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Gwinnett Daily Post FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2016
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Vol. 47, No. 15
Redevelopment planned for Prado site BY CURT YEOMANS
curt.yeomans @gwinnettdailypost.com
A slowly dying shopping center near Gwinnett Place Mall is in line for a massive redevelopment. The largely vacant, 32-acre Gwinnett Prado shopping center on Pleasant Hill Road was bought by new owners out of
bankruptcy proceedings about two months ago. Those new owners are now looking to take on a radical overhaul of the property that could see most of what’s currently there torn down. They are eyeing a mixed-use project that’s attractive to millennials, although details haven’t been finalized yet.
“(Gwinnett Prado has) a lot of the old traditional design that would be considered obsolete today, open spaces for parking, and it’s really unfriendly for what the current consumer likes,” John Mansour, from the Ayoub and Mansour law firm, said. “What we’re looking
The old Rio Bravo at the Gwinnett Prado sits empty on Thursday. The Prado’s new owners are planning to redevelop most of the property, except the main building, which still has tenants. (Staff Photo: Curt Yeomans)
See PRADO, Page 8A
Gwinnett fire, police to hold 7th fall festival FROM STAFF REPORTS
Teacher Lynn McArthur, who is in her ninth year at Wesleyan, and who has worked in education for 31 years, is leading a focused effort on reading where the school is training its teachers in the Orton Gillingham approach. Wesleyan’s 250 students and their families have set a goal to read 500 books and 100 million words this school year. (Staff Photos: Keith Farner)
Mission: Literacy
The Gwinnett fire and police departments will take part in a friendly softball competition while celebrating their partnership with the community at the seventh annual Public Safety Fall Festival on Saturday. The event will feature the ballgame tournament and activities for all ages at Coolray Field, 2500 Buford Drive, in Lawrenceville from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free, but guests are asked to bring a canned food donation for the North Gwinnett Cooperative Ministry. “(The event) serves as a fun way for citizens to interact with fire and police personnel in a non-emergency environment,” said Capt. Tommy Rutledge, a spokesman for the fire department. The festival will include police car and helicopter displays, Touch-a-Truck, a car and motorcycle show, pet adoptions, car seat checks, the SWAT team and more. For more information, contact Gwinnett fire’s Community Risk Reduction Division Education section at 678-5184845 or fireprograms@gwinnettcounty. com.
Wesleyan sets goals to put reading, family first Lawmakers look for ways to cut number of uninsured
BY KEITH FARNER
keith.farner @gwinnettdailypost.com
PEACHTREE CORNERS — Making reading an enjoyable habit while setting schoolwide goals of reading books and words is a priority at Wesleyan this school year. The school is training all of its kindergarten through fourth-grade teachers in the Orton Gillingham approach while also starting a program called iRead. Teacher Lynn McArthur, who is in her ninth year at Wesleyan and 31st year in education, is leading the effort. She worked over the summer to tailor the curriculum to match this effort. She established a guided reading program in which teachers can focus on a set of books targeted for a specific reading level. McArthur is certified from the Academy of Orton Gillingham. The school has regularly sent teachers to be trained through the years, but this is a concerted effort to get every teacher on the same page and speaking the same language, said Wesleyan Lower School Principal Jason Erb. After about 30 hours of training, the teachers receive classroom educator certification. “The best thing about reading a book is when I’m not reading a book, but when I
BY ANDY MILLER Staff Correspondent
beginning of the year and put at a specific level that, for example, may not necessarily be the average third grade level. “So they’re able to access books that give them the best opportunity at comprehension,” McArthur said. “We have some lower children in a grade that to read just a particular third grade book, they could get through it, but they’re not going to enjoy it and it’s not going to be successful. So we’re customizing
A legislative panel heard testimony Wednesday on ideas for reducing the high number of uninsured people in Georgia through alternatives to a standard Medicaid expansion. The Senate study committee focused on a variation of expansion that Arkansas and other states have launched. Under this “premium assistance,’’ a state would use Medicaid funds to purchase coverage in the health insurance exchange for newly eligible adults. Sen. Renee That was the basic idea Unterman of legislation introduced by state Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, DMarietta, in the most recent General Assembly session earlier this year. His plan drew a legislative hearing — a first for any expansion proposal in Georgia — but not a vote. Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has been adopted by 31 states, the latest being Louisiana. Most of these follow a standard approach to expansion as specified under the ACA. So far, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and leaders in the GOP-dominated General Assembly have opposed expansion,
See LITERACY, Page 9A
See UNINSURED, Page 8A
Student Noah Beckman writes foundations of words during a class taught by Lynn McArthur.
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hold my place and begin to think and wonder where the book takes me intellectually, and then I come back to the book,” said Erb, who is in his third year at Wesleyan. “A five- to 10-minute pause, or three-minute pause, is awesome because it takes you places you wouldn’t normally go because you start thinking deeply.”
The Orton Gillingham approach is a move away from learning “sight words.” “The way that we want to approach them is that they understand how to critically process the language,” McArthur said. “That they’re not just memorizing words. We want them to be able to look at a word they’ve never seen before and know the meaning of it and take it to the next level. Our language is very complicated, and we want them to understand the structure of it.” Students are assessed at the
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INSIDE Classified .......8B
Horoscope .....4A
Nation ........... 5A
Sports ............1B
Comics...........7A
Local ............. 2A
Obituaries ......8A
Weather .........4A
Crossword .....7A
Lottery........... 4A
Perspectives ..6A
Weekend........1C
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