relationships in a learning environment and that translates to her online interaction. She acknowledges that transforming from in-person teaching to an online platform is a challenge.

She said that in itself is a process and educators have to think about how to make it “relevant, practical and engaging online because if it’s boring, people will tune out.” Making it relevant comes naturally for Krueger, a gregarious extrovert with a boisterous laugh that fills a room.

Dr. Casey Frechette, assistant professor in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg and an adjunct teacher at the Poynter Institute, worked with Krueger for about 10 years before moving to USFSP full time. He said that “in many ways, Vicki is the ideal colleague. She’s generous in sharing her knowledge, but she’s always eager to learn more.”

Parallel to her personal experience, the Poynter.org website evolved over time. More specifically, the turning point for the institute’s online learning offerings came after Sept. 11.

The site gained relevance and a wider audience because the institute “realized what it had and being able to help journalists around the country and around the world do better journalism,” she said.

Telling stories about the events during the terror attacks that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and getting the coverage of its aftermath in these communities right was important, she said. “I think, at that point, Poynter realized that it had a website that can reach journalists,” she said. The website started gaining traction as a resource for journalists.

The Poynter Institute was founded as the Modern Media Institute in 1975 by Nelson Poynter, the principal owner of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). Poynter wanted to ensure that his beloved newspaper would remain private, independent and locally owned when he died, so in his will he stipulated that the majority of his stock in the paper would pass to the institute.

Six years after Poynter died in 1978, the institute was renamed in his honor, and in 1985 it moved into a gleaming new building at 801 Third St. S.

For years, the institute thrived, its finances buoyed by multimillion-dollar annual dividends from the Times. In the last decade, however, the Great Recession, the digital age, and changes in the habits of readers and advertisers have devastated metropolitan newspapers like the Times.

In recent years, the Times has dramatically slashed its staff, sold several pieces of property and two affiliated publications, given up the naming rights to the ice hockey and entertainment arena in Tampa, and three times cut employees’ pay.

The newspaper is no longer a viable source of support for Poynter, which in response has created a fund-raising arm, shaken up its teaching program and entered a non-binding agreement to sell property next to its building to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg for $6.2 million.

In November, Poynter announced that it lost $3.5 million in 2013 and expects to have another loss at the end of 2014. Poynter lost $1.7 million in 2012 and $3.8 million in 2011, according to public documents.

Despite the grim numbers, e-learning at Poynter is thriving.  Finberg said the future of NewsU “is going to be brighter than it is today. And with new technologies, with new methods, new kind of classes, I think that you’ll see that it will continue to grow.”

Krueger is at the forefront of this growth.  NewsU must strive to meet users’ needs while staying affordable.

“That’s why we try to keep our prices low. We need to make the money to keep the lights on, but we don’t want to price it so much so people can’t access it,” she said.

Some of the webinars and self-directed courses, for instance, are free courses while others have price tags ranging from as low as $25 per course or module to over $500. The courses span from one hour to weeks-long skills training seminars. Users have to sign up for an account, but that means they will have ample access to materials produced by respected journalists.

Krueger says beyond understanding what the audience wants through e-learning, NewsU will always have content “that will be cutting edge, that will not necessarily drive much revenue” but will always keep Poynter true to its mission: A leader in journalism training.

Information from jimromenesko.com, the Tampa Bay Times and the Tampa Tribune was used in this report.

BY JULIET MORALES
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – One is a visual artist who has been drawing since he was a toddler decorating the walls of his family home.

The other is a rapper who finds inspiration at every turn, jotting down ideas and lines on an ever-present notepad.

Will Kuncz and Hagan Lee are not exactly kindred spirits, but both were featured in November at an event called “Bridging the Gap” at Sly Bar at 2061 Central Ave. in St. Petersburg’s Midtown district.

The event is the brainchild of Tiffany Taylor, 26, an event planner who works to bring together visual and performance artists from both sides of the Howard Frankland Bridge.

