Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Michael Horn: Governor, Ryan, welcome to The Future of Education. Thanks for being here.

Governor Bush: Good to be at a Primer school.

Michael Horn: Yes, it is indeed. And the history, Governor, of publicly funded widespread universal school choice, educational choice in Florida really gets its start from your time as Governor. You have laws in 1999, 2001, I’d say 2003, with funding following the student to Florida Virtual. You have all these milestones. As you look back now, 2026, at the state of educational choice here, how would you describe where we are in Florida? Where in the movement, if you will, are we right now?

Governor Bush: We’re not completely there, but we certainly got to scale for sure. When we started, I think we had 80 kids in that, parents went to a private school with public money. And that’s expanded over time. One voucher program, another corporate tax scholar program. Today, over 50% of parents in Florida choose where their kids go to school. It could be we have universal public school choice, we have universal Education Savings Accounts. And so we’re, we’re building what I think is the right way to educate our children by empowering parents. It’s really exciting.

Michael Horn: And as you noted, we’re sitting in a , literally one of hundreds of microschools, low-cost private schools throughout the state right now. I’m curious, did you envision this sort of education entrepreneurship that we’ve seen when you were Governor?

Governor Bush: I didn’t envision anything. I hoped that it would happen. My personal belief is that parents deserve to have this power to choose where their kids go to school and if they do that, that there will be schools like Primer, more tools for homeschool kids. Charter schools will emerge. The religious schools that were in decline in terms of providing education to their students would see growth, all of that. I was hopeful it would happen, and I’m proud that Florida has been a leader. But it’s also exciting to see it happen across the country.

Michael Horn: Ryan, you’ve been a direct beneficiary of really the foresight of these policies that I think it’s fair to say. And you also, as I understand it, have quite an intergenerational connection as well when it comes to microschools, educational choice in Florida. What’s your family connection to the story that’s unfolded here that started under Governor Bush?

Ryan Delk: Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a very personal connection, but then there’s also this sort of interesting macro connection. And the personal connection is my mom was a public school teacher, so she was very pro-public schools. We were zoned for. She took me to kindergarten orientation at the school that we were zoned for. And she quickly realized that it was a failing school. It wasn’t going to meet, you know, her standards for us. We were living with, in my grandparents house at the time in a low income area outside Orlando.

We didn’t have, you know, any choice to move. We couldn’t afford private school. And so she just took matters into her own hands. And so she ended up starting one of the first kinds of homeschool microschools in Florida. She got me and my siblings and then about a dozen other kids together and she just willed this thing into existence. And what’s interesting, and this is where it kind of connects to the macro. So I, this incredible education that frankly was like, you know, significantly higher quality than, you know, what I would have, you know, deserved, you know, relative to our socioeconomic status or what you would have expected. And what’s interesting is that she started that right before Governor Bush’s first term.

Impact of Governor Bush’s Policies

Ryan Delk: And so, we sort of experienced, you know, what I think of as the before times and it was very contrarian. We got a lot of questions. I think she was frankly judged by a lot of people, you know, for, for doing what she did. And then when Governor Bush took office, he, you know, sort of decided to, to go to the mat for, you know, a lot of these issues and make it a key priority. And so we, we actually sort of experienced the shift where it was, it was you know, not only just normalized but sort of like celebrated and empowered. And so I now feel this frankly like a real weight and responsibility as sort of the first generation to benefit from these policies. And then now, three decades later, you know, getting to spend my life building schools like this that open up those same opportunities to students with the same, you know, structure and work that, that not only, you know, Governor’s administration, but many, many folks since then have carried the torch to unlock these opportunities for kids. And so the weight of that is not lost on me.

And I think it’s quite powerful that we’re sort of seeing the second generation now. The folks that had the, that got these opportunities from, from sort of generation one of these programs now being able to reinvest in the next generation is, is quite exciting.

Michael Horn: Well, and it’s fascinating, right, that narrative of ostracism almost to norm, to expectation, right, for families. And as I understand it, you all at Primer are thinking a lot about the policy and regulatory landscape and some of the critical questions when it comes to things like microschools and the like, zoning, fire safety codes, things of that nature. I know there have been some big developments over the past couple years in Florida around some of those zoning questions. Can you just update us both on what’s happened, but also why it matters so much?

Ryan Delk: Yeah, so we are, we’re one of — there’s a lot of people doing great work on this ExcelinEd. There’s a ton of great, great orgs. And so we are one of many people that are working on this issue. There is one, you know, very narrow and perhaps, I think, very underrated, but maybe, you know, kind of unexciting part of the regulatory landscape that I happen to care a lot about, and that is the regulations around new school supply. So there’s an enormous amount of energy that’s gone into what I would articulate as the demand side, unlocking funding for parents, making sure that the funding follows the student. And that’s, you know, as we discussed, many decades in the making. But now that that exists, the reality is that a lot of the regulations around starting new schools, and I learned this firsthand, like the amount of nights and weekends that I spent early on at Primer staring at zoning maps of cities and counties is far more than I ever anticipated.

And the reason for that is that there’s all these regulations that sort of, you know, take as a sort of starting assumption that every school is still a, you know, 60,000 square foot, $30 million build to serve 2,000 students. And so in that framework where every single school looks like that, of course there’s traffic studies and school bus parking and very intense building regulations, that all makes sense in that context. But now in this world where you have a great educator who wants to open up a school in a church or a community center or, you know, a facility like this, those regulations are quite arduous. And they’re arduous, you know, we’re a fairly sophisticated operation. They’re arduous at times for us, but, but in many ways they’re impossible for like a sort of seasoned educator that wants to go serve their community. And so what I care is the sort of common sense, right sizing of these regulations specifically for small schools.

So for the large schools, a lot of what’s in place is, I think, serving that need really well. It makes a lot of sense. But for small schools, we want to make it much easier for those schools to open up in existing facilities to serve their community. And the reason that I care a lot about this is that I’ve seen firsthand stories of dozens, maybe hundreds of educators who want to start not just primaries, but all sorts of types of schools who reach out to us and say, hey, I got stuck. I have, you know, I’m trying to get this building permit, I’m trying to get this code, I can’t figure out zoning, or I’ve got to do a nine month variance process. All these things that are sort of just, just incredibly arduous for the task at hand. And so we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy from a legislative perspective making sure that we can knock down those barriers.

Michael Horn: Governor, I want to broaden the view now beyond Florida and think about these sorts of questions, supply questions, others, in the context of this sort of nationwide movement right now we’re seeing toward educational choice. And I’m curious both of your takes on a couple of items that we can run down. First, it strikes me just thinking about what you said on the zoning side of it. As an onlooker, there’s a pretty robust demand right now for different options that meet different kids needs. But the supply side that you just described, so you’re taking some significant steps there, but getting a sustainable supply side that’s affordable, low cost, private schools like Primer. What’s holding up the supply side? What else should we be thinking about in terms of that? Or maybe my perspective is wrong on this, but I would love to think about how do we really encourage this robust supply side.

