Olympic Heights Grad Passes Away in Jet Ski Accident

Joel Deleon in a 2014 photo
Joel Deleon in a 2014 photo

Many West Boca residents are mourning the passing of Joel Deleon, who died yesterday in a Jet Ski accident in South County Regional Park. Mr. Deleon was a graduate of Olympic Heights High School.
We were alerted to the incident by a tweet from Fire Rescue:
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Fire Rescue subsequently tweeted that the missing person had been found, but there were no further official statements.
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There were a number of comments from readers, including comments identifying Mr. Deleon (tagging his Facebook page) and that he had passed away.
Mr. Deleon’s Facebook page is now flooded with messages from friends. We can see dozens of them and it’s likely that there are many more we can’t see due to user privacy settings.
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One friend posted this picture:
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Another used this as a platform for advice, though we don’t know whether or not Mr. Deleon was wearing a life jacket:
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There is also a gathering planned for tonight, posted as a Facebook event and already with dozens of people going.
And there are so many more. Here are just a few:
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From West Boca News, we wish comfort to the Deleon family in this difficult time. Rest in peace Mr. Deleon.
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Going Bald and Saving Lives at Olympic Heights and West Boca High

Brian Levine is a student at West Boca High.
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Cross-town rivals West Boca High School and Olympic Heights High School are teaming up in order to fight against one common enemy, cancer. This year, these two high schools continue the eternal struggle against cancer by participating in St. Baldrick’s.
St. Baldrick’s is an organization that first started on March 17th, 2000. It began as a challenge Tim Kenny set forth to his colleagues John Bender and Enda McDonnell. One simple question – “How will you give back in return for your own good fortune in business?” – kicked off a massive, international program unlike anything seen before. Today, thousands of people world-wide volunteer, donate, and shave their heads in order to help put an end to children’s cancer. If you want to learn more about St. Baldrick’s, click here.
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Here in Boca Raton, high school students at Olympic Heights and West Boca are shaving their heads in order to support this cause. West Boca High has been participating since 2013 while Olympic Heights is going on their eleventh year of participation. Now, both schools together have earned well over half a million dollars. Students are working hard to raise money for the event by sending mail and emails and by taking advantage of social media.
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Olympic Height’s event will take place on February 26th at their gymnasium. In order to prepare for the event, students and teachers alike are selling custom dog tags ($5), wristbands ($5) and t-shirts ($10). They are being sold in room 8106 at Olympic Heights. Students here must raise a total of $100 dollars in order to get their head shaved. If you would like to help Olympic Heights, you can either write a check out to Olympic Heights, donate in cash to room 8106, or donate online to their website here. Donations can go to the entire school or to an individual student.
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West Boca’s event is also taking place on February 26th at the gymnasium in their school. To participate as a ‘shavee’ in the event, students at West Boca High have to raise $50. At the school store and around campus, volunteers are selling St. Baldrick’s bracelets ($5) that must be bought in order to attend the event. To donate and help raise money for West Boca High, you can write a check out to West Boca High, donate cash to the school store, or donate online to their website here. Donations can go to the entire school or to an individual student.
A child is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes world-wide. Come support schools and students alike as they work together to help save lives and put an end to cancer this St. Baldrick’s. If you have the opportunity, go bald! After all, hair grows back!
Pictures provided by Joseph Marutollo and Elena McKnight.
Note: Another student wrote up last year’s St. Baldrick’s event at Olympic Heights.

Straight A's for High Schools in West Boca

The school grades are in for high schools and West Boca did well. Out of 524 high schools in the state that were graded, Spanish River High was #50 on the list with West Boca at #84 and Olympic Heights at #111. Boca High, which serves some West Boca families, did even better at #24.
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The numbers for our local schools are actually better than they appear. Many of the highly ranked schools on the list are specialty magnet or charter schools, such as Suncoast (7) and Dreyfoos (10). Most or all of the students in these schools get in through a competitive process and so they have few weak students to bring their scores down. Our West Boca high schools are all open and take everyone in their zoned districts. The #1 school on the list is the Pine View School in Sarasota, which is an all-gifted program. #2 and #3 are choice programs in Brevard that only admit students who consistently meet standards on the same tests that drive the scores in this system.
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Within Palm Beach County, the two schools at the top (Suncoast and Dreyfoos) are both magnet schools. Leaving such programs out, Boca High and Spanish River are the top two in the county. Other regular high schools that posted top scores in the county include Jupiter High, Park Vista (Lake Worth), West Boca and Wellington.

