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Monday's Daily Pulse
What you need to know about Florida today
› Gatorpalooza returns to Gatorland, featuring wild animals, family fun and a ‘Florida Man Challenge’
Gators and Crocs and wild animals, oh my!! Throw in some live music, specialty food, craft vendors and fun for the whole family and you get Gatorpalooza. Gatorland, the “Alligator Capital of the World,” is hosting its 4th annual Gatorpalooza, featuring all the fun activities and more that Gatorland has to offer.
› Central Florida nonprofit helps children with vision impairments via confidence-boosting tree trek
More than two dozen children who are blind or visually impaired put on their harnesses and took part in a ropes course Saturday morning. The course at Orlando Tree Trek Adventure Park was aimed at helping the children with mobility and confidence, as well as sensory and social skills. 12-year-old Zoe Boleslawski was so happy that she and her friends got to take part. “This is one of the fun things we get to do with Lighthouse,” Boleslawski said. “We get to do learning skills, but we also get to do fun activities.”
› Students as young as 14 forge entrepreneurial paths
3DE, a new education model that puts a premium on entrepreneurial skills and solving business case challenges, has been introduced at several Tampa Bay area high schools.A local leader says the audacious goal is to “re-engineer” education and create “a school within a school,” particularly in schools in underserved communities that lack resources.
› Orange County Comptroller Diamond warns about tourist tax ‘roller coaster’
With hopeful applicants –– including a group that wants to bring big-league baseball to Orlando –– lining up for a share of tourist tax funding, Orange County Comptroller Phil Diamond instead used a theme-park attraction Friday to describe the ups-and-downs of the levy currently on a 14-month record run. A statistic graph showed the line of revenues undulating like a roller-coaster, rising in good times but dropping after the 9/11 terror attacks, dipping in 2009 spurred the Great Recession, and plummeting in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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