Each year, Santa Rosa District Schools gather members of the school board, Santa Rosa Education Foundation and the community together to surprise the pick for Santa Rosa Teacher of the Year. This year, the group ventured to Allentown to announce Christal Bennett, Central School’s band teacher, as the district’s best.

At the end of Clearview St. on Garcon Point, you’ll find a gated, 30-acre property with some interesting inhabitants. The property is home to eight horses, a donkey and a litany of pigs. The people who look after these animals, mostly volunteers, are there not only for the animals but for visitors.

When some people hear the word, “snake,” it often elicits responses such as screams or shivers up the spine. While a fear of snakes, which sometimes manifests itself in ophidiophobia, a more intense fear of snakes, may be common, it doesn’t negate the fact they are here.

Join Santa Rosa County Public Safety and Florida State Animal Response Coalition (FL SARC) for the Small Animal Emergency and Disaster Sheltering Course. The course is being offered in two levels, Awareness Level (Level 1) and Operations Level (Level 2). Thanks to a generous grant from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, class registrations are FREE!

Who says you can’t go home?

For Michelle Barlow, East Milton Elementary School’s library media specialist and 2023 teacher of the year, the East Milton community has always been a place she called home. In fact, it’s where her desire to become a teacher and, later a librarian, first came into being.

A Wallace Lake K-8 student will have her art in the State Capitol Building in Tallahassee during the 2024 Legislative Session.

ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, a Florida based, family-owned wine and spirits retailer, opened a new location in Navarre on Thursday, November 9. The store is located at 8315 Mikajack Avenue in Navarre.

For Haley Fender, Rhodes Elementary School’s 2023 Teacher of Year selection, being a teacher was never a question.

“My mom has stories of me pretending to (be a) teacher with my little sister like sitting her down with stuffed animals and pretending to read a book,” Fender said. “Its just kind of what I always wanted to do. There was never a lightbulb moment.”

Fentanyl usage has reached a crisis point in the United States. The potent and dangerous synthetic opioid, which is oftentimes mixed with other drugs like heroin and methamphetamine, is the leading cause of death in adults aged 18-45, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).