Governor Bush: Ten years ago, the big fight was how do we get charter schools to be able to access, as public schools to access public capital, what we call in Florida pico dollars. And that was a struggle because look, the public schools feel threatened by all these choices. I mean my, my hope and dream is that there’ll be a superintendent in Miami-Dade County or some other place that says every child that goes to school in my county is my responsibility, and I’m going to create a menu of options for parents, and I’m going to try to do everything I can to make sure that every child succeeds.

Michael Horn: So really helping them navigate to the right option.

Funding challenges for private schools

Governor Bush: Yeah, but if you had that attitude, you wouldn’t be, you know, making it impossible for a private school to get a permit or you wouldn’t have, you wouldn’t restrict private capital to come in. I mean, there’s really one institutional source of money for private school capitalists, the Drexel Fund, which is for Catholic schools. The charters have, you know, three or four fundraising operations for their capital growth needs. So that’s part of it is you need to have more private philanthropy come in. But ultimately this should be a state responsibility as well. I mean, do we, do we do this in Medicaid? Do we have government run doctors and government run nurses and government run clinics? Some, but it’s not the dominant way that someone that is qualified for Medicaid gets access to healthcare. We should have the same mindset for education. And I think you would have an acceleration of really interesting options both in terms of hybrid learning, you know, where a parent could choose to take care of many much of their healthcare, their education needs, or they could go to Primer and take some of the money maybe and go to do something that accelerates the learning.

This is where we’re moving and there’s still, it’s work in progress. But I’m really excited that Ryan and others like him, education entrepreneurs, are advancing this at a pace that’s pretty exciting.

Michael Horn: Ryan, what’s your take on this in terms of the sustainable supply? What’s it going to take to get supply to meet the demand that we’re seeing?

Ryan Delk: I think it’s all about cost. And we have this core value that acts as the constraint. And so we start from the place of Primer needs to be accessible to every family, regardless of income. We’ve never turned away a student. And so some of the regulatory work that we’ve discussed that to me is all connected to this idea of how do you get these schools open as efficiently as possible and then how do you get the cost to educate down where parents can attend these schools for ideally nothing. Ideally it’s completely free. They just use their ESA and they can just attend the school. But if there is some out of pocket, it’s 50 bucks a month or 75 bucks a month.

And to me that is the key thing to unlock because then these scholarships are accessible or they’re unlocking opportunities for the families that need it most. The families that can afford a $15, $20,000 a year school, they don’t necessarily need these options as desperately as the families that are trapped in schools that are not serving their needs. And so that’s what we’re obsessed with. And I think there’s a kind of growing coalition that’s really focused on this low cost, high quality private school.

Michael Horn: Second thing I’m curious about, and we’ll go to my inner wonk here, your inner wonk here, which is there’s been a big proliferation of Education Savings Accounts across the country right now. But there are subtleties in the policies in different states, and I’ll just name a few of them because I’m curious what you all think about the impact of these differences. I’m thinking of the increasing number of states with accreditation requirements for example. Florida, you know, does not. You have some states that require external assessments of students in these low cost private schools. Some don’t. Some states are tuition first ESAs and some are not. Some allow you to roll over dollars even for post secondary education.

So it really creates a savings and value ethos as opposed to others that are not. We in the media often call these all ESA states. Are we sort of masking over these subtleties? Do they matter, the variants? Are we lumping them sort of at expense of understanding what we’re really trying to create here? What’s your perspective on these differences?

Importance of State Flexibility

Governor Bush: My perspective is that’s all good. You know, if we had one size fits all, it’d probably be driven out of Washington and that would be. It wouldn’t happen. It would be an unmitigated disaster. So having states have the ability to implement as best they can a version of ESA and then modify it as they go along because someone from another state’s done something interesting like the Education Savings Account where you can reinvest it if you didn’t spend the whole amount. I mean that’s an interesting idea that may catch on for all the states that don’t have it now. To me, I think the baseline should be there’s a financial responsibility that if you’re taking taxpayers money directly or indirectly, you should be a good steward of that money. And there’s health and safety issues that are really important, particularly for young kids. Beyond that, let’s let a thousand flowers bloom and come up with the best approach.

The important thing is that we get to scale so that parents demand that no one tries to take it away. That’s the first mission and that’s happening. You know, if 50% of all kids in Florida parents choose, it’s going to be hard to imagine if someone wants to come and try to re regulate this and have it just be traditional schools being the only option. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Texas, you know, having a hundred thousand kids to start with and over time that growing is going to create another kind of scalable moment for that state. And so if you try to impose a bunch of rules on top of that, it’s not going to grow at the speed that I think will make it more effective.

Michael Horn: Ryan, what’s your take on the variance?

Ryan Delk: I mean, I’m a personal big fan of federalism so I just have a personal bias towards that. But I think what I’m encouraged by is the movement is coalescing around the right things. And so when you look at the programs that have launched recently, they have measures to make sure that the providers are delivering for students, they’re fiscally responsible, the dollars are flowing to low-income, working-class, middle-class families that need them. And so I’m really encouraged by the way, I think the last four programs that have launched at scale have all had versions of that in place. And I think if that’s taking the best practices from other states, implementing them into new programs, and if that continues then I’m quite optimistic.

Improving financial accountability systems

Governor Bush: You know, one of the things that could be done in a federal system, and it’s happening right now, and ExcelinEd is working on this is to create a coding project because right now the technology isn’t the same as it would be for a health savings account, for example, or think about your MasterCard or Visa. All this stuff is done, you know, we have no clue how it, at least I don’t have any clue how it works, but it works really well. Whereas if you think about all the coding that could happen to make sure that there’s financial accountability and also that parents aren’t out of pocket making these commitments that they don’t have the resources to do because of some bureaucratic snafu at the state level. So there are things that could be done, but those are more like private sector enhancements that will make this more effective.

Michael Horn: And I guess it also helps the supply side so that those dollars actually reach the operators. Right. Ryan, you’re not sitting there waiting for it. Let me ask, Governor Bush, if we zoom out, what do you see as the big flashpoints to come in educational choice? It could be Florida, but also nationwide.

Governor Bush: Well, you can see it happen if there is, I’ll use Florida as an example. We have several hundred thousand, we have half of all the ESA kids are in our state. So you could have 1/10 of 1% of those transactions take place in a way that is inappropriate as they’re trying to sort out. You know, you’re dealing with scale, it’s hard to do all that. And so then you know, Senator Schmidlap will want to say well we need to like regulate this and regulate that. That’s the biggest danger is Washington getting involved or states trying to re regulate to deal with the tiny fraction of problems that impacts 99.9% of families. So regulate in terms of testing. We should trust parents to make these decisions and then give them the tools to be informed consumers and give them an array of choices.