“I’ve never seen someone try to unite artists from different areas together,” she said. “I think it’s very important in St. Pete because we try to keep everything local, we try to keep artists working together.”

Taylor calls her endeavor Rose Gold Creations, so named because “my grandmother’s favorite flowers were roses and I happen to love rose gold.”

At first, Rose Gold Creations was a brand name to showcase her photography and other creative projects.

“It has turned into a bigger picture than just that,” she said. “Midtown is an up and coming area in St. Pete, and I really wanted to show people a new area of St. Pete that is blossoming.”

Kuncz, 30, a visual artist from Largo who now lives in St. Petersburg, said his fascination with art started early.

“My mom used to let me draw on the walls in the house when I was a toddler so I guess I was kind of born into it,” he said. “I was pretty introverted as a kid so I’d spent a lot of time drawing. I started to take it seriously, though, when I was in my early 20s as something I’d like to pursue as something more than a hobby.”

Kuncz, who said he gets his inspiration to create art from people, uses marker, ink pen and acrylic on everything from wood fencing to aluminum foil.

“Finding a style is hard and easy at the same time,” he said. “You start by battling yourself and experimenting with a set goal of trying to find a new way of doing things.

“Once you stop pressuring yourself and start to let go, I found that it just started to flow.”

Lee, 31, is part of a rap group called Mickey Spixx. He said writing is something he feels he can do anywhere, but the best place to write is in the studio, where he can bounce ideas off people.

“It’s always different; sometimes I’ll be at the house with my headphones in. Sometimes I’ll be at work,” he said.

“Sometimes the moment will strike (and) I’ll get certain lines or ideas and concepts and I’ll write those down. There’s just a bunch of sporadic things I have on my notepad.”

If you go
The next “Bridging the Gap” will be at Sly Bar, 2061 Central Ave., on Jan. 26. It will feature hip-hop artists, spoken-word performers, jewelry artisans, painters and live graffiti art.

BY CHANEL WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

TAMPA – Behind a stack of newspapers piled high on the desk is a petite woman gazing at a computer screen. Her long, dark-brown hair is placed behind her ear so she can hear news reports from Bay News 9 on her small TV. The only other sound in the room is the clicking of the keyboard as she types.

“It’s my responsibility to ensure that the community is educated on the congresswoman’s agenda and policies,” said Marcia Mejia, 34, the press secretary for Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat who represents Florida’s 14th Congressional District.

The district covers a swath of Hillsborough County from Tampa’s Town ‘n’ Country neighborhood to Sun City Center plus the southeastern portion of St. Petersburg. Castor, first elected in 2006, is serving her fifth term. She is the first woman to represent Hillsborough and Pinellas in Congress.

It’s a slow day at the office for Mejia because of the Thanksgiving holidays. She just finished organizing a press conference for the opening of a business center for female entrepreneurs that is named for Helen Gordon Davis, who served nearly two decades in the Florida Legislature.

Now she is finalizing details for Castor’s role in honoring John Wilson, who is retiring after 50 years in TV broadcasting, the last 33 in Tampa Bay. The congresswoman will be one of the bay area leaders to appear in a video tribute to Wilson on Fox 13 News, and she will enter a tribute to Wilson in the Congressional Record.

Mejia plays a leading role in managing Castor’s social media. She uploads articles and invitations to community events and maintains engagements among constituents. It is her responsibility to monitor newspapers for coverage of the congresswoman and issues she supports, such as immigration reform.

Mejia grew up in Tampa but moved to Orlando for college. While finishing bachelor’s degrees in both political science and journalism at the University of Central Florida, she began a countrywide job hunt.

“I applied everywhere,” she said. “I was ready to move wherever I was offered a job.”

The hundreds of applications led to an offer to become a reporter for a small Kansas newspaper, the Dodge City Daily Globe. But the job was put on hold because her father was terminally ill. She moved back to Tampa to help take care of him and became a clerk in the Hillsborough County supervisor of elections office.

