Here is the The Short List for July 23.

Third grade reading a critical moment

Of course every year of a child’s schooling is important, but experts agree that third grade is the pivot point — when students switch from learning to read to reading to learn.

If they fall behind here, their chances of academic success in the future diminish.

That’s why Studer Community Institute fellow Reggie Dogan looked at what Santa Rosa and Escambia school districts are doing to catch children who are falling behind in third-grade reading.

If you’re a parent of an elementary school aged child, you should check out Reggie’s story here.

EntreCon is coming — are you ready?

As part of a new partnership with the University of West Florida, Quint and Rishy Studer and the university are creating the Center for Entrepreneurship. Designed to help drive business in the community, the center will start teaching the notion of entrepreneurship from elementary school onward through college and beyond.

To kick that off, we’re hosting EntreCon, Nov. 5-6.

It’s part of the effort to make Pensacola a hotspot for entrepreneurial thinking and education. Studer Community Institute fellow Mike Ensley has the details here.

Can I get a fire truck?

That’s the question people who live near five Escambia County fire stations have been asking — and data shows that many times, the answer is not what they want to hear.

Five volunteer stations — Bellview, Ferry Pass, Innerarity Point, Myrtle Grove and West Pensacola — are missing responses to fire calls. At some stations as many as 40 percent of the fire calls.

Despite everyone’s best efforts, the volunteer ranks are not enough at these stations to ensure staffing that matches the demand for service.

County Commissioners were given a couple of options for increasing the fire service fee to adequately staff those five stations with career firefighters. It would take 60 positions to staff all five with career firefighters 24/7. Tonight they will discuss raising the fire fee from $85 a year to $100 a year.

That will pay for 24 paid firefighters. Commissioners told Public Safety Director Mike Weaver he had the discretion to allocate those 24 firefighters among the five stations in the most need as he saw fit.

Read Studer Community Institute fellow Shannon Nickinson’s story here

.

The man from Chumuckla

Will he or won’t he?

That’s the question on the lips of Panhandle politicos as U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller mulls a run for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Marco Rubio. InWeekly’s Rick Outzen caught up with Miller to talk about that, and other issues close to representative’s heart, including the fate of the federal courthouse in Pensacola and long, hard slog of reforming the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Read Rick’s story here.

And in other business….

Read why Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward III embraces social media as a tool to talk with his constituents, what the top 10 causes of death in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties were last year, and how the UWF Center for Research and Bioremediation is poised to take advantage of a wave of research into the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill.

“The Disappearing Apalachicola Oyster”

Chris Furhmeister, a writer for the website Eater, which is part of Vox Media, has a great story about one of our area’s greatest assets — Apalachicola oysters. His story starts off at Peg Leg Pete’s, by the way.

These beauties are fast becoming a casualty of the battle for water rights among Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Metro Atlanta needs water from the Chattahoochee River for drinking water. Apalachicola needs fresh water from the river downstream to keep the salinity of the bay low and the oysters thriving.

Florida and Georgia have exchanged lawsuits over the issue. Read more here.