And we need to protect that. That to me, you can see this happening at the state level. New governor comes in, they feel compelled to do something. And I’m very fearful of Washington getting involved. I’m excited about the tax credit program, but I haven’t seen the rules. And, you know, I’m paranoid about this stuff because I’ve seen there’s too many examples of Washington with good intentions getting things wrong.

Michael Horn: Ryan, I’d love to hear your reflections on the big flashpoints of the moment and both to comment around what the Governor just named, because you’re operating not just in Florida. So what are you seeing as those big questions or big issues that the field’s going to really have to think about or protect against in the years to come?

Focus on quality in education

Ryan Delk: I mean, I think a lot of people care a lot about education in this country, and that’s a good thing overall. And so there’s, you know, people with strong perspectives on both sides. A lot is changing. The world is changing really quickly. And my view on this is there will continue to be flashpoints, there’s going to continue to be contentious policy debates and accreditation and testing and all these things. But I really believe, I have deep conviction that if we stay focused on delivering high-quality academic outcomes in a way that’s accessible for every family, that is the winning strategy. And if we can stay laser focused on that and all the inputs to that, from, you know, great rigorous academics to unlocking the regulatory environment for new schools to open, to empowering educators to serve their communities, if we stay just maniacally focused on that, I think everything else falls into place. Because when you unlock those opportunities for those kids, and it’s not just that family that becomes a huge advocate for this movement, it’s their city council member, their city commissioner, all these people start to see, wow, this is transforming this community.

And when you do that, I think that is the winning focus. And so I hope that that can be the thing that we all rally around. And obviously these flashpoints will continue to happen. But that’s what we’re focused on. We’re going to stay maniacally focused on that. And I think a lot of other folks will too.

Michael Horn: I was curious about the assessment piece of this.

It seems this is much more of a trust the parents accountability model model that you’d sign up for as opposed to with traditional public schools. Let’s test. Is that accurate?

Governor Bush: It’s accurate, but I think parents — most states do have norm reference tests as a measurement of how kids are doing. And if you want parents to be empowered to make these choices, they need to be informed about the caliber of the education. So I personally support the idea of norm reference tests, and that’s the norm across the country. But I’m respectful of places like Arizona that, you know, want to have a little more libertarian approach. It seems to work well there, and maybe it’s part of their culture, a little bit more of their culture than it is in another place in the country.

Michael Horn: Final word. Governor, as you reflect over a quarter century of publicly funded choice in Florida, and we sit in a school that probably could not have existed, serving the students, you know, that could not have been in such an environment before if it weren’t for these policies that you started to put in place. What are your final reflections?

Governor Bush: Look, when you get a chance to serve, it’s really cool over the long haul to see successive legislatures and Governors embrace this idea and build on it. And I’m proud that our political leadership over the last 25 years has accelerated this. And my hope is that it stays the course. Look, big ideas take a long time. You could be patient. You got to be stubborn. In some cases you can. You just, you gotta, you know, stick with it.

Parental involvement in education

Governor Bush: And in Florida, that’s the case, I don’t think. And I would say there are external issues as well. If we didn’t have COVID, which allowed parents to really realize that maybe their kids weren’t getting the education that they thought they were getting because they became the teachers of their kids and they saw the slop that many of them sadly had to deal with, that accelerated it even more. So I’m excited about this. I think it’s really important that we stay the course because the world we’re moving toward at warp speed is exciting, but it’s also really scary. And you want to make sure that kids can read at the end of third grade in a capable way so that they can learn in a dramatic way, and that parents know what’s best for their kids to make the right choices. And there’s an array of them. That’s the mission, and it seems to be doing quite well right now.

Michael Horn: Governor, Ryan, thank you so much for joining me in this conversation.

The state education commissioner and school choice advocates have clapped back at the Florida Education Association’s lawsuit alleging the state’s school voucher program is unconstitutional.

Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas during a Florida Board of Education meeting in Miami Thursday said the union “continues to waste members’ dues and taxpayer dollars on litigation that does nothing to advance student achievement or strengthen our schools.”

He called the statewide union a “special interest group” on a “never-ending quest to harm students and families in our great state.”

“It has been said, if you give a clown a stage, they will perform, and last week’s press conference put on by the Florida Education Association was nothing short of a circus act that we have all grown tired of,” Kamoutsas said during his report.

Parents and the FEA argued in a 39-page filing in state trial court in Leon County last week that state dollars funding private school vouchers don’t conform to the Florida’s Constitution’s requirement for “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.” They announced the lawsuit during a news conference in front of the Florida Capitol.

“This lawsuit is against the more than 530,000 students who are participating in a state scholarship program and it is also against 440,000 students who are enrolled in charter schools across this state,” Kamoutsas said.

If the FEA’s ideas were enacted, Kamoutsas said, they “would have an enormously detrimental impact” on students. He compared it to the when the union resisted the DeSantis administration’s reopening of public schools.

The FEA wants the court to declare the scholarship programs and charter schools “as currently administered” unconstitutional.

“When public funds are used to educate a child, that child is entitled to the same level of educational opportunities, the same quality standards, and the same basic protections,” the FEA argued.

The Capitol

Moments after the commissioner made his argument, outside the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee representatives of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s education think tank argued against the lawsuit.

“We don’t have to choose between supporting our public schools or giving parents educational choice. We can do both,” Foundation for Florida’s Future Director Patricia Levesque said.

Bush focused heavily on school choice during his time as governor. Back then, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Holmes in 2006 that his program paying taxpayer dollars to private schools was unconstitutional.

Levesque, who was chief of staff for Bush while he was in office, said although she doesn’t think the FEA intends for Bush v. Holmes to be overturned, “I think it’s very possible,” Levesque said, calling it a “flawed decision.”

Since then, the makeup of the Florida Supreme Court has changed. Currently, the top state court is made up of Gov. Ron DeSantis appointees.

“We believe it was a wrong decision back then and, if this lawsuit should proceed, we look forward to the opportunity for the Florida Supreme Court to re-examine that deeply flawed decision,” Levesque said.

“When the state Constitution says, ‘Legislature, you shall fund a system of high quality, safe, secure, free system of public schools,’ you shall do this. What we believe, and what we believe is an actual, accurate interpretation of the Constitution, is that’s the minimum. Legislature, you have to fund the system of free public schools. What the Bush v. Holmes decision and what the teacher’s unions are arguing is that that’s the only thing you can do. They’re arguing that that’s a limit on the legislative power,” Levesque said.

