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Chattanooga Today, April 15, 2013

40 views · Published 15 April 2013 · 4:40 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: chattanooga times free press · 2013 · News & Politics

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Good morning Chattanooga.

Here's a quick look at today's top five stories.

With a new mayor, City Council and city department heads, the leadership of Chattanooga's City Hall changes today as much as in any time in modern history.
In the last two weeks, Andy Berke announced plans to oust 18 top department managers at City Hall who served in the Littlefield administration. He also created the entirely new positions of chief operating officer, chief policy officer and chief innovation officer.
In addition, Chattanooga's first gay city councilman will be sworn in today.
Chris Anderson, from District 7, says he is the first openly gay person to win a contested race in Tennessee.
The inaugural ceremony for Berke and new council members is 10 a.m. today at the Tivoli Theater.
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Next up, While the idea of "teaching to the test" may have been looked down upon in the past, it is a new reality for many teachers and students.
Core classes such as math, science, and English are increasingly focusing on the state's end-of-course exams and teachers now say that test performance is crucial.
New state standards require that end of course exams count for 25 percent of a student's final grade.
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Across the state line, a 6-year-old girl in Dalton has found what is believed to be a human skull in her yard. Now the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office is investigating to see if it is indeed human and how it ended up there. 
Jeff Stevens believes his dog might have dragged it into the yard from the woods or a nearby cemetery. Detectives scoured the forest for any other remains, but came up empty handed.
The results from a crime lab should come back within a few days.  
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Next up, prison violence in Georgia is on the rise.
Three times as many prisoners were killed in state prisons last year than a decade ago. 
And guard shortages ran as high as 30 percent at some prisons.
That's all against a backdrop of growing gang influence and prisoner overcrowding fed by the closure of seven prisons in the state in five years.
Officials simply say inmates are getting more violent, and they blame the killings on easier access to cellphones.
Georgia recorded more than 10 percent of prisoner deaths in the nation in 2010. And since then, 26 more inmates have died.
In fact, the Southern Center for Human Rights calls the upward trend in gang rapes, prisoner assaults and torture alarming.
At least one consultant has called for the federal government to step in.
After all, Georgia continues to pump more than a billion dollars a year into corrections while prison violence only increases.
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And finally, Chattanooga's oldest rehabilitation hospital has gotten a $12.5 million dollar expansion.
HealthSouth Chattanooga plans to begin using its new wing this week.
The complex, which is located near Parkridge Hospital, will feature 50 new beds.
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And weather will be cloudy today with a high temperature near 74 degrees. Tonight's low will be around 59.

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