A generous amenities center has been set up in the apartment complex that is spread over 13,000 sq. ft. of area. There are tennis courts, swimming pools, spas, massage parlors, sunning beaches, kayak launch and picnic spots with grills. A concierge facility is also available.

Socializing runs the central them of Riva Del Lago with meeting rooms, business centers, media and entertainment lounges, and private gathering spaces. A well-stocked library has been added to the facility to meet the academic and literary needs of residents.

There is enough diversity available in the condo development to meet the needs of most people. A two bedroom condo in the development is available for an average price of $190,000.

A three bedroom condo with modern amenities and stunning views can be had for an average price of $255,000.

A four bedroom condo offers the epitome of luxury living standards. This unit can be had for an average price of $700,000. Prices vary depending on roominess, views from the balcony, interior designs, and décor.

This community truly offers the best in golf and luxury amenities. Quail West Golf and Country Club features 2 18-hole golf courses designed by course designer Arthur Hills. The courses are uniquely challenging as they unfold along waterways and nature preserves, creating a great test for all levels of golfers.

The Lakes, a links-style course, stretches to more than 7,000 yards. The Preserve is a more traditional, championship course that winds through 200 acres of landscape filled with wildlife and nature. Only 600 members belong to Quail West, which hosted a professional golf tournament in 2007.

The golf club features a state-of-the-art practice facility and professional teaching staff. The 70,000-square foot clubhouse offers members three dining options, a pro shop, a spa, a salon and a fitness center, along with tennis courts and an indoor pool.

Quail West, located near Interstate 75, offers convenient access to all the attractions in Florida. including fine dining, shopping and entertainment. Residents can also take a short drive to the sun-drenched Gulf Coast beaches. Art and music lovers will enjoy the Naples Philharmonic, the theaters, or the many art galleries throughout Naples city itself.

Homes in this luxury community are in demand, and range in price from $800,000 to $9.9 million.

Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

It’s a claim made by a charter school leader in the education documentary Waiting for Superman, which places much of the blame for bad schools nationwide on union rules that protect incompetent teachers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on national television last week that he would overhaul the way city teachers are granted tenure, linking their advancement to improving student test scores.

“Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teachers and principals — and we are,” Bloomberg said.

But city teachers say that if bad teachers have won tenure protection it’s the fault of the administrators who gave it to them.

“We don’t make that decision. Whoever the principal is makes that decision,” said LezAnne Edmond, a Manhattan high school teacher with 15 years of experience.

Teacher tenure has its roots in academic tenure, which was intended to protect academic freedom; once granted, professors are rarely fired. Tenure rules for K-12 teachers vary from state to state, with some operating more like universities and others that offer no stronger protection than job security laws that prevent people from being fired without cause.

States including California, Florida and Colorado have passed or proposed legislation to change tenure laws in hopes of securing education funding under President Barack Obama‘s “Race to the Top” program.

New York City teachers can win tenure after three years. Once they are granted tenure they cannot be fired without an administrative hearing. What the teachers union calls due process, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein call a system that has protected incompetence.

The issue gained prominence with the Sept. 24 release of “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” opening to wider release on Friday. The documentary from “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim suggests that kids receive a superior education in charter schools without unions.

NBC‘s Sept. 27-28 education summit covered much of the same ground. Bloomberg used a 15-minute MSNBC segment to announce a tenure crackdown.

“We’ll do more to support teachers and reward great teaching, and that includes ending tenure as we know it,” he said. Bloomberg said principals must start denying tenure unless their students have made two years of progress on state tests.

Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, responded that principals can already deny tenure “for any reason” and that teachers “would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards.”

But the union has opposed using state test scores — the city’s preferred benchmark — to measure teacher performance.

City Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the union is being disingenuous.

“On one hand, they seem to be blaming principals for too many teachers getting tenure,” she said in an e-mail. “On the other hand, they don’t want principals to take into account student performance when making tenure decisions.”

This year, 3.7% of teachers who reached the end of their three-year probationary period were denied tenure, up from 2.3% the year before. Another 7.2% saw their probation extended by a year.

Ernest Logan, president of the union representing New York City principals, said his members take student achievement into account.

“I don’t think people are just granting people tenure because they’ve been there three years,” Logan said.

Veteran city teachers say they need tenure for job security and to protect the First Amendment rights it was designed to safeguard.

“I need tenure to speak out,” said Arthur Goldstein, a union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens.

Goldstein said he has complained publicly about overcrowding and other issues.

“I’m standing up for the kids of Francis Lewis High School and I absolutely need tenure,” he said.

Katharine Dawson, who retired last summer after 12 years as a city schoolteacher, said tenure “protects you from favoritism, it protects you from all kinds of things.”

Asked about tenure protecting bad teachers, she said, “Maybe there’s two bad teachers per school. Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”

One teacher whom Bloomberg would like to throw out is Melissa Petro, whose essay about using Craigslist to sell herself as a prostitute was published in the Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the same day she was awarded tenure by the principal of her Bronx elementary school.