Levesque pointed to the School for the Deaf and Blind and university lab schools as being outside the system of free public schools.

“Is the requirement to fund a system of free public schools, is it the minimum or the maximum? And we would say it’s the minimum they have to do; they can do more than that if they so choose, which they have done for 20-something years,” Levesque said.

Rita Brown, owner of Brownsville Preparatory Academy, said that, before private school vouchers, families like hers on the the south side of Tallahassee “were unable to think about private school as an option because they just didn’t have the money.”

Brown called vouchers a “game changer.”

“If the teachers’ union were to succeed in eliminating the scholarship program, we would lose most of our school-aged children. That K-3 program would probably die and it would be devastating for our parents,” Brown said, calling the lawsuit “frivolous.”

Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, pointed to former President Ronald Reagan’s vision of exceptionalism.

“We are the light on the hill that Ronald Reagan talked about, because of the opportunity that’s unmatched anywhere else on the planet, and Florida has been leading the way. And Florida’s StepUp scholarship will continue to make sure that our light stays the brightest, not just in this country, but around the world,” Martin said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Testing experts at the Education Department had been laid off and the board in charge of the program . But now, expansion is coming in the form of additional results that could give the public more information about how students in their states are performing.

The National Assessment Governing Board approved a new testing schedule Friday that allows for state-level results in 12th grade math and reading, eighth and 12th grade civics and eighth grade science. 

The vote was 16 to 3.

NAGB, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has long aspired to add more granular results, said Executive Director Lesley Muldoon.

“That’s what helps drive actual policy action at the state level,” she said. 

The would take effect in 2028 for eighth grade civics and 12th grade math and reading. The eighth grade science test would be administered in 2029 and 12th graders would take a civics exam in 2032. Participation is optional, but NAGB wants to know states’ intentions by this summer.

The governing board isn’t alone in wanting NAEP to be more useful to state policymakers. In its on the future of the American workforce, the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, called for more state-level data in the same three areas and a shorter, six-month timeline between the assessment and the release of the results.

Some observers say the board’s vote underscores the importance of NAEP.

“This suggests an acknowledgment that standardized testing, and comparable data across states, still matters,” said Dale Chu, an education consultant who frequently writes about assessment. 

At the same time, in its fiscal year 2027 budget, the administration is requesting less for the program than Congress has appropriated in recent years, $137 million compared with $193 million.

Muldoon told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· that if Congress maintains $193 million for the program, no additional money would be needed to expand testing at the state level. But if all 50 states want to participate, they might need more resources. 

‘We got busy’

The response from states, she said, has been positive, but she doesn’t expect all to sign up. 

Board Member Julia Rafal-Baer, who voted against the plan, said while she agreed with the science and civics schedule, she’s concerned about whether enough states would participate in the 12^th grade assessments. The announcement, she said, would also come in the midst of a “charged environment.” 

“You can see it bubbling up now — public trust around testing, technology, AI, screens and student data,” she said during the meeting. “In this room, we understand all the differences. Parents right now do not understand the differences.”  

Others noted that with 39 governors’ races this year, those who show interest now might be out of office by the time they have to formally commit. But Board Member Ron Reynolds, formerly head of a California private school organization, said the elections shouldn’t affect the board’s decision.

“I think we would cross a dangerous line if we began to anticipate what the political environment might be at a specific time and then make decisions in advance that might foreclose an opportunity to assess and report,” he said.

States would need to identify a sample ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 students in each of the categories for which they want new results. 

Tennessee Rep. Mark White, a Republican and current NAGB chair, told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· that his state is among those that would likely “jump on the opportunity” to see how the state’s students are performing in science, civics and in their senior year.

“Tennessee realized that our K-12 standards were not adequate in 2011 when we compared our performance to NAEP data,” he said. “We got busy.”

In 2013, the state was the in the nation, and this week as a top performer in post-pandemic academic recovery.

AngĂ©lica Infante Green, Rhode Island’s education commissioner, wants her state to participate in all of the assessments, but is particularly enthusiastic about state-level civics . The state passed in 2021 requiring students to demonstrate proficiency in civics to graduate.

“It’s important, based on where we are as a country,” she said. “If our students don’t know how the government works and how our democracy works, that poses a challenge.”

Chu said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Morath, state chief in Texas, or Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner also take “a keen interest,” but predicted that “in many other places the reaction would amount to little more than a shrug.”

Former Florida Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. after the 2024 fourth and eighth grade results were released. The state saw a sharp decline in reading scores, which he attributed to a sample of schools that he said was not representative of the state overall and included two of the lowest-performing schools. He also blamed the shift that year on the switch to a digital test on school district devices. 

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to questions about whether the state might participate. 

‘Powerful source of information’

Chu and others, however, question whether state-level data on 12th graders would be that useful. 

“Low student motivation has long been a cloud hanging over 12th grade,” he said. “I’m not sure bringing those results to the state level adds much unless that issue is addressed.”

Muldoon disagreed that motivation is a challenge, but said that getting a large enough national sample of 12th graders can be. Seniors, she said, are sometimes off campus for internships or college trips. 

Some states, like Nevada, require students to take the ACT for graduation. But Jhone Ebert, superintendent of the Clark County School District, and former state chief, said a college entrance exam might not be the best way to measure the skills of students planning to go straight into the workforce. NAEP, she said, would offer a fuller view of students’ skills.

“Not everybody’s going to college,” said Ebert, also on the board. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be successful participants in our society.”

National results from 2024’s 12th graders were discouraging. Twenty-two percent tested at the proficient level in math, a 2 percentage point decline since 2019. In reading, 35% were proficient, also a drop. As with fourth and eighth graders in recent years, the percentage of high school seniors scoring at the below basic level increased. But those results don’t tell states anything about their specific strengths and weaknesses. 

State-level data could be a “really powerful source of information,” Muldoon said. “There is no other nationally representative assessment of high school students’ achievement.” 

‘Blue and red states’

The same is true for civics. The last NAEP civics test was in 2022, and just in eighth grade. Average scores on the 300-point scale fell by two points, the first-ever decline in the 25-year history of the test, which measures students’ knowledge of government, the founding documents and politics. 

Twelfth grade results in civics haven’t been available since 2010. The 2032 civics test in 12th grade will also be an updated version. Patrick Kelly, chair of NAGB’s assessment development committee, told the members Friday that while the “bones are good,” the design of the civics assessment is old.

The last time the test was updated, “our president of the United States was playing ,” he said. 

Shawn Healy, chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a nonprofit that provides civics lesson plans and online games, called the state-level results and the update “a big win for our field.”

The results, he said, will offer insight into the success of civics education policies at the state level, such as requiring a dedicated course or completion of student projects, or offering diplomas that recognize achievements. This year, he’s tracked 240 civics education bills in 40 states.

