bserver O PALM COAST
YOU. YOUR NEIGHBORS. YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
SPORTS
NEIGHBORHOOD
FPC, Matanzas battle across the net. Tennis is back!
Hot sauce, Banana Derby highlight the Ag Museum’s weekend festival. PAGE 17
PAGE 13
Tonya Kronk
Courtesy photo
+ Kronk crowned Miss Sweetheart of North Florida Tonya Kronk, of Palm Coast, has been crowned Miss Sweetheart of North Florida. She will advance to the 2014 North Florida State Miss Heart of the USA Pageant, where she will be competing for scholarship money.
NEWS
Dr. Morris Carter honored; plus: Can you name all the gas stations in Flagler? PAGE 3
eat it and weep By Shanna Fortier | Community Editor
YOU DECIDE
‘Restaurant: Impossible’ will be paying a visit to the Palm Coast cafe.
School choice expands
Grace’s Place to get televised makeover About a year ago, Grace and Ed Tutak, owners of Grace’s Place, which opened in 2012 after some struggles, put in an application to Food Network’s “Restaurant: Impossible.” “It was really a time of desperation,” Grace Tutak said. “The restaurant was not doing well at all, mostly because of my lack of expe-
rience, and the crew was a hindrance, not a help.” The crew of previous employees from Best Bagels & Deli, which was in the space before Tutak took it over, took Tutak for a ride, she said. Food was being wasted, and equipment was break-
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It was really a time of desperation ... The restaurant was not doing well at all. Grace Tutak
SEE GRACE’S / PAGE 4
LIVING HISTORY
+ ‘American Idol’ finalist comes to Palm Coast “American Idol” finalist Phil Stacey will be appearing at three free events in Palm Coast this weekend. The first is a concert and meet-and-greet 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at Evangel Assembly of God of Palm Coast, 99 N. Old Kings Road. He will be performing some of his old songs, as well as music from his latest album. Friend and musician Trevor Hager will also be accompanying Stacey. The Thomas Sisters, of Palm Coast, will open the show. Stacey will also be part of the 8:30 a.m. worship service at the church. Sunday night, he will be featured at a special event for students, youth and single young adults, “Live With Intention,” at Parkview Baptist Church, 5435 Belle Terre Parkway. The event starts at 6 p.m. and is cosponsored by Halifax Baptist Association, Parkview Baptist and Evangel A/G of Palm Coast. All events are free and open to the public. Call 793-4653 or email palmcoastevangel@aol.com.
SEE OUR TOWN / PAGE 2
Photos by Shanna Fortier
Angel Hopkins dances with the liturgical dance ministry of Mount Calvary Baptist Church. For more coverage of the 11th-annual Youth Black History Reality Program, see Page 21.
BABYSITTER ACCUSED By Jonathan Simmons | News Editor
‘No contest’ plea in sex abuse case Deputies say Thomas Underwood, 32, assaulted numerous children. A Palm Coast man deputies say sexually battered at least four children over the course of several years — beginning in 1996, when he was 15 — pleaded no contest Monday to eight charges against him. Thomas Underwood, now 32, faces up to life in prison. His victims, according to Flagler County Sheriff’s Office reports, were boys and girls he’d
been tasked with babysitting. One victim told deputies the abuse began when she was 5 and continued until she was 8 or 9. She didn’t tell anyone then, according to a deputy’s report, because Underwood told her that if she did “he would hurt or kill her family,” sometimes brandishing a knife or pellet gun as he made the threat. Another victim told deputies
Jonathan Simmons | News Editor
Transfers widely granted.
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OUR TOWN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2014
Underwood began assaulting her when she was 8 and he was 15. She said he told her that if she didn’t do what he wanted, “he would put ‘wolf spiders’ that lived in the closet in her mouth,” according to a Sheriff’s Office report. His sentence will be determined by a judge at a later date, Seventh Judicial Circuit representative Klare Ly said.
The Flagler School District is preparing to open up parents’ options to transfer children from one school to another, through the School Choice program. “It used to be that you had to have an identifiable reason; it couldn’t just be that you thought another school was better,” Flagler Schools Student Services Director Katrina Townsend said during a presentation at a Tuesday workshop of the Flagler County School Board. Many applications for transfers have been denied in the past. Under a draft proposal Townsend presented at the meeting, though, parents would no longer need to state a reason to transfer a child to a new school. The change is in part a response to a problem with the current policy, Townsend said. District staff started noticing that a number of parents who applied for school transfers and were denied didn’t keep their children in their home-zone school — they pulled them out for home schooling. Those cases spurred a review of the district’s School Choice procedure, Townsend said. The proposed new policy would still have some restrictions, in part because of state and federal law. “We do have a state statute which drives School Choice,” Townsend said. “The schools have to have capacity to do that, the schools have to be able to maintain class size, and they have to be able to maintain a diverse enrollment.” School choice transfers couldn’t interfere with federally mandated desegregation measures, she said. And parents couldn’t use the School Choice option to get a child out of disciplinary measures like suspensions, or transfer a child who has severe discipline problems, is enrolled in an intervention program or is behind their grade level.
SEE SCHOOLS / PAGE 5
INDEX Cavaliere............ 28 Classifieds . ....... 35
Cops Corner...........8 Fortier................ 22
McMillan...............6 O’Brien.............. 13
Real Estate......... 26 Simmons............ 22
Vol. 5, No. 3 One section