What they're saying on tampabay.com: 10 quotables of the week

After just a few days of our new commenting system on tampabay.com stories, I'd like to welcome and thank our nearly 1,000 new members.

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Some lively discussions took place on stories this week; here are 10 comments that caught our eye.

Sanitation worker killed when car crashes into garbage truck:

Richlew wrote: "I worked for waste management back in the late 80's this type of accident was the crews worst fears."

Wasteworker wrote: "As the wife of a wasteworker this hits home. It could have been my husband. The kids and I pray for him every morning to be safe each day. People do not realize the danger they put other people in when they get in a hurry on the road. Can we just slow down a bit, whatever we are in a hurry for will be there if we arrive five minutes later than we planned. Our prayers go out to the family." 

Florida approves 14.6% hike to Universal Property's homeowners insurance rate

Ace: "NICE....kick 'em when their down. That's the way to build customer loyalty."

VStPete wrote:"Crist, you did a bang-up job getting our insurance under control... sigh."

Birddog asked: "Why is California home insurance LESS than Florida ? They have: Mudslides, earthquakes, wind, rain, etc., but they pay LESS than we do."

Student says Gibbs High shimmers despite F rating

St. Petersburg's Gibbs High School was hit with gloomy news earlier this summer when it received its first first F rating from the state. A new principal, Kevin Gordon, was named to "turn the school around."

Many tampabay.com readers expressed little optimism for the school, blaming lack of involvement from parents and students who don't care. 

One Gibbs student took offense to the comments and to the perception of her school.

"I'm absolutely hurt and disgusted," Amanda Kiener wrote in a letter on It's Your Times, the St. Petersburg Times' community journalism site.

Kiener learned about Gibbs' arts program, the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, when she was in eighth grade and set her sights on attending -- even though she lives in Tarpon Springs. For the last three years, she's boarded a bus at 4:45 a.m. for her 2½-hour ride to school. Kiener is entering her senior year and already has been offered a scholarship to the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Kiener says the community views the school in two ways, either for its arts program or as the "school in the hood." But it's more than that, she says: It's a united school, with a dedicated teaching staff.

Reader asks: Is it time for a pit bull ban?

Brett Haywood of St. Petersburg posed that question after a 5-year-old Madeira Beach boy was seriously injured when a pit bullterrier bit him in the mouth on Saturday. 

"Just wondering how many more children (and adults) have to be injured by pit bulls before we actually consider banning them from St. Petersburg?" Haywood wrote in an e-mail to Let's Talk. "How sad for that five-year old child in Madeira Beach who was highlighted in the paper today. Yes, this kind of thing seems to happened with regularity where a pit bull will badly injure someone.
 
"Are all pit bulls bad dogs? Certainly not. Yes, they seem to have a tendency to behave in violent and erratic ways. We in Florida concern ourselves with problems with sharks, alligators, and snakes, but I would dare say that more people are injured by pit bulls than those three combined. When are we going to wake up and consider a ban on pit bulls like they have in Miami and Denver?"

Your thoughts? Should Florida consider a ban or is Haywood overreacting?
 

Teacher struggles with students who don't care

A Pinellas County teacher writes a revealing account of life in her high school classroom, asking what to do about students who don't care. Virginia Oliva's letter, published on ItsYourTimes.com, describes being hamstrung by school regulations and uninvolved parents, as well.

She says students show up for her class "equipped with electronics capable of playing their favorite downloaded music, mostly rap, playing television shows, videos or movies, e-mailing, texting or talking to friends and family members.

"On any given day, these teens walk into the classroom with plugs in both ears, a phone in one hand and the other hand holding up their pants -- but no paper, pens or pencils."

She lists 8 possible solutions for the problems in schools. Her final one: Parents caring.

Read her piece, share your thoughts.

Touched by Summer Moll's story

Cheryl Lassiter, a former St. Petersburg resident who is director of a Volunteer Mobile Emergency Response Unit in Austin, Texas, writes about how touched she was by the story of 4-year-old Summer Moll. The little girl was critically injured in a head-on crash in September that killed her mother.

"I am the mother of six children and could not even fathom the thought of even one of my children facing such a reality as this. The truth is no one can and more than likely you (the Times) have offended a small percent of the readers in the St. Pete Times area and that's ok too," she writes on ItsYourtimes.com.

She followed up with an e-mail later saying "I pray that many will take this story and apply it to their everyday lives so that not one more person dies like Summer Moll's mother did."

He's got no sympathy for Linda Bollea

An It's Your Times writer, John Masterson of Spring Hill, offers some perspective for Linda Bollea and her financial woes.

Masterson reminds us of the case of Venecia Lonis, a 4-year-old Haitian girl who suffers from malnutrition.

Masterson writes of Bollea: "Poor baby may not be able to watch cable T.V. and worse then that, may have to wash her own windows."

Read his full piece, offer your comments on ItsYourTimes.com.

An ode to the Rays

Edith Long of Sun City Center asked us to publish her poem about the Rays.

"We have buses that take us to your games and we watch it also on T.V.," she wrote. "We're so proud of the Rays."

Read her poem on It'sYourTimes.com

She's fallen in love with the Rays

Today, It's Your Times  -- the St. Petersburg Times' community journalism site -- published a sweet letter from new Rays fan Celeste Spoon of Brooksville.

Spoon had surgery for a torn Achilles tendon and has been in a cast ever since April. She joined her husband to watch the Rays one night and has been hooked ever since. "That night I fell in love with the Rays, and I want them to know they've made my injury bearable," Spoon wrote.

She later explained to me on the phone that her husband has cancer and the Rays' winning ways "have saved my sanity."

She says she's looking forward to walking again so that she can attend a game.

Photo submitted by Sara Currier,  Spoon's granddaughter