It would be the first in a series of positions that Mejia would hold in government communications.

“It was supposed to be temporary; I always thought I would return to journalism,” Mejia said.

After a year, Mejia became a public information officer at Tampa International Airport. She was there for only a few months before becoming a public information representative for Hillsborough County in 2003.

In three years, she was promoted to community relations coordinator. Mejia was responsible for writing speeches for elected officials, working with county departments to disseminate positive information via media, and coordinating large-scale events such as ground-breaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

In 2010, Mejia joined the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) as a public information officer, a positive she held for three years before deciding to move on.

“I was a small fish in a big pond at HART,” she said. “There were no advancements because of the poor economy at the time, and I needed something new.”

In 2013, the press secretary position for Castor came open. Mejia saw the opportunity as perfect timing.

“I had seen her (Castor) around at different community events, so it helped when I applied because I was a familiar face,” she said. Mejia was hired in January 2013.
“She is great and we are blessed to have her,” said Chloe Coney, Castor’s district director.

Mejia’s Colombian heritage is beneficial at the office because she is able to translate for non-English constituents who seek assistance. But Mejia is not the only staff member fluent in Spanish. Tanya Fernandez and Terry Sanchez assist with constituents facing immigrations issues.

Castor’s district office also features Thomas Gay, who assists with veterans; Vito Sheeley, the staff outreach director; staff assistant Wendy Hamilton; and deputy district director Julie Fitzpatrick.

Mejia was four months pregnant when she began working at the congresswoman’s district office. “It’s a challenge being a new mom, but having my husband work from home makes it much easier for me,” Mejia said.

Mejia’s hours extend beyond 9 to 5. When she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she does is check the newspapers to see if there is any coverage of the congresswoman.

“I’m coming up on my two-year anniversary,” she said. “Working here is my dream job.”

BY CHANEL WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – For Antwaun Wells, life is all about investing in the community and serving others.

“My personal take on your life is, if you’re not doing anything good for yourself or anybody else, then you are good for nothing,” Wells said. “I want to be known as someone who is good for something.”

In a typical week, the 39-year-old St. Petersburg native is good for a lot.

On weekdays, he’s up at 6 a.m. and off to his job as assistant superintendent for LEMA Construction, which is building a three-story Midtown Center for St. Petersburg College at 1300 22nd St. S. The 45,000-square-foot building, three blocks south of SPC’s current quarters, is scheduled for completion in the spring.

Since 2002, Wells has been project manager for Wells Builder LLC. He and his brother Kevin, the company’s owner, have done restoration projects in Midtown – including Gallerie 909 and Chief’s Creole Café – and building projects and restoration jobs elsewhere in the county.

Earlier this year, Wells joined Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas County as supervisor of its new Mercy-Midtown Neighborhood Preservation Partnership. The partnership works with homeowners who live in the 22nd Street S corridor with home repairs, energy efficiency upgrades and landscaping.

On weekends and sometimes in the evenings, Wells can be found at the Esquire Barber Shop in Midtown, where he is a master barber.

And on Sundays, he helps run the Deuces Live Sunday Market, which he serves as treasurer, then goes down the block about 5 p.m. for spoken-word performances at Gallerie 909.

“The Deuces” is the nickname for 22nd Street S, which was the main street for St. Petersburg’s black community during the days of segregation and discrimination from the 1920s until the late 1960s.

When he’s not tied up in his everyday commitments, Wells mentors and tutors students. He said he got the idea from his own former mentor, retired teacher Jim Oliver, who took note of how Wells talks to youngsters and encourage them to do well in school while cutting their hair.

Two years ago, Wells said, he got certified to mentor students at schools in the local area.  He started at Melrose Elementary in 2012 and expanded to John Hopkins Middle, and Lakewood and Gibbs high schools.