Bloomberg demanded that Petro be pulled from the classroom, but she has tenure and cannot be fired without due process. She has been assigned to an office job pending an investigation. A phone number for Petro could not be found.

NYC takes aim at teachers’ ‘tenure for breathing’

NYC takes aim at teachers’ ‘tenure for breathing’

Her hopes were dashed, though, when her classmates voted for a ceremony featuring traditional African dress. Johnson-Shaw ended up wearing a long, patterned skirt and matching head wrap, and her football-player escort, instead of a suit and tie, wore a loin cloth.

“I look back at the queens in ball gowns, and I’m still envious,” Johnson-Shaw says now.

She graduated from college in 1972 and lives in Ahoskie, N.C., where she retired following a career with the Internal Revenue Service. In the past week, Johnson-Shaw has been reliving her collegiate memories because she can now access a digital archive of the Hawk yearbook back to 1959, the inaugural edition.

Scanned images are available for free online and let readers browse through a yearbook cover to cover or search by name.

The grainy images from the yearbooks are full of period hairdos and clothes. They also show the school’s evolution from a tiny, historically black college into an institution that now offers doctoral programs and enrolls 4,500 students.

“It’s fascinating when you look back, not just at the changing hairstyles but also at who was in the classrooms, the activities people were involved in and the new buildings,” said Jennifer Neumyer, the college’s special collections and outreach librarian.

The 1960 yearbook includes a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. He spoke at commencement and is pictured in a cap and gown with a procession of soon-to-be graduates strolling behind him.

Nationwide movement

Colleges across the United States have been making digital copies of old yearbooks, student newspapers and course catalogues, said Laurie Gemmill, program manager of the Mass Digitization Collaborative at LYRASIS.

The Atlanta-based group for libraries and information professionals has helped 100 colleges and universities create digital archives of materials that include yearbooks. Preserving the documents is only part of the benefit, she said.

“Institutions are more interested in sharing their materials. So many materials are hidden from people. You have to go in and request it. The special collections are there for people to use, but it can be intimidating to some,” Gemmill said.

Among the colleges that have created digital archives of yearbooks: Penn State University in State College, Pa.; Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte; St. Mary’s College of Maryland in St. Mary’s City, Md.; and the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

Penn State’s yearbook, La Vie, goes back to 1890.

Kimberly Conway Dumpson, director of alumni affairs and planned giving at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said digital yearbooks are another way for her to connect with alumni and raise money for the school. This week while meeting with alumni in Florida, she pulled out her laptop and showed one man his yearbook photo from 45 years ago.

“He was just blown away, so excited. He couldn’t stop reminiscing about friends and alumni,” Dumpson said.

Sandra Odoms Hawkins, a 1976 graduate, said she checked out her old yearbook online and isn’t the least bit embarrassed by her clothing choices. The 56-year-old lives in Edgewater, Md., and works in the information technology department for the U.S. Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper.

“Some of the styles have started coming back around. You should have kept those platform shoes,” Hawkins said.

Horatio William “Bill” Jones III graduated in 1978 and is now an employee of CBS News in Charlotte He finds it neat that one photographer, Thomas Wiles, took almost all of the yearbook pictures from 1959 to 1989.

The 60-year-old Jones said he grew up in Princess Anne and remembers when jazz greats Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and Duke Ellington played at the college. He said he’s been so busy clicking through the yearbook online to see how the college has changed and to see old friends and faculty members, that he hasn’t looked at his own picture.

“I don’t need to. I know what I look like,” he said.

College yearbook collections go digital

College yearbook collections go digital

SANFORD, Fla. – A father furious because his 13-year-old daughter who suffers from cerebral palsy had been bullied stormed onto a school bus and threatened the children who teased her, deputies in Florida said.

The girl had to be hospitalized because of stress from the confrontation. The father, James Willie Jones, was arrested Thursday after he stormed onto the bus two weeks ago and later released on bail. He hopes to apologize to the children, said his attorney, Natalie Jackson.

“The little girl was scared to go to school. There has to be something done about school bullying,” Jackson said.

Jones boarded the school bus on Sept. 3 because several boys were allegedly bullying his daughter, according to the sheriff’s office report. He told deputies the boys placed an open condom on his daughter’s head, smacked her on the back of her head, twisted her ear and shouted rude comments at her, the report said.

Video surveillance from the bus shows Jones asking his daughter to point out the students accused of harassing her. Jones is heard threatening those who bully his daughter, and he also threatens the bus driver.

Jones then steps off the bus. Some children are heard laughing.

Jones told deputies he complained to Seminole County school administrators in the past, but nothing had been done to help the girl, Jackson said. A phone message left Friday afternoon for the school district’s spokeswoman was not immediately returned.

Jones was charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing a school function and later posted $2,000 bail. He was ordered to stay away from all county school buses and the driver of the bus.

Phone messages left Friday by The Associated Press at a home number listed for Jones were not immediately returned.

Deputies: Dad threatened kids who teased daughter (AP)

Deputies: Dad threatened kids who teased daughter (AP)

Florida, Hawaii, Missouri, Ohio, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands are among the states that will receive funding to support education jobs.