Spanish River High’s parking lot after a heavy rain.

One interesting note is that Atlantic High ended up with a higher overall score than Olympic Heights even though OH had better test scores, particularly in reading.
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Two spreadsheets are below, first for Palm Beach and Broward counties, and then for the whole state. They are based on the main spreadsheet from the state database, but with some edits to highlight Palm Beach County and West Boca schools.
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/hs-grades-palm-beach-broward.xls”]
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/All-Districts-HSG-highlighted.xls”]

4 Arrests in 2014 for Ricardo Tincel

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West Boca youth Ricardo Tincel (18) was arrested Thursday for the fourth time in 2014. This arrest was on grand theft charges. In October he was picked up for another grand theft. These are both felony charges and are generally considered serious. The October case has not been resolved yet and remains open.
There were two other minor arrests this year. In September he was arrested in Broward accused of resisting without violence (often a bogus charge). And back in January he was arrested for marijuana along with some traffic charges.
Tincel’s reported address is in the American Homes neighborhood north of Kimberly and east of 441. We were not able to determine what high school he attended (or attends) but the address is zoned for Olympic Heights.
Mr. Tincel remains in custody at this writing, more than 24 hours after he was first booked.

Big Crowd at Olympic Heights for School District Forum

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An estimated 400 people showed up to the school district’s event at Olympic Heights High School on Lyons Road north of Glades. The meeting was for discussing the school board’s Resolution on Accountability. Slides from the presentation are at the bottom of this article.
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The resolution has mysteriously disappeared from the school district website, and of course they ran out of English language copies of it. Plenty of Spanish language ones were available. However we were able to find a copy of it online at Diane Ravitch’s blog.
The resolution is lengthy but basically it seeks to limit the impact of testing on education. We give credit to the school district staff for keeping their presentation reasonably brief, and then allowing the audience members to speak.
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Many of the audience commenters were teachers, though there were also students and parents. The group below spoke toward the end of the event.
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An Olympic Heights junior, below, spoke early on.
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And this 5th grader spoke well about the pressure of testing and the uncomfortable experience it has been for her.
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There were other kids in the audience:
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One of the teachers who spoke identified himself as the chair of West Boca High’s Language Arts Department, Noel Levin.
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Generally the speakers read from prepared statements and were well received by the audience. The main complaints seemed to be about testing, curricula, and teacher pay. The “Common Core” buzzword came up repeatedly.
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It seemed that a couple of things were missing. First, while the complaints were coherent, there did not seem to be a clear solution. Second, the resolution and much of the comments addressed federal and state issues beyond the power of the school board, but there was virtually no presence from state and federal officials.
There was one exception to that, as State Rep. Irving Slosberg took the microphone and gave a rousing speech encouraging people to vote out Rick Scott and the Republicans in Tallahassee and “change the management” in state government.

Irving Slosberg (far left); School Board candidate Tom Sutterfield 2nd from right
Irving Slosberg (far left); Board candidate Sutterfield 2nd from right

We spoke with Slosberg outside. We asked whether the problems people are complaining about (testing, curricula, common core, etc.) were brought about by both parties and he didn’t answer that directly. He focused on teacher pay, blaming Republicans for it being so low. We also asked about Charlie Crist’s role in the FCAT and Slosberg said that was in the past. He clearly did not like our questions and stuck to his partisan message. Regardless, we appreciate that he showed up and so did the audience.
A few other state and federal elected officials live close by but didn’t come. Early on we “tweeted” to Ted Deutch and Kevin Rader on Twitter but they did not respond.
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Slides from the presentation are below:
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/slides.pdf”]