On Tuesday, we had a story looking at suspicious use of a Belle Glade garbage truck -- the mileage records were a mess and seemed to suggest something shady was happening that caused the use of the truck to skyrocket earlier this year while gas use was suspiciously low.More >>

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Mavericks in Palm Springs opened last August.

Aside from the kids in the Palm Beach County jail, tenth-grade students at Mavericks High in Palm Springs fared worse on the FCAT reading test than any of their peers in the county, according to data released last week by the state Department Education.

Only 7 percent of the 54 students who took the FCAT at Mavericks last fall passed the reading portion of the test. The 16 students who took the test while in jail had a 6 percent passing rate.

Mavericks in Palm Springs opened last August. It's the newest in a chain of charter schoolsMore >>

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Florida Department of Corrections

The popular Palm Beach Gardens band teacher who was arrested three years ago for sexually assaulting four girls at H.L. Watkins Middle School is about to complete his first month in a Miami-Dade County prison.

Heath Miller, 37, pleaded guilty in March to one count of sexual battery of a minor and three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and eight years of probation and is barred from unsupervised contact with children.

In his prison mug shot, Miller looks thinner than he did when he went to jail in 2009. His head is shaved and his left arm decorated with a tattoo of a Tazmanian devil.

Miller is the son of a prominent Belle Glade family and attended Howard University in
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Biden says he's on a mission from God.

Frank Biden, younger brother of the man who is second in line for the White House, has a flair for the dramatic. Last year, he called the Mavericks High charter school in Palm Springs a "hope factory" and said its management company, Mavericks in Education Florida, was "on a mission from God." 

Now, he says Mavericks schools are going to "save the country." As he wrote on his blog yesterday:

Frank Biden plans to save the country, one student at a time. With the dropout rates in the state of Florida and in the entire nation reaching alarming levels, the brother of US Vice President Joe Biden is dedicated to eradicate eradicating the silent epidemic by serving as the President and Director for Business Development for Mavericks in Education.

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Two young women throw punches and tear at each others' hair while a crowd of onlookers shouts around them. Teenagers hold cell phones to record the fight as the women tumble to the ground. In the center of the video frame is a man wearing a T-shirt bearing the logo of Mavericks High -- the South Florida chain of charter schools that has been plagued by whistle-blower lawsuits and academic troubles.

According to the student who posted the video on YouTube, this fight took place near the Fort Lauderdale campus of Mavericks. "Shit got to real in skool 2day these hoes stay fighting !" Junior Lamy tweeted on April 16 before posting a link to the video.

Mavericks enrolls students who are at risk of dropping out of high school, promising to
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Remember WordPress.com? Back in 2003, it was a brilliant invention designed to put any pajama blogger on the cutting edge. That edge is clearly where Frank Biden belongs.

Biden, brother of the Amtrak-riding vice president, has entered into the wild world of WordPress to tout his for-profit chain of charter schools, Mavericks in Education Florida. As president and "P.T. Barnum" of the West Palm Beach-based chain, it's not surprising that Biden would want to brag about Mavericks on his very own site.

Here's how he begins a March 29 entry:

Frank Biden is the brother of US Vice President Joe Biden. He is making a name for himself in the education sector as the President and Director for Business Development of Mavericks in Education, an educational institution that is dedicated to the design, development, and delivery of innovative, out-of-the-box, and effective educational solutions to students who are at risk of dropping out of school.

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maverickshigh.com

A former special-education teacher at Mavericks High in Palm Springs has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit alleging that the charter school is inflating enrollment records and fabricating grades.

Angenora Mechato's suit is the third whistle-blower case to be filed against Mavericks in Education Florida, a for-profit, West Palm Beach-based company that manages eight charter schools in the state. Two former employees at Mavericks High in Homestead made similar allegations last year, and their suits are still pending.

In her legal complaint, Mechato says she began working as a special-ed "lead teacher" and
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maverickshigh.com

Mavericks High in Homestead has suffered violence too.

​Last month, we brought you news of violence involving Mavericks High charter school students in Homestead. One 17-year-old was arrested for bringing a gun to school, and a 16-year-old student was shot and killed by a police officer. Now the Mavericks High in North Miami Beach is making headlines for crime -- and city officials are not happy about it.

According to the Miami Herald : "Police records show that since the school opened in 2009 to December 2011, police have arrested 32 Mavericks students and responded to 88 calls for service at the school. But police say the number of incidents is likely much higher."
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