“That speaks to the interest in this issue across blue and red states,” he said.

In science, 2029 won’t be the first time state results will be available. Most states voluntarily . But now, under a new design, the questions will more closely match what states expect eighth graders to know in science, said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston and a NAGB member. Large school systems,  those in the Trial Urban District Assessment group, would also be able to opt in to that science exam. Currently, only national data is available for those subjects and grades.

“At a time when science and engineering are having such a profound impact on our lives, it’s important to understand how our students are doing,” she said. “Education leaders continue to see value in expanding opportunities for state-level reporting beyond reading and math.” 

More significantly, after Florida’s 2023 ban went into effect, student performance on reading and math tests improved modestly, at least in one large district studied, with scores up by about 3.5 percentage points in its second year. Schools with the highest pre-ban cellphone use saw the largest positive impacts.

But a pair of researchers studying the state’s first-in-the-nation statewide cellphone ban also tracked a 25% spike in suspension rates in the first year, with the biggest impacts on Black students. At schools with high levels of pre-ban cellphone use, the rate of in-school suspensions for Black students rose by 30%, while rates for white and Hispanic students remained steady. 

In the second year of the ban, disciplinary rates returned to pre-ban levels. Those findings are similar to those of a national study on cellphone bans published last week.

Researchers David Figlio and Umut Özek also found “significant reductions” in the number of unexcused absences in both the first and second years after the ban, especially among middle and high school students. That drop in absences could also help explain, in part, the better test scores, they said.

The Florida ban, adopted in May 2023, made cellphones off-limits to students during instructional time, but allowed local districts to impose additional restrictions according to their needs. 

Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester, noted that Florida is an unusual place to study the topic, since it was one of the first states “to really get back to normal in schooling” after the shock of the COVID pandemic and widespread school closures. 

“Schooling was business as usual in the 2020-2021 academic year in Florida,” he said in an interview. “It was not business-as-usual in almost any other part of the country.” That could have delayed potential academic improvements around cellphone bans in other states, he theorized. 

Figlio said the discipline data is concerning, since phone-related suspensions were, at least at first, “disproportionately borne by male students and especially by Black students.” 

While it’s possible that Black students were simply violating the rules more often, it’s also possible that the rules “were being more heavily enforced” for these students. “Whenever I see any evidence of disproportionality in terms of any policy, that’s always a cause for concern for me. And so that’s what I’ll call the dark lining in what I think is a silver cloud.”

When Figlio and Özek’s findings appeared last fall as a in the journal of the National Bureau of Economic Research, they were the first to look at a universal school cellphone ban policy. A newer paper, also published by the bureau, studied nationwide data on cellphone bans compiled by Yondr, a California startup that makes lockable pouches for schools, businesses and entertainment venues. 

That paper, released May 4 by a team led by the Stanford researcher and Duke University’s , found that school cellphone bans don’t typically bring improved academic achievement or better behavior, as many advocates have hoped.

Figlio suggested that the broader look at cellphone restrictions could have been subject to a kind of “post-COVID transition period” that showed slower academic improvement. 

In their study, Allcott, Baron and colleagues called the Yondr restrictions “particularly stringent and physically binding,” suggesting that they provide a way to measure cellphone restrictions more accurately than “no-see” policies that simply ask students to keep phones powered off and hidden. They also said the national scope of their study “provides substantial statistical power” to examine the policy across different schools. 

In an interview, Stanford economist , one of the researchers working with Alcott and Baron, said no-see policies are inconsistently and unevenly enforced. “We wanted to leverage the data from Yondr because it gives us much more confidence that in-school use of phones is actually being restricted,” he said.

The new paper by Figlio and Özek, appearing Tuesday in the journal , updates data on cellphone restrictions nationwide to include policies newly in effect this spring.

It looks at an unnamed Florida district which is one of the nation’s largest — the list of the 10 largest U.S. district includes — where local leaders imposed a “bell-to-bell” ban that prohibits using phones, earbuds and smartwatches throughout the entire school day, including noninstructional time. 

The new rules went into effect at the start of the 2023–24 school year. After Labor Day, if a student violated the rules, their device was confiscated and returned at the end of the day, with the option for suspension. 

The district carried out the state ban as a “no-see” or “off-and-away” policy, Figlio said, so the expectation was that students had their phones off and out of sight. A few schools used the lockable pouches, he said — schools in all five of the state’s biggest districts had Yondr accounts — but pouches were “not the dominant form of enforcement.”

Figlio sees the two studies as complementary, comprising “two different ways you can really study this topic credibly,” especially as some places implement “no-see” policies and others rely on pouches. He noted that both studies, in effect, find “zero-to-small positive test score improvements” initially, but more positive results after that. 

A 2024 found that about one in three teachers consider students distracted by cellphones “a major problem.” Among high school teachers, that figure rises sharply, to 72%. More recently, Pew researchers in July 2025 74% of U.S. adults say they would support banning cellphones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% late 2024. 

Figlio said a future version of the Florida study will also track evidence that student reports of classroom climate, school climate and teacher-student interactions improve under cellphone bans. After a short negative period, students also report improved well-being.

“Whenever we introduce new policies and they really take off like wildfire, I think a lot of people are hoping that they’re going to find that this is ‘The Solution,’” Figlio said.

In the end, what both studies find is that cellphone bans “are not a panacea,” he said.

“The biggest thing that these cellphone bans did was dramatically reduce student use of cellphones in the school,” Figlio said. “For people who think that’s a good thing for any number of reasons, that’s a good thing — that’s a sign that cellphone bans worked. For people who were expecting this to lead to a major turnaround in the ‘achievement recession,’ where achievement had been dipping even before COVID and continued to dip following COVID, I think they’re going to be disappointed.”

Florida teachers’ average starting salary increased between 2025 and 2026, although not enough to improve Florida’s nationwide standing, according to data from the National Education Association.

The national union’s for teacher pay put Florida’s average starting salary of $49,435 at 19th in the nation. It’s overall average teacher salary of $56,663 ranks 50th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

“In the past five years, my daughter has had her full roster of teachers for an entire school year only once,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said in a news release. “
 These incidents are a disruption to her learning and, unfortunately, they’ve become the norm for far too many students across Florida.”

Average teacher pay rose by 3.3% between the 2024-2025 school year and the 2025-2026 school year, according to NEA data.

Mississippi was the only state with a worse average teacher salary in the most recent NEA report.

“When public dollars are diverted away from public schools, and teachers can’t afford to stay in the profession, it’s students who lose,” Spar said. “Public schools have been forced to cut essential services, lay off teachers and staff, and increase class sizes, all of which put students last.”

The NEA report also shows that Florida experienced among the biggest drops in public school enrollment between 2024 and 2025, more than doubling the national decrease in enrollment rate.

