- SCHOOL PAY: Polk’s School Board voted 4-3 to raise pay for veteran teachers by $650, not the $1,500 requested by the teachers’ union, and to give no raise to paraeducators and support staff. Members supporting the higher raises for teachers were Sarah Fortney, Lisa Miller and Lynn Wilson. Wilson said his vote was a protest of state-mandated millage rollbacks that hamper education funding.
- HOSPITAL: Lakeland Regional Health has informed at least a dozen former patients that their laparoscopic hysterectomies used permanent sutures instead of dissolvable ones. Complications said to be related to the sutures prompted three recent lawsuits against the hospital.
Source: The Ledger