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Florida A & M University trustees meet in a day-long workshop tomorrow and officially on Thursday to consider new anti-hazing measures being proposed by President James Ammons. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the draft proposal would fix many of the problems discovered during the investigation of a drum majors death by hazing.

A tough new anti-hazing plan will be in place before the fall semester, if the Florida A&M University Trustees agree. Dr. James Ammons disclosed a broad outline of the plan in an exclusive interview last week.

“We think its necessary for us to have NCAA-type regulations in place,” Dr. Ammons said.

Trustees will meet a total of 18 hours over two days. About three hours of that time will be spent on the band and hazing.

The draft agenda shows an anti-hazing officer reporting directly to the president. A compliance officer in the Music department will enforce new requirements for band members. Those requirements include:

• Maintaining a 2.5 Grade Point Average

• Band practice will be limited to 20 hours per week.

• There can be no off campus meetings

• Eligibility for band travel will have to be approved by three people, starting with the band director

• Band members will also be limited to four years of performing on the field

• And all band members must be full time or near full time students.

Senior Paige Turner believes the changes may have limited affect.

Reporter: You don’t think it will stop it?

“No,” Turner said.

Reporter: Why not?

“Because, I mean, even if you have a good GPA, you can still take part in stuff like that, or even if you have a bad GPA,” she said. “Good people do bad things sometimes.”

The draft plan also calls for all faculty, staff and students to sign a new anti hazing agreement.

The band lost three faculty members as a result of the hazing scandal. They will be replaced by visiting professors while the school searches for permanent replacements.

The final round of FCAT scores have been released, foreshadowing more failing schools in Florida. FCAT scores are used to help figure a schools overall grade and as Whitney Ray tells us, the new, higher standards will mean more Ds and Fs for Florida schools.

The final round of FCAT scores were better than predicted, still, four out of 10 elementary and middle-schoolers failed math and reading. Half failed science.

In a conference call with reporters, the Commissioner of Education, explained new standards make it hard to tell if Florida students are gaining or losing ground.

“We need to have two years of data comparing apples to apples to be able to set an achievement standard,” said Commissioner Gerard Robinson.

But that doesn’t mean schools won’t be held accountable for lower scores.

FCAT scores account for half of a schools overall grade, which means the state will see more D and F scores when the Department of Education releases grades this summer.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education says there are safeguards in place to keep school from falling too far.

“No school can drop more than one grade level this year,” said Spokeswoman Jane Fletcher.

Teachers unions fear the grade will open the doors for a charter school expansion.

“The state would like to see more for-profit entities take over for schools,” said FEA Spokesman Mark Pudlow.

On a trip through the panhandle this week Governor Rick Scott explained why he believes the new standards will work to improve education over time.

“What ever you measure gets improved, so we’ve got come up with measurement systems to constantly improve everything we want to do,” said Scott.

And the bar will only get higher as the state transitions out of FCAT and in to a tougher test by the 2014-2015.

The scores will also be used to determine which teachers receive merit pay. After the score were released, House Minority Leader Ron Saunders released this statement:

“While the FCAT may be helpful as a diagnostic tool, it is being misused as a measuring stick for how we assess student progress and how much we pay our school teachers. Florida House Democratic Caucus members continue to stand in strong support of our students and teachers and in opposition to the current use of the FCAT.”

The State of Florida wants to keep checking the voter database for non citizens, even though the US Department of Justice has said the process is illegal this close to an election. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the state is expected to argue the purge is just normal maintenance, which is allowed, when it responds later this week.

Candidates lined up Monday to get their name of the ballot this year. Others mailed their paperwork, detailing the area they want to represent. The unanswered question, though, is who’ll be able to vote for them. The U.S. Department of Justice has shut down state efforts to examine voter rolls within 90 days of the August election. We asked Governor Rick Scott why he ordered the effort now.

“There’s no perfect time to do any of these things,” Scott said. “We just want fair elections. That’s what all of us want.”

The State says it has been trying to get Federal approval for the purge and the use of a federal database since last September. A trail of emails show that conference calls to were cancelled by both sides.

As early as a month after first asking to use the database, the state was told it would need an alien database registration number for the computer to make the match. The Catch-22 is that the state doesn’t collect that number because it doesn’t register non-citizens.

What is clear is that the state is not giving up.

Reporter: The 90-day requirement doesn’t apply here, is that right?

“We’ll be addressing that in our letter to DOJ,” Secretary of State Spokesman Chris Cate said.

Reporter: And when will that letter go?

“We’ll send out our letter to DOJ this week,” Cate said.

Initial matches of voters to the state’s suspect list have gone overwhelmingly to the voter who was a citizen and properly registered.