The FEA said the Legislature’s failure to pass a budget before the regular legislative session last year and this is “adding to the financial instability facing our schools and the teacher and staff layoffs seen across the state.”

California has the highest average teacher salary, $103,552. New York is second and Washington state is third.

In his budget recommendation , Gov. Ron DeSantis asked for $1.56 billion targeted for teacher pay raises, nearly 15% more toward increases than last year. The governor emphasized that the stand-alone item for teacher pay can ensure that money appropriated from Tallahassee goes to the classroom and benefits students.

The House and Senate initial budget proposals include similar dollar amounts, although lawmakers have not approved spending for the fiscal year beginning this summer.

In the , the state budget included about $1.25 billion in salary increases.

The Florida Department of Education pointed to the budget line item targeting teacher pay in response to a Phoenix request for comment on the NEA data.

On Monday, the justices rejected a in which parents Jeff and January Littlejohn alleged that a Leon County middle school violated their rights by supporting their child’s gender transition from female to male without their knowledge. The decision comes after the justices declined to hear two similar cases, one from last week and another from in March. 

For now, their decision means that the court might end its term without taking up one of the most contentious issues in education — the debate over whether state and district policies that aim to protect the privacy of LGBTQ students violate parents’ rights to direct the upbringing of their children. 

In March, the conservative majority sided with California parents who argued that districts should proactively inform parents if their child wants to change their gender identity. But in that case, they only reinstated a lower court decision to temporarily block schools from keeping such information private. They have yet to address the substance of the arguments on either side of the issue.

“This does require a full briefing and a full decision on the merits,” said Katie Cosgrove, counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative law firm representing a that recently asked the Supreme Court to hear another case related to parental notification. “The court needs to make some clear clarifications on this parental rights issue.”

The court’s decision comes as the House is expected to vote this week on that would require schools to alert parents if students ask to change their preferred names or pronouns as well as the sex-based facilities they use. Those in favor of parental notification say districts have kept parents locked out of one of the most consequential decisions in their children’s lives. 

But advocates for LGBTQ students, , say students questioning their gender identity face of violence, poor mental health and unstable housing if they’re not ready to be open with their families.

In her dissent in , the other California case, Justice Lynn Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, also argued that the justices should have let the lawsuit run its course in the Ninth Circuit. The conservative majority, she wrote, was “impatient.” 

“The court resolves the issues raised through shortcut procedures on the emergency docket even though it has had — for months now — the option of doing so the regular way, on our merits docket,” she wrote. 

The newest case on that list is the Rocklin Unified School District’s lawsuit against California’s Public Employment Relations Board. In 2023, the district, north of Sacramento, began requiring schools to notify parents if their child wants to use a name or pronoun for facilities that doesn’t align with their sex at birth.

The board, on behalf of the teachers union, filed an unfair labor charge against the district, saying that the policy essentially changed the terms of teachers’ employment and should have been negotiated. The union won in a state appeals court and the California Supreme Court declined to hear the case. That’s when Liberty Justice Center asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.

Cosgrove called the lawsuit a “a super interesting intersection of parental rights and the union and administrative board overstepping its authority.”

‘They sought to help the child’

But most of these cases have been brought by parents.

It took the court several months to decide whether to take the Littlejohns’ case. The justices rescheduled it for their conference days 10 times after initial briefs were submitted last fall. 

The dispute with Florida’s Leon County district, which encompasses Tallahassee, began in 2020. The Littlejohns told Deerlake Middle School that their child, A.G., was being treated by a therapist for gender confusion, and to continue treating the student as a girl. But A.G. asked the school counselor to use the name “J” and “them” pronouns. The lawsuit states that school officials continued to support A.G.’s social transition, including holding a meeting to create a “support plan,” without the Littlejohns’ knowledge.

In multiple filings in the case, the district says that once the Littlejohns objected, school officials gave them the plan and invited them to be present at all future meetings with the student.

The parents sued the district in 2021, but lower courts ruled for the district and dismissed the case. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, considered one of the most conservative circuits in the federal court system, the educators’ actions did not “shock the conscience,” in a legal sense.

“Defendants did not act with intent to injure,” the court said. “To the contrary, they sought to help the child.”

Meanwhile, for the Trump administration, became a symbol of the fight against such district policies. She was among President Donald Trump’s special guests when he addressed Congress in 2025, and she’s a at Do No Harm, a nonprofit that opposes gender-affirming healthcare, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery.

The district argued that the case was moot.

Since the Littlejohns sued, Florida, like , passed a parental rights bill that says schools can’t “infringe” on parents’ fundamental rights. As a result, the district revised its policy to say that school staff can’t “intentionally withhold information from parents unless a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.” 

Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ Equality at the National Women’s Law Center, said that because of the Florida law, a similar dispute probably wouldn’t happen today. He added, however, that “these issues have to be sorted out at the local level.”

“A single federal standard,” he said “is not going to resolve the tension that we see between some families and schools on this issue.”

However, if state leaders are serious about improving outcomes for students, they need to make sure their policy plates are filled with the right solutions. Accountability is the broccoli on that plate. It may not be the first thing you reach for. You might not want to go back for seconds. But despite what my dad used to say, you need to eat it. 

Accountability leads to positive student academic progress through consistent implementation. When I was governor of Florida, we worked to put in place a built on clear standards, annual assessments, school grading, real consequences for persistent failure and financial recognition for success.  

It wasn’t the most popular thing my administration did, but over time, the approach created a culture of transparency and responsibility. Florida parents understood how their child’s school was performing, educators had clearer expectations and policymakers had the data they needed to make informed decisions. 

Over the next two decades, Florida became one of the for student proficiency in math and reading according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This was particularly true for Florida’s low-income students. To be clear, those proficiency gains were not the result of a single program or short-term investment; it was part of a broader education policy agenda that included high-quality literacy instruction, access to more schools  for families through scholarship programs and letter grades for schools.  

, similar agendas have emerged in states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Their gains reinforce a simple but important point: When states stick with the fundamentals, students benefit.  

At the national level, the picture is far less encouraging. The show too many students are struggling, with declines and stagnation in both math and reading. Right now, students in fourth and eighth grade are performing on average at a their counterparts from a decade ago.     

Minnesota is a prime example of a state that rested on its laurels. In 2013, Minnesota was coming off more than a decade of consistently in nearly every education category. Since then, despite billions of additional dollars invested, Minnesota students are now performing on par with the national average in fourth grade reading and math. They are now performing more than an entire grade level behind their 2013 peers.

These scores aren’t just numbers; they reflect lost earning potential for students and a weaker workforce ahead. from Stanford University finds that restoring academic performance to 2013 levels would boost the average student’s lifetime earnings by about 8%. In total, the Stanford study estimates learning loss over the past decade has cost our country more than .  