After Wells spoke at Gibbs’ Great American Teach-In – an annual event that brings in professionals to talk about their jobs – the school’s mentor adviser, Aby Figueroa, asked him to come more regularly.

“The way he treats the kids and how they respond back to him is amazing,” Figueroa said. “He is a good example for them.”

Wells is mentoring two 15-year-old students at Gibbs – Wayne Atkins and Bill Baptiste. He meets with them for an hour each Monday to talk about building self-confidence and managing their time.

“I learned a lot from our session,” Bill said after a recent meeting with Wells. “Staying busy means you’re never bored.” Since he began his meetings with Wells, he said, he has joined the baseball team and ROTC at Gibbs and a church band.

“He is very nice and helpful. He has taught me how to use my time and say no to people,” said Wayne, who at Wells’ encouragement has become a volunteer at the Campbell Park Recreation Center.

Wells said he tries to seize any opportunity to motivate children to aim high in their lives. On a recent day at the St. Petersburg College construction site, he chatted with some of the students who were walking home from school. He engaged them in small talk and asked what they had learned in class.

“These kids sometimes just need someone to talk to as well as listen, and if I can I want to be that person,” Wells said.

Since his own preteen years, Wells said, he has been a self-motivated entrepreneur. He would go through his neighborhood and wash people’s cars. Since he didn’t have the supplies at home, his neighbors trusted him to drive their cars to the car wash down the street and back.

With persistence, his business began to flourish. But that wasn’t enough for the ambitious youngster. To help his dad save money on the rising price of a haircuts, Wells said, he began to practice cutting his little brother’s hair. It was only a matter of time before Wells had a line of friends and neighbors waiting outside on the porch to get haircuts.

While running his side business, Wells said, he was a member of the Gibbs High football and track teams.

Academics were always a top priority, he said, and learning came easily for him. He would have his homework done before school let out, and he was an honor roll student and helped tutor peers.

During summer vacations, Wells said, he would take free classes at Florida State University while visiting his aunt in Tallahassee. Back home, he took similar courses at Eckerd College.

After graduating from Gibbs, he studied electronic engineering at DeVry University in Atlanta, then returned home in 2007 determined to give back to the community that helped raise him.

“It’s time for my generation … to bring it back,” he said.

A determination to inspire runs deep in Wells’ family. His great-great-grandmother, Idella Barton Jones, founded the Church of God by Faith at 2850 Freemont Terrace S. His grandmother, Johnnie Lee Williams, eventually took over the church, which was renamed All Nations Church of God by Faith, and served for 35 years. This year Williams passed the baton to Wells’ mother, Rhunette Wells. The church is now at 3000 Fourth Ave. S.

On average, Wells said, he sleeps about four hours a night.

“Rest is something I haven’t mastered yet,” he said. “It’s something I have to work on.”

BY SALEM SOLOMON
NNB Student Reporter

A catchphrase among volunteers is “think globally, act locally.” Habitat for Humanity believes it has found a way to do exactly that.

Through a program based on the Christian tenet of tithing, Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas County sets aside money each time it builds a house locally to help pay for a house in a developing country.

“Every time we build and sell a home we provide funding of about $4,500 to build a home in either Malawi, Africa, or Guatemala,” said Ron Spoor, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas County.

Founded in 1976 and championed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Habitat for Humanity builds and sells homes at no profit with a zero-interest mortgage to people who earn below a certain percentage of the area median income. In Pinellas County, the organization has built 312 homes since the local chapter began in 1985.

Local volunteers, called Habitat Global Village volunteers, visited Guatemala to build homes in 2013 and Malawi in 2014. They plan to return to Guatemala in 2015.

During the June 2014 trip to Malawi, 16 local volunteers built two family-sized homes in the remote village of Mwalama.The organization goes to great pains to make sure the work benefits the entire community and not just the recipients of the new homes, Spoor said.

The Habitat volunteers work under the supervision of local masons and carpenters, he said, and the volunteers’ donations fund the construction of the houses and the wages of the masons and carpenters.

