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Legislative Leaders to Kick off New Lecture Series

There’s a new series of public lectures starting up in Tallahassee.  Tom Flanigan reports two of the most powerful people in Florida will headline the first one this coming Tuesday (Feb. 12).

Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford

The lecture is the latest community project of Holy Comforter Episcopal School, headed by Peter Klecamp.

“We were wanting to provide an opportunity, not only for the Holy Comforter Episcopal School community with our parents and so forth, but the community at large and all of Tallahassee where we’re able to provide an opportunity for this year, for our inaugural event, for civic leaders.”

Now that could have meant a city or county commissioner, maybe someone from the local school board.  But Klecamp says, for this first outing, they decided to swing for the fences.

“Through a lot of committee work and brainstorming what direction we wanted to go to, we were fortunate enough to have the incoming president of the senate and incoming speaker of the house to be able to commit and present kind of a preview of the legislative session coming up and then answer some questions in regards to education and so forth.”

Having Florida Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford is, of course, a major coup.  Klecamp says Holy Comforter will try to maintain that quality of speaker in future lectures.

“It might be someone who is expert in the STEM field.  Or it might be someone in the arts.  We’re not sure where that path is going to lead us but we started brainstorming different ways that we could offer learning opportunities for people within our community.”

And how often might Holy Comforter be holding these open-to-everyone lectures?

“It might be a yearly thing; it might even be hopefully more than that.  But we’re going to wait and see how things go, but I would love to offer more opportunities in a variety of different fields.”

Klecamp says the focus right now is on a successful first-ever lecture at Holy Comforter Episcopal School.

“It’s Tuesday, February 12th and it’s going to be in our student center.  We have plenty of parking and there’s going to be some very welcoming folks pointing people in the right direction and in our student center we have plenty of seating so that everyone will be able to take advantage of that and I’d say seven o’clock to about eight o’clock.”

It will be a great chance to hear and ask questions of the new leadership of the Florida Legislature.  Because after the session gets underway early next month, speaking with either of these men for more than a moment will be very difficult indeed.

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Tom Flanigan has been with WFSU News since 2006, focusing on covering local personalities, issues, and organizations. He began his broadcast career more than 30 years before that and covered news for several radio stations in Florida, Texas, and his home state of Maryland.

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