The news is even more grim for disadvantaged children, who saw the performance gap between high- and low-performing students . Because these students have suffered larger learning losses, their average lifetime incomes are expected to be than those of similar young people a decade ago. 

State education leaders and lawmakers who commit to with a focus on academics are more likely to see their states stick to those changes and more likely to see future leaders and lawmakers continue to raise the bar, ensuring lasting improvement. That kind of consistency is not easy, but it is necessary. Plenty of people would like to eat nothing but pizza — comfort food solutions with no substance — but any doctor will tell you humans need more green stuff to see healthier outcomes. 

Unlike Minnesota, mounted a commitment to transparent, rigorous, accountability during the 2010s. ČŃŸ±ČőČőŸ±ČőČőŸ±±è±èŸ±â€™s fourth grade students are of their 2013 peers in reading and math, outperforming Minnesota kids in reading by half a grade level — all while spending far less money. 

That means state leaders must stay the course, even when the results are not immediately flattering and there is pressure to retreat. Lawmakers must resist the temptation of the better-tasting, less wholesome items on their plate that are more likely to make eye-catching headlines but not have as much effect on student outcomes. For the sake of America’s children, more states need to embrace accountability and stick with a simple solution: Eat your broccoli.

In February, the telehealth company , including clinicians who worked directly with students and families, leaving about 500 employees. 

The company lost one of its biggest customers, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, last year. It shortened its contract with the Chicago Public Schools because of “challenges securing funding,” a spokeswoman said. And several districts across the country have also either ended their business with Hazel or have contracts that expire later this year. 

they are “restructuring” the company to put it in a better position as it pursues more stable sources of funding, like billing Medicaid and private insurance, now that the federal relief funds some districts used have expired. Company spokeswoman Emilie Fetterley said no additional layoffs are expected “at this time” and that many states and districts plan to renew their contracts. 

But according to internal memos, by a news outlet covering mental health, CEO Iyah Romm said the company was losing “too much money” to meet its goals. Since the expiration of the Los Angeles contract, the company has even, at times, absorbed the cost of services, Fetterley said. 

Some say the company faces a difficult road ahead.

There is a “massive need” to address student mental health and behavior issues, said Adam Newman, co-founder of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm focused on the education sector. Until the relief funds ran out, “there were enough dollars in the system for schools and districts to find ways to underwrite these types of programs. But the risk has always been: What’s the durable funding model?”

In Missouri, the Ferguson-Florissant district, outside St. Louis, ended its business with Hazel last year.

“They were great to work with,” said spokeswoman Onye Hollomon. Hazel served about 2,000 students in the district, which used COVID relief funds to pay for the program. “Once that phased out, we had to make that cut.”

Los Angeles spent more than $28 million in one year to make Hazel available to the county’s 80 districts, according to GovSpend, a data company tracking payments to government agencies. It funded its deal with the company by tapping a $389 million . Between March 2022 and May 2024, 804 schools in the county referred 9,337 students for services, according to data Hazel provided to the county. Of those, 4,162 students received at least one visit, with students participating in an average of six visits. Fetterley said once a student is referred to Hazel, parents don’t always follow through with a visit or may seek help elsewhere.

In addition to taking a loss on services for some students since last year, Hazel has relied on billing insurance, including Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, and contracts with individual districts. Leaders are currently negotiating contracts with districts for next school year. 

Hazel is also one of eight providers approved for a new program that allows 700 districts throughout California to be reimbursed for services by Medi-Cal or private insurers. It participates in a similar in Iowa, and in Nevada, the Clark County School District uses Medicaid funds to pay for Hazel services, but that ends in June. A spokesperson said the board has not yet decided whether to renew it.

‘Made their mark’

Telehealth programs, delivered through schools, were expanding long before the pandemic. They offer families convenient access to a remote doctor or therapist while preventing students from missing school for appointments that often turn into full-day absences. Hazel Health, founded in 2015 by health care executive Josh Golomb, was part of that growth. 

“Telehealth providers have made their mark in school-based health care,” said Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy manager at KFF, a nonprofit focusing on health policy. “They eliminate transportation barriers, where students may not be able to physically get to a provider.”

During the pandemic, when learning and work suddenly went virtual, telehealth programs for schools . of school-based health centers showed that during the 2020-21 school year, more than 80% of respondents offered telehealth services, up from 19% in 2016-17. 

The financial landscape has since changed. A lot of districts are now cutting budgets to close deficits. GovSpend, which doesn’t capture all district spending, shows a decline in payments to , a similar company, since 2023, while , another virtual mental health provider, saw a more stable influx of funds from 2024 to 2025. 

Among providers, however, Hazel Health stands out. The company, which serves 6,000 schools in 21 states, initially focused on primary health care, with physicians prescribing over-the-counter medications for routine symptoms like stomach pain or headaches. In 2021, the company broadened its model to provide mental health services and respond to “rising unmet student needs and limited access to care,” Fetterley said. 

In Florida’s Duval County schools, Brittany Beimourtusting reached out to Hazel last school year when she was going through a divorce. Her middle child, she said, was having trouble adjusting.

“It was a single-parent household all of a sudden, and I thought, ‘How am I supposed to get him to get help because I think he could use therapy,’ ” she said. The provider, she said, met with him about five times and helped him open up about what he was feeling. “It was definitely worth it.”

But when Superintendent Christopher Bernier looked for ways to save the district some money last year, a $1.4 million payment to Hazel was on the list.

‘A connected system’ 

Four years ago, the startup’s future looked bright.

It attracted over $50 million from investors, including Fiore Ventures, founded by Walton family heiress Carrie Walton Penner. As recently as last year, Hazel was still eyeing growth. It made two acquisitions, including , which offers family therapy, to further expand mental health services. 

“Together, we are building a connected system that supports children from their classrooms to their kitchen tables,” wrote Andrew Post, then ±áČčłú±đ±ô’s president, in October. But he has since resigned, writing this month that it was time to turn to the “next chapter” in his career.

±áČčłú±đ±ô’s was supposed to run through the end of 2027. Now it will end on June 30. Still, district officials said the layoffs have had no impact on the services students receive. In a pilot program that began in March 2025, the district made mental health services available to 84 high schools. As of January, 420 students had taken advantage of the program, the district said.

In December, Destiny Singleton, the honorary student member of the Chicago Board of Education, told members that students don’t always feel comfortable talking to school counselors about personal issues because those staff members are often focused on academic performance and preparing for college. That’s why talking to an outsider can be helpful. But she added that students at the district’s larger high schools are often unaware that Hazel is even an option.

