The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 28

Sunday, September 9, 2001 The Palm Beach Post PalmEeachPost.com Section a Officer shoots hit-and-run suspect PAGE 4B Don't expect bad weather to let up soon PAGE 4B LOCAL NEWS Addie Greene: A commissioner for all races 'I don't want to be a LUliliilloo Wilts I wnu people believe is only concerned I about black people. YAtt rA 1 1 4-1 JsisiJ7sf By Alexandra Navarro Clifton i Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Addie Greene is the black Palm Beach County commissioner. That's what she calls herself not District 7 Commissioner Addie Greene or former state Rep. Addie Greene. After a year on the commission and two decades in politics, Greene accepts that race still bubbles on the edges of every conversation and every meeting.

When any of the six other commissioners walk into a room, they're immediately ad dressed by their title. But for the past year, county staff members and citizens have called her by her first name. Doing that somehow makes her not as important as the others, she says. And she's expected to care for only for minority issues. "I don't want to be a commissioner who people believe is only concerned about black people," said Greene, 58.

"I'm for all the people in my district" Greene was elected last year, defeating incumbent Maude Ford Lee, who had held the minority commission seat since it was created 11 years ago. To win, Greene aggressively courted white Republican voters in the district whom Lee had largely ignored. White voters made the difference in Greene's 173-vote victory. The long, skinny District 7 runs along the coast from Riviera Beach to Delray Beach, picking up minority neighborhoods along the way. It also includes Palm Beach.

"Although race never came up when I visited white voters, I knew I was on display," Greene recalled. "That didn't bother me. Their roads have potholes and they want lower taxes like everyone else." Supporters credit her with taking time to learn the county system, which includes a dizzying number of departments and boards and policies. But critics complain she hasn't done enough and should be more visible in the black community. Greene said black voters are Please see GREENE, 5B i in jur uu uiv yvvyiv in my Palm Beach County Commissioner Addie Greene I nm.mii nui um 'Every teacher and student should see this, to know what an old schoolhouse was really like.

-r- Frank Cerabino Pick your peril during the calm before the storm JENNIFER PODISStaff Photographer Eleven-year-olds (from left) Amanda Phillips, Alison Byrne, Kelsey Stofft and Claire Fontanetta hide from the rain during performances Saturday. Students young, old enjoy schoolhouse Boynton Beach's Schoolhouse Children's Museum celebrates the building's 88 years with a preview. By Shannon Colavecchio Palm Beach Post Staff Writer BOYNTON BEACH If Saturday was a "soft" opening for the city's long-awaited Schoolhouse Children's Museum, it was also a wet one. As the cloudy sky vacillated between periods of dripping and pouring, dozens of families and former school attendees scurried into Boyn-ton Beach's historic schoolhouse seeking a bit of shelter, a bit of education and a lot of fun. A decade after residents and school alumni first dreamed of turning the former two-story elementary school into a children's museum of Palm Beach County history, the museum is nearly ready to open.

School alumni will come from as far as California for a reunion on Nov. 3, and the museum is scheduled to open Nov. 6 for its first official day of business. On Saturday, museum officials Thomas, who taught at the school for 20 years starting in 1955, was among several school devotees who sat back Saturday and watched the children enjoying the museum they'd worked so hard to build. "This is one of the things I wanted to do when I retired, to see this through," Thomas said.

"Just watching them today, they're so interested!" Boynton Beach's museum drive is part of a nationwide trend: building children's museums near long-deteriorated downtowns as educational, entertaining bait to families and school groups. In Florida, Boynton Beach's children's museum will join eight others. "This was well worth the wait," said museum Director Arleen Denni-son. "I don't think we ever dreamed it could be so amazing." shannoncolavecchiopbpost.com How do you survive a quiet hurricane season? We always talk about the hurricane season in terms of what to do for an approaching storm. But what happens when the season, like this one, shapes up to be quieter than George W.

Bush on What happens if you're sitting there with your batteries, bottled water and tracking maps, and the lawn is still dry enough to need the sprinklers? The problem stems from something I like to call The Constant Peril Theory. I The Constant Peril Theory postulates tlit to be content, we must focus on an acceptable level of danger. Too much danger is certainly not healthy. But neither is a lack of danger. We need a token amount of peril to feel like vital human beings.

The lack of a viable hurricane threat thjs season has left us with a peril deficit hre, something that over time, can develop into a frantic casting about for terror. Such as worrying about being eaten by sharks, or being bitten by mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus. When a Category 3 storm waltzes up the coast, it knocks out more than electrical power. It knocks out a drumbeat of attention to mad cow disease, the hole in the ozone layer and the concern over spending the Social Security surplus. Our plate of peril is only so big, and when we dump a hurricane in it, the stuff near the edges sloshes off.

Conversely, no approaching hurricanes leave us scurrying for things to fill the void. Without coordinates of latitude and longitude to plot, we might take the time to worry that (fill in the blank) causes cancer in; lab rats, that the United Nations conference on racism was a flop or that singer Mariah Carey might be having trouble pulling out of her personal crisis. 2 Nobody in a hurricane worries about Mariah Carey, unless she has taken the mattress you wanted to huddle under. If no hurricane comes remotely close to us by next week, I've decided to start worrying about the impact of Mexican trucks driving into Texas. That's how desperate I've become.