Bricks for the homes are made from village clay, and mortar is made from clay, straw and water. All material for the walls is sourced within 50 feet of the new homes. The sturdy walls are designed to stand for 80 years.

At the end of the week of construction, the Malawian villagers held a ceremony complete with dancing and singing to dedicate the new homes. Spoor and the other volunteers conducted a ceremonial “laying hands on the homes” complete with prayers and blessings for the new homes.

Spoor said the experience was life changing. The volunteers were followed around all day by children who – despite lacking shoes and, in some cases, suffering from illnesses like AIDS or malaria – exuded joy.

“They were just great joy to interact with and to see their smiles, and to see that living a simple life, a life of poverty really, but the depth of their smiles is really amazing,” he said. “It is not forgettable. It’s a lesson for us.”

Critics have charged that the money for trips, which cost thousands of dollars per traveling volunteer, would be better spent as direct donations to local causes. Why, they ask, should wealthy Americans travel around the world to do things locals can and should be allowed to do themselves?

“Short-term volunteer projects can do more harm than good,” wrote Ian Birrell, a columnist for the British paper The Guardian. “Wealthy tourists prevent local workers from getting much-needed jobs, especially when they pay to volunteer; hard-pressed institutions waste time looking after them and money upgrading facilities; and abused or abandoned children form emotional attachments to the visitors, who increase their trauma by disappearing back home.”

The British group Voluntary Service Overseas even decried charity tourism that many college students and retirees engage in as a “new form of colonialism.”

Spoor said he can’t deny that sending American volunteers abroad might not be the most efficient way to help those in need, but it has other merits.

Since the Habitat volunteers’ donations fund both the construction and the wages of the local masons and carpenters, he said, the construction and “related infusion of money into the local economy” would not happen without the volunteers.

“One can make a very reasonable argument for not going on a trip but just sending a larger check,” he said. “But one can also make an argument for the power and the necessity of having the human connection and how important that is for all of us in the world,” Spoor said.

In the end, he said, his experience shows that the power of the interaction between people of different cultures is a value that can’t be quantified. “I think it’s great to send big checks but I also love the meaning and the depth and the power of human connection, which is life-changing,” he said.

“I would say it’s not an ‘either-or’ answer but it’s a ‘both’ answer. Maybe people should spend less money on things that are not necessary, and that would allow them to go on a trip and make generous donations.”

BY CHANEL WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Dominique Baptiste and Tamara Harrell grew up together in their grandmother’s modest house in the Midtown neighborhood.

To some people, Midtown is a bleak place blighted by urban decay, poverty and crime. But to the  sisters, it’s home.

That’s why they are grateful that Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas County helped them build side-by-side homes on 21st Avenue S, a block from the house where they grew up.

“This has been the best opportunity for me,” said Baptiste, 29, a single mother with three children. “I don’t know who’s happier – me or my kids.”

They moved into their four-bedroom, two-bath home in September, three months after Harrell, 33, and her two children moved into the three-bedroom, two-bath house next door.

Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization based on Christian principles, has been helping struggling, low-income families build houses in Pinellas since 1985. People and families who qualify are required to complete 20 homeownership preparedness courses and work 250 to 350 “sweat equity” hours alongside the Habitat volunteers who are building their homes and homes for other Habitat families.

Once a candidate has met Habitat’s requirements and the house is built, Habitat sells the house to the candidate at no profit with a zero-interest mortgage.

Harrell’s home was Habitat’s 300th new home in Pinellas. Baptiste’s was No. 309.

The completion of the two homes came as Habitat debuts a new program in the corridor bordered by Ninth and 26th avenues S between 25th and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. streets. Under the program, called the Mercy-Midtown Home Preservation Partnership, Habitat will help low-income homeowners make substantial improvements to their houses.

