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 RATS! 15 December 2011
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News for pineview rats
Pine View School students moved to avoid rats
Sarasota Herald-Tribune - 1 day ago
By Christopher O'Donnell
For more than a year, Sarasota County's most prestigious school —
Pine View School for the Gifted — has been infested with rats. ...
Sarasota's Pine View School for the Gifted fights rat infestation ...
www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111213/wire/111219846
SNN6: Rat problem at Pine View School worries parents ...
http://video.heraldtribune.com/video/1325975949001
The school has been battling a rat infestation for more than a year without
notifying parents of the problem

Rats, can carry many different zoonotic pathogens, such as
Leptospira,
Toxoplasma gondii, and Campylobacter. The Black Death is traditionally
believed to have been caused by the micro-organism Yersinia pestis, carried by
the Tropical Rat Flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) which preyed on Black Rats living
in European cities during the epidemic outbreaks of the Middle Ages; these
rats were used as transport hosts. Other zoonotic diseases linked to pest
rodents include Classical swine fever and Foot-and-mouth disease.
Posted By Editor
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 Abuses alleged in Sarasota County Schools 20 October 2011
 | Abuses alleged in Sarasota County Schools tech deal
By Doug Sword & Scott Carroll
Staff Writers - Herald-Tribune
Published: Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
The Sarasota School District paid $12 million for a computer software program
from a company that may have skirted the law and could be headed for
bankruptcy,
according to a lawsuit filed last week.
The lawsuit filed by two partners in the Orlando-based firm Crosspointe.net
also
claims that another partner in the company paid $31,500 to Bob Hanson, the
school district's former IT director, as a possible thank you for helping
facilitate the sale.
The allegations come amid an FBI investigation into another high tech purchase
by the district -- the $13 million the district paid for electronic white
boards
for classrooms. Hanson has been implicated in that investigation, too.
The lawsuit was filed May 6 by Larry Plasil and Jim Barako, software engineers
whose companies own a 50 percent stake in CrossPointe. In it they accuse Joan
Keebler, who owns the other half of the company and was the main salesperson,
of
gross negligence and possible illegalities.
Plasil and Barako are seeking to recover payments they say were made to Hanson
without their consent and to investigate "any improprieties or illegal
conduct."
Hanson was the school district's chief negotiator on the CrossPointe
contract.
The lawsuit claims that Crosspointe is in deep financial trouble because of
Keebler's loose spending and asks an Orange County judge to appoint an
overseer
for the company.
The lawsuit also claims:
• That Plasil was supposed to approve all company expenditures, but did not
approve a $31,500 payment to Hanson made through the Florida Association of
School Administrators, where Hanson now works.
"Keebler's concealment of the company's payments to Hanson through FASA are
troubling, and they raise issues about whether the entire procurement of the
Sarasota School District contract was tainted by some arrangement or
understanding between Keebler and Bob Hanson," the lawsuit states. "If the
process of procuring the Sarasota School District contract was in fact
compromised by Keebler's misconduct then Plasil and Barako agree that the
Company should pay the Sarasota School District back the Company's ill-gotten
gains."
• That Keebler offered Hanson a job at CrossPointe in October 2009, as he was
leaving the school district, but backed off after Plasil and Barako objected.
The pair were "concerned with the unseemly appearance of hiring the individual
most responsible for securing the Sarasota School District contract."
• That Crosspointe was willing to accept $10 million for the software program
before the district offered $12 million in December 2008. Keebler "bragged
that
she was able to extract an extra $2 million."
• That Jim Warford, director of the Florida Association of School
Administrators, was paid $2,000 by CrossPointe for each Florida school
official
he recruited to attend technology conferences sponsored by the company.
The company has paid Warford more than $100,000 since December, according to
copies of invoices and canceled checks attached to the lawsuit.
Hanson, Keebler and Warford all dismiss the claims contained in the lawsuit as
unfounded.
Responding to questions via e-mail, Hanson denied ever receiving direct
payments
or a job offer from CrossPointe. He said he talked to the company about
employment but a job offer was never extended.
Hanson was hired by FASA in December to help school districts use technology
more effectively.
Keebler dismissed the lawsuit as "sheer nonsense" and said that she is the
aggrieved party in the company.
Plasil has taken CrossPointe software, repackaged it and sold it without
turning
revenues over to the company, Keebler said. The lawsuit was filed after she
confronted Plasil over selling CrossPointe's software under another name in
Illinois, she said.
"This is what's precipitating his blackmail," Keebler said, referring to the
lawsuit.
Warford acknowledged that he has been a paid consultant for CrossPointe for
about a year, work that is allowed under his contract with FASA. He denied
being
paid a $2,000 "bounty" for each school official he got to come to a pair of
education technology conferences sponsored by Crosspointe and other
companies.
The Sarasota school district bought the software program from Crosspointe
about
six months after the company had been formed. The program brings student
performance, school budgeting and management all under one Web-based
program.
Despite the court fight between CrossPointe's owners, installation and testing
of the program is proceeding satisfactorily, said Al Weidner, the school
district's budget director, who had not seen the lawsuit.
The system is behind schedule, but the management portion is expected to be
online in August and the district expects that in a year parents will be able
to
use the program to check on the progress of their children, Weidner said.
The school district and Hanson were named in March in an FBI subpoena for
information relating to the district's $13 million purchase of 3,000
electronic
white boards, or Activboards, for classrooms. The subpoena also sought
information relating to former school superintendent Gary Norris and the
Activboard's manufacturer, a British company called Promethean.
The FBI is also investigating the purchase of Activboards by the school
district
in Waterloo, Iowa. Norris took the Waterloo superintendent position in 2008
after leaving Sarasota and later hired Hanson as a consultant.
Both men have denied any wrongdoing in connection with the Activboard
purchases.
Posted By Editor
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