When the clock clicked noon today, the official five day period for state and local candidates to qualify began. A few dozen candidates arrived to deliver their papers in person. Hundreds others opted for mail or courier.

State Representative Clay Ford of Pensacola thinks it is appropriate for the candidate to make the effort to deliver the oath of office and check in person.

“I just think it’s something that’s so important to do,” Ford said. “It kinda makes a statement that I’m interested enough to get here and make sure it’s done right.”

Clay County Clerk James Jett filed his paperwork to run in Congressional District 3. Weeks ago, Jett complained he was offered money and other favors on behalf of incumbent Cliff Stearns to get out of the race. That offer, says Jett, is part of what the campaign is about, as well as leadership in Washington.

“Because I think I can make a difference,” Jett said. “The country’s in trouble. I think that this is the most important election in the history of America, and I believe that there are going to be a lot of James Jett elected throughout this nation, as a result of the problems we’re in.”

Representative Irv Slosberg of Palm Beach personally filed his paperwork to run for re-election. He says the District 91 seat is more compact after new legislative boundaries were drawn, and that compactness, he says, will benefit Palm Beach County and its residents.

“Before I was in two legislative delegations, Broward and Palm Beach County,” Slosberg said. “And now it’s only Palm Beach County if I win.”

Reporter: Is that a better deal, do you think?

“Well, it’s better for everyone that I can stay more focused on Palm Beach County rather than split the focus from Palm Beach County and Broward County,” he said.

Qualifying ends at noon on Friday.

Fifty-Eight thousand ninth graders will have to retake Algebra and pass or they won’t graduate. More than half of Florida ninth graders failed the now mandatory end-of-course math exam. As Whitney Ray tells us, this means summer school for many of the test-flunkers.

Click Here for a county by county and a school by school breakdown:

Forget Disney World, or even the beach. Many Florida ninth graders will spend their summer in school, because they flunked Algebra.

On a conference call Friday morning, the Florida Department of Education told reporters more than 58-thousand ninth graders failed the end-of-course algebra exam. That’s more than half of the students that took the test.

Later the Commissioner of Education, Gerard Robinson, told reporters the good news is there’s time for a do-over.

“We actually have several programs for students who did not pass, to take courses in remediation,” said Robinson.

This is the first time ever ninth graders have had to pass the test in order to graduate. It’s part of the state’s efforts to set higher standards and to phase out the FCAT.

By 2015, students will also have to pass tests in Geometry and Biology to get their degree.

“So we will actually have some of the best educated students in the United States,” said Robinson.

Leon High School students scored better than most, with 8 out of 10 passing campus wide. Still there will be more summer school students, stretching budgets thin.

“We are probably only have to remediate 40 or 50 kids, where other schools throughout the state, we’re talking hundreds and that’s going to be a major problem. You can’t continue to cut, cut, cut and ask more, more, more,” said Leon County Principal Rocky Hanna.

Students who opt out of summer school algebra, can take the course online or wait till next year. But waiting means they risk falling even further behind.

Commissioner Robinson says the test will better prepare students for the PARCC, or the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test. The test will replace the FCAT beginning in the 2014- 2015 School year.

The feds are telling the Florida Division of Elections to stop efforts to remove illegally registered voters from the voting roles. Today many elections supervisors followed complied, but the Republican Party of Florida has a different plan. They’re asking the feds to help. RPOF has launched this online petition asking the president to make available a federal immigration database. RPOF Chairman Lenny Curry says the database would keep the state from misidentifying legally registered voters as illegal.

“The big question is why won’t the administration work with us with the data in that database? The only thing I can come up with is they want to politicize this,” said Curry.

The feds are giving the Division of Elections until June 6th to respond to their request to stop the purging. The efforts are catching heat because some of the people the state identified as illegally registered turned out to be US Veterans. RPOF says the federal database would prevent those types of mistakes.

It’s the first day of hurricane season and insurance agents have their fingers crossed. They also have a seat smack dab in the middle of the state’s emergency operation center. Sam Miller, the Vice President of the Florida Insurance Council sits there. Miller says being in the EOC when a hurricane hits allows him to send adjusters to the hardest hit areas, quicker. And of course the faster an adjuster see the damage, the sooner customers get their claims paid.

“It’s aimed at getting insurance claims handled as quickly as possible, getting adjusters in to damaged areas as quickly as possible,” said Miller.

The industry began requesting a spot at the EOC after Hurricane Andrew. In the aftermath of that storm adjusters were sometimes kept from viewing the damage for weeks. And people who had their houses destroyed had to wait longer to begin rebuilding.