Following Habitat’s partnership model, homeowners are required to work 10 to 25 “sweat equity” hours alongside volunteers and contractors for work like roof replacement, plumbing and electrical repairs, painting and landscaping, upgrades in energy efficiency and modifications to help people with physical disabilities.

The homeowners will get zero-interest loans from Habitat to cover the cost of materials, with a payment schedule based on affordability.

Habitat has begun to accept applications and hopes to serve 10 homeowners in 2015.

The services supervisor for Habitat’s Midtown home preservation initiative is Antwaun Wells, 39, a building contractor, barber and civic activist who grew up in Midtown and wants to help the neighborhood rebound.

“I’m a community stakeholder, but I’m also a servant and I love impacting my community,” he said. “One of the main reasons why I’m happy to be part of the Habitat is because we are the people.”

“It is time for us to invest in the community to bring it back to speed,” he said. “My personal take on your life is, if you’re not doing anything good for yourself or anybody else, then you are good for nothing. I want to be known as someone who is good for something.”

Habitat for Humanity International was founded in 1976 on the principle that “all of God’s children ought to have a simple, decent place in which to live.” Its most famous volunteers are former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who volunteer for Habitat for one week every year.

The Pinellas chapter of Habitat, one of more than 1,400 affiliates around the country, does not get funding from the main organization. It relies on corporate contributions, donations from individuals, and the mortgage payments of people living in Habitat-built homes. For every home built in Pinellas, a home is also built overseas.

A common misconception is that Habitat gives away free homes to low-income families. In fact, Habitat recipients must meet the program’s qualifications and spend up to a year in classes and Habitat work projects before they get the keys and a no-interest mortgage (see informaton below).

Because of the strict guidelines, only five of the 313 Habitat homes in Pinellas have ended up in foreclosure, according to Ron Spoor, the organization’s chief operating officer.

Baptiste, who moved into her new Midtown home in September, calls Habitat “a program of second chances.”

More than 200 volunteers helped build her home, she said. “It meant a lot to me; the community supported me throughout the entire process … There were a few military officers that volunteered to prime and paint the outside of my home. The support was just breathtaking.”

While she attended Habitat’s mandatory classes on home ownership, Baptiste worked two jobs – as a senior process technician at Valpak and a full-time mother to three children, ages 14, 11 and 4.

“It was hard,” she said. “I did struggle but the classes taught me responsibility.”

Her new home helped her develop a new attitude, Baptiste said. “Since all these random people helped me, I decided to pay it forward.”

She has helped build other Habitat homes. She spoke at the organization’s homeowner orientation class to share her experience and urge Habitat applicants to never give up. And she assisted with the development of Habitat’s Girl Powerhouse endeavor, which has the motto “Built by women; funded by women.”

On the day she received the keys to her new home, Baptiste was presented a Welcome mat by her new next-door neighbor – her sister.

Harrell said it took her 18 months to take the Habitat classes and complete her “sweat equity” hourswhile working full time as a licensed practical nurse and studying to become a registered nurse. She works at the nearby Johnnie Ruth Clarke Community Health Center.

At the dedication of her house, Harrell told Bay News 9 that she was overwhelmed with excitement. “Just to show my kids that you have something, you don’t have to rent all your life. Just to provide that stability for them.”

Her children, ages 11 and 10, are pleased that they don’t have to move around any more, said Harrell, and even more pleased that they now live next to their cousins.

How it works
To qualify for a new home, candidates must meet three principles – a need for housing, the ability to pay and a willingness to partner in the building efforts. Specifically, candidates must earn 30 to 80 percent of the median income in Pinellas County – as little as $22,500 a year for a family of four. They must demonstrate a need for adequate shelter, the ability to pay back a zero-interest loan and willingness to put in 250 to 350 “sweat equity hours” on their potential home and other Habitat homes. In addition, candidates must attend 20 homeownership preparedness classes on topics ranging from financial education to home maintenance, energy conservation, domestic violence, parenting and being a good neighbor.