Your Florida Daily: Supersonic travel may be making a comeback

ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s Wednesday, August 17, and here’s the latest edition of Your Florida Daily.

You’re Hired

According to Florida’s largest teachers union, an estimated 6,000 teachers are needed to fill classroom vacancies across the state.

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his ideas on how to recruit new teachers.

His plan includes the following:

• Waiving fees for the teacher certification exam and adding bonuses.
• A teacher apprenticeship program that will give apprentices two years of teaching under a mentor.
• A new scholarship program that would give high school teachers the opportunity to obtain their master’s degree and teach dual-enrollment classes at the high schools they work at.
• A governor’s recruitment program to bring in retired military veterans, first responders, law enforcement, EMTs, paramedics and firefighters who have a bachelor’s degree.

“We’ve got people that have served, you know, 20 years and in law enforcement, they retire and some of them are looking for kind of the next chapter in their life,” Gov. DeSantis said.

Orange county school board chair Teresa Jacobs pushed back, telling News 6 proper training is important.

“No, they are not qualified because they’ve been a firefighter or law-enforcement to come into a classroom and teach I absolutely do not believe that’s appropriate,” Jacobs said.

“I think that they need to go through the training and the education they need to be in the classroom and they need to be certified and they need to have the same qualifications as anybody else who’s teaching.”

Earlier this year Gov. DeSantis signed a bill that raised minimum teacher pay to $47,500. However, Florida ranks near the bottom for average teacher salaries in the U.S., according to data compiled by the National Education Association.

Jet-New

Supersonic air travel could return to Florida by the end of the decade.

American Airlines has agreed to buy up to 20 supersonic jets that could fly passengers from Miami to London in just under five hours. The plane is called “Overture” and is built by the company Boom.

Tickets will cost about $4,000 to $5,000 to fly from New York to London. Back in the 1990′s, the “Concord” flew people across the Atlantic Ocean at over 1,300 miles per hour, but it never caught on due to the high cost.

Overture is slated to roll out in 2025 and carry its first passengers by 2029.

Sea Turtle Baby Boom

Over 100,000 loggerhead sea turtle nests have been documented in Florida so far this nesting season, according to the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI).

Officials said the preliminary totals are already more than the entire 2021 nesting season.

Sea turtle nesting season lasts until October 31.

A Completely Random Florida Fact

Back in 1996, Citibank came up with an innovative solution to help in-line skaters access their money.

They went to Miami Beach and installed the first ever roll-up ATM. They built a pink ramp just for skaters to roll up to the ATM outside.

Citibank claimed they wanted to try this at banks across the country but as far as I can tell that did not happen.