I went to the beach last weekend and looked for fins, for crying out loud. And Wednesday night, I found myself watching Larry King interview U.S. Rep. Gary Condit's daughter, Cadee. Just remembering her name is embarrassing enough.

But no, I actually sat there, as if I really cared whether she thought the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy would affect her father's chances for reelection. It took me five minutes before I regained my senses, and went back to scanning the Atlantic for puffs of disturbed air off the African coast. Things are getting so bad, I don't even have an orange tree in my yard, and I'm starting to get worked up about citrus canker. Don't get me wrong. I'm not wishing for a killer hurricane, or longing for the misery of the floods of Cambodia, the land-grabbing in Zimbabwe or the constant terror of the Middle East I just need that token amount of peril an approaching storm (that eventually misses us) provides this time of year.

And without a storm, I dread the other concerns The Constant Peril Theory will require me to adopt. It's enough to make a South Floridian long for November, the time when we can shift gears to a new peril, one that strikes on the roads, in restaurants, and practically wherever people gather. I'm talking about the arrival of the snowbirds. Say what you may about snowbirds, but one thing's for sure, we don't have to wonder about whether they'll show up. They're a peril we can count on.

frank, cerabinopbpost.com Re-creations of main-street Boca Raton, Boynton and Delray Beach and a high-tech communications exhibit will teach the history of the Barefoot Mailman and the evolution of e-mail. About half of the exhibits, which were paid for with a $1 million county recreation grant, made their debut Saturday. Ten-year-old Chelsea Zulauf said the best part was "when the lighthouse dude comes out" That dude is a robotic version of Hannibal Pierce, the gatekeeper at Jupiter Lighthouse 100 years ago. "It's like, you would not imagine this being a school 'cuz there's no desks or kids," said 10-year-old Jamie Smith. But there is a teacher.

celebrated the schoolhouse's 88th birthday by offering a sneak preview of the $3.4 million, facility that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "This really brings back memories," said King's Academy teacher Charlotte Klar, looking at a black-and-white picture of teacher Betty Thomas' 1956 class. "It makes me remember that we didn't have air conditioning how the old heaters ticked all the time. And we had these wood floors, too. Every teacher and student should see this, to know what an old schoolhouse was really like." During their visit, they can also immerse themselves in the roots and lore of Boynton Beach and the surrounding area, as far back as 1880.

meet their match Second insect soon to take a bite out of nuisance trees Parents planning last-minute plea to save teacher aides ttvi. Psyllid Researchers hope to start releasing psyllids in January. that has swarmed over 400,000 acres since people brought it to Florida in the late 1800s. But researchers hope the pair of bugs will slow the melaleuca's growth after crews whack the trees with blades and poisons. "That's what we're trying to do to suppress the ability of the melaleuca to move back to areas where it's been cleared," said Ted Center, research leader at the USDA's Invasive Plant Research Laboratory in Fort Lauderdale.

Already, some small melaleuca trees are dying after the beetles scarfed up their leaves and stopped them from flowering. Researchers released 8,000 beetles initially, then later harvested 200,000 from the wild and spread them to 150 sites around the state, Center said. The government plans to start a major redistribution effort next By Robert P. King Palm Beach Post Staff Writer A stubby Australian beetle is taking a bite out of one of Florida's most noxious pest plants, just as federal scientists hoped when they released the bug into the Everglades 4V years ago. Now they're preparing to unleash a second insect from Australia, with the same goal: reining in the fast-breeding, water-guzzling melaleuca tree.

The first insect, the melaleuca snout beetle, is doing even better than researchers had expected in nibbling the tree's buds and new leaves, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The new arrival, called a psyl-lid, is an aphid-like insect with toxic saliva whose larvae cover the tree with tufts of cottony wax. Researchers hope to start releasing the psyllids in January. By themselves, the insects will probably not eradicate the melaleuca, an Australian native By Kimberiy Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer I Palm Beach County parents are massing to de- fend classroom teacher aides, hoping that a last stand on Monday may sway school board members to reverse the cuts that reduced aide hours this year.

Parents and teacher aides plan to speak during a public hearing Monday before the scheduled adoption of the school district's 2001-02 $2 billion budget. Already, a letter-writing campaign has swamped board members with pleas to keep the aides, who help certified teachers with everything from grading papers to monitoring the playground and walking students to lunch. But schools Superintendent Art Johnson is questioning the necessity of having teacher aides, and cut the number of aides this year by 200 positions. That reduced the ranks to 2,000. He's hinted about more cuts next year.

Johnson is backed by a 1999 Tennessee-based study on class size and student achievement that found aides have no significant effect on increasing I Ml I I- II Melaleuca snout beetle Released in the Everglades 4Y2 years ago Please see BEETLES, 3B Photos: Agricultural Research Service Mease see TEACHER AIDES, 5.