Support for Education Jobs

But their school principal does.

This week, Baltic High School, just north of here, became one of the latest across the USA to ban the rubber bracelets that has a message some say is in poor taste: “I love boobies.”

The bracelets have caused controversy in schools in states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin. Some districts allow students to wear them inside-out, and others ban them.

“When we had an assembly the first day of school, I basically told the students we are not insensitive to the cause,” Baltic High Principal Jim Aisenbrey says. “I think everybody in the gym, including myself, has had a family member or relative or friend who has dealt with the issue. I do think there are more proper ways to bring this plight to the attention of people, and I don’t think this is a proper way.”

“I guess I never thought of them as offensive,” Aberson says. Her grandmother and five of her grandmother’s sisters battled breast cancer.

The bracelets, which sell for about $4 in stores, were created by Keep A Breast Foundation, a Carlsbad, Calif., non-profit group that seeks to increase breast cancer awareness among young people. Proceeds from sales support the foundation’s programs, founder Shaney Jo Darden says. She says the bracelets are meant to spark discussions.

“That’s the whole idea, it’s getting people to talk about breast cancer, it’s getting people to share their feelings about how this disease has impacted their life,” she says. “The bracelet is doing what it’s meant to do — it’s making people talk.”

“Schools banning it? That’s crazy,” says Julie Hubbell of Lewisville, Texas. Hubbell helped organize an auction and barbeque named “Boobie Q” to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which fights breast cancer.

In the Fresno, Calif., area, students in the Clovis Unified School District were told not to wear the bracelets in class — or to turn them inside out so the message is not visible, spokeswoman Kelly Avants says. The district’s dress code outlaws jewelry with sexually suggestive language or images, she says.

Schools ban bracelets promoting cancer awareness

Schools ban bracelets promoting cancer awareness

JACKSON, Miss. – A policy designed to achieve racial equality at a north Mississippi school has long meant that only white kids can run for some class offices one year, black kids the next. But Brandy Springer, a mother of four mixed race children, was stunned when she moved to the area from Florida and learned her 12-year-old daughter couldn’t run for class reporter because she wasn’t the right race.

The rules sparked an outcry on Internet blogs and other websites after Springer contacted an advocacy group for mixed-race families. The NAACP called for a Justice Department investigation — not surprising in a state with a history of racial tension dating to the Jim Crow era.

The district scrapped the policy by Friday afternoon.

Superintendent Russell Taylor posted a statement on the school’s website, saying the policy had been in place for 30 years, dating back to a time when school districts across Mississippi came under close scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department over desegregation.

“It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body,” the statement said. “It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed.”

Springer, who moved to Lee County from Florida in April, said her daughter was told the office of sixth-grade class reporter at Nettleton Middle School was available only to black students this year.

Her anger grew when she saw school election guidelines that allowed only whites to run for class president this year. In alternating years, the positions would be reversed so blacks could run for president and whites could hold other positions, district officials said.

Even if the policy is an attempt to ensure black and white participation, Springer said diversity is no longer a black and white issue, with a growing number of mixed-race children, Hispanics and other ethnicities attending school together.

The school agreed, saying it the statement that it “acknowledges and embraces the fact that we are growing in ethnic diversity and that the classifications of Caucasian and African-American no longer reflect our entire student body.”

Springer is white. Her two older children, including the sixth grader, are half Native American. Her two younger children have a black father.

“How are they supposed to be classified?” she asked.

“My main concern is that the object of school is to prepare people for life. An employer could never do this: Advertise a position for a white man only or a black man only,” she said. “This is not a lesson we want to teach.”

The changes in school policy may have come too late for Springer. Springer said she moved to another school district last week and pulled her kids from Nettleton Middle School.

School administrators did not immediately respond to messages seeking further comment left Friday by The Associated Press.

Nettleton is a town of about 2,000 people with a population that is about 66 percent white and 32 percent black.

Springer’s plight demonstrates the complexities faced not only by interracial families, but by school officials trying to achieve racial equality in a state known for tensions between blacks and whites. The school district also manipulated prom and homecoming elections so that the outcome is an equal division of blacks and whites.

Springer and others worried that could leave out Hispanics, Asians or any other student from another race or ethnicity, Springer said.

Springer’s story spread rapidly on the Internet after she contacted a website for mixed families — mixedandhappy.com.

Suzy Richardson, the website’s founder and the mother of four mixed-race children, said she and her husband have “raised our children to tell them they are black and white. They’re half of me and half of dad.”

“It really made me upset (to hear Springer’s story). The message that were sending to kids is that they have to choose one side of who they are,” she said. “The message that we’re sending our children is that we do things based on race.”

Before the school announced it was getting rid of the policy, Charles Hampton, a vice president of the Mississippi NAACP, said he would ask the U.S. Justice Department to investigate.

“That’s something that shouldn’t be happening anywhere in America, but we still have pockets of it happening at certain schools,” Hampton said. “The local community needs to get involved and demand they change the policy.”

School’s race rule prompts mom to pull kids out (AP)

School’s race rule prompts mom to pull kids out (AP)