• Duval County Public Schools (DCPS) has been selected as the only school district in Florida and one of six in the country to receive a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). The grant will support college readiness and access efforts for 1,000 students at Matthew Gilbert, Jean Ribault, Northwestern and Paxon middle schools. All are sites designated by DCPS as having “large achievement and income gaps.” The grant will be funded over a six-year period with $500,000 awarded each year.
• The federal government has also sent some money the Sulzbacher Center’s way. The Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded the center $1.9 million in funding over the next three years to expand medical, dental and behavioral health services to homeless and at-risk clients at the beaches. The first phase of the expansion will be to renovate a building for a clinic at 850 Sixth Ave. S. in Jacksonville Beach.
• Miami trial lawyer Neal R. Sonnett will be presented with the 2008 John H. Pickering Award of Achievement from the American Bar Association Senior Lawyers Division on Aug. 8 during the ABA Annual Meeting in New York City. Sonnett, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the Criminal Division of the Southern District of Florida, will receive the award at a 7 p.m. reception and dinner in his honor at the New York Athletic Club in New York City.
• State Attorney candidate Angela Corey plans to celebrate win or lose after the Aug. 26 election results. “We’re having a party no matter what,” said Corey. The party’s at the Fraternal Order of Police Headquarters on Beach Boulevard.
• Local candidates found unique ways to promote themselves at the Chamber’s Hob Nob at Metropolitan Park Thursday night. City Council candidate Theresa Graham gave out Teddy Grahams stapled to her brochure while State Rep. candidate Ronald “Doc” Renuart handed out Puffs packets.
• The Jacksonville Women Lawyers Association recently inducted its 2008-09 board of directors. They are: President, Anita Pryor, President-elect, Mary Scott, Secretary, Stephanie Harriett, Treasurer, Lindsay Tygart, Director of Public Relations, Ingrid Bethel, Director of Information Technology, Maureen Jones, Director of Professional Development, Katherine Schnauss Naugle, Director of Professional Development, Jodi Seitlin, Director of Events/Opening Reception, Amanda Webb, Director of Events/Opening Reception, Nicole Habl, Director of Events/Holiday Party, Elizabeth Oakes, Director of Events/Judicial Reception, Megan Harper, and Immediate Past President/Law School Liaison, Susan Haag.
• If you went to lunch around Bay Street Friday, you might have seen the commotion near the Annex involving numerous police cars, which blocked off roads and sidewalks and one UPS vehicle. Suspicions of a bomb on the UPS truck halted all traffic in the area until shortly before 1 p.m .