Some Chicago parents, however, are wary of Hazel and say families don’t always know what they’ve agreed to when they consent to allowing their child to meet with a Hazel provider. In to Chicago district leaders last year, student privacy advocates said they were concerned about whether Hazel properly secures students’ private information. 

The company’s acquisition of Little Otter, , raises red flags because Rebecca Egger, its CEO, formerly worked for Palantir, a federal contractor known for using AI to assist the Department of Homeland Security in its . 

In a response to Chicago officials, Romm, the CEO, wrote that Hazel does not “sell, share, or use student data for any commercial purpose,” and that it “does not have any relationship with Palantir, commercial or strategic.”

Fetterley, the company spokeswoman, also said Hazel is in the early stages of rolling out chatbots to “simplify administrative tasks like scheduling for parents and clinicians,” but that AI will never be a “substitute for our human providers.”

Even so, some districts see a much higher demand for in-person rather than virtual clinicians. In Broward County, Florida, where Hazel provides medical services, but not mental health support, 179 students completed a telehealth visit between August and December last year, according to district data. Over that same time period, more than 134,000 students visited a school clinic.

“Parents want nurses,” Cynthia Dominique, chair of the District Advisory Council and a parent in the district, told the school board in March. As a nurse practitioner, she questioned how a provider working remotely can diagnose and treat most common symptoms, like congestion or a sore throat.

“I can’t ask the registrar from the front desk, ‘Can you look in the kid’s mouth and tell me what you see?’ ” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. “They don’t know what they’re looking for.”

For district leaders, however, ±áČčłú±đ±ô’s ability to keep kids from missing school provided an effective selling point.

During a 2023 meeting, Duval County School Board Member Darryl Willie said the program had saved the district 4,000 “classroom hours” during the 2021-22 school year.

“We’re talking about making sure we’re focused on reading, writing and math,” he said. “The only way we can do that is if students are in school, in classrooms, sitting in seats.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to Âé¶čŸ«Æ·.

Pacheco is one of approximately 15,000 residents in what is known as America’s first solar-powered town, defined by its environmental vision, hurricane and strong sense of community. Since welcoming its first residents in January 2018, Babcock Ranch’s population has soared, with plans to reach 50,000 in the years ahead.

As this future-focused community grows, its K-12 education landscape is expanding alongside it, shaped by the same spirit of innovation. With a rising assortment of public schooling, homeschooling and micro-schooling options, Babcock Ranch offers a distinct snapshot of today’s evolving education offerings and the families who choose them.

“It’s kind of like choose your own education adventure,” said Laura Felker, who moved to Babcock Ranch from Colorado last spring. She enrolled her son in kindergarten at the Babcock Neighborhood School, a public charter school that opened in 2017, just a few months ahead of the community’s first residents. Babcock High School, also a public charter school, launched in 2022.

Felker was attracted to the school’s commitment to project-based learning, which is embedded into the curriculum. Her son has excelled at Babcock Neighborhood School, but when she heard about a new school opening in Babcock Ranch this fall, she was intrigued. Her son is academically advanced and in need of a more challenging learning environment, while also thriving with project-based learning. “I wanted some kind of meet-in-the-middle microschool,” said Felker, explaining that she was looking for a school that would blend the flexibility of homeschooling with the structure of traditional schooling, while prioritizing hands-on, project-based learning.

“Primer is able to do that,” said Felker, referring to the venture-backed K-8 private school network that is opening a Babcock Ranch location this fall. Founded in 2019 by Ryan Delk, expects to have 19 teacher-led campuses across Alabama, Arizona, Florida and Texas in the upcoming school year — including Babcock Ranch. The company did not disclose its network-wide enrollment numbers or current registration figures for Babcock Ranch, but Felker says that many of her neighbors are excited about this new model.

“Hands-on learning is going to become incrementally more and more important,” said Felker, who leads data and AI strategy for a Silicon Valley-based company. She sees first-hand how emerging technologies are impacting the workplace and shaping the jobs of the future, and she wants a schooling environment for her son, and his two younger siblings, that mixes core academics with ample time for creative, community-based projects. “I want that to be part of his schooling, so when Primer came, I think I was one of the first people to reach out because this is the exact thing that I’m looking for,” she said.

Emerging schooling models like Primer are taking root in communities across the country, as families look for more personalized education options. In states such as Florida, expanding school choice policies make these models financially accessible to more families. Felker expects most of Primer’s tuition to be covered by the state’s education savings account programs.

While some parents like Felker use ESA funding toward private school tuition, today’s programs often enable much greater customization of learning. In Florida, for example, families are eligible for funding through the state’s Personalized Education Program, an ESA enabling them to tailor their children’s education in myriad ways, including covering homeschooling expenses, tutoring services, curriculum resources, online learning and part-time school fees.

This flexible funding, averaging about $8,000 per student per year, is what Pacheco uses to educate her 13-year-old daughter, Bella. When the family moved to Babcock Ranch in the summer of 2024 following that enchanting Friday night visit, Pacheco began homeschooling Bella, who had previously attended a public elementary school from kindergarten through fifth grade. 

Pacheco liked the school, but she wanted something more for Bella as she entered her middle school years. “I always felt like the public school wasn’t the best fit,” said Pacheco, a nurse practitioner who helped to co-found a family medicine practice with three Florida locations, including a new one opening soon in Babcock Ranch. “It’s like a one size fits all, but that’s not how people are,” said Pacheco, who was particularly concerned about the frequent focus on standardized testing in the public schools and the anxiety it created for her daughter.  

When she moved into Babcock Ranch, Pacheco discovered a large and vibrant homeschooling community. “There are so many homeschooling groups,” she said, often gathering for park meet-ups, enrichment activities and field trips to the aquarium and similar spots. Parents also take turns hosting lessons at their homes, which supplements the online curriculum that Bella uses for her core academics. “It’s like a little homeschool village here. I love it,” said Pacheco, adding that Bella is much happier than she was in a conventional classroom.

Babcock Ranch was designed to be a modern-day village, where community life is intentionally built. That same intentionality is shaping how Babcock Ranch families choose to educate their children. From project-based charter schools to homeschooling to emerging models like Primer, families have a growing array of learning options to consider.  

In Babcock Ranch, this variety isn’t only reserved for K-12 education. options are sprouting, and the community recently a partnership with Florida Gulf Coast University to create a new sustainability-focused campus center at Babcock Ranch.

“There is a lot of educational opportunity here, and it just keeps evolving for every layer of education,” said Felker. “It’s cool to see that type of vibrancy.”

Student demographics are shifting so that in just six years, districts have lost nearly 2 million students nationwide. Meanwhile, charter schools gained about half a million, private schools added thousands more, and homeschooling rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. These shifts look different depending on where you live, but almost no district is immune. The result: Traditional district schools are serving a shrinking share of a shrinking market. 

In many states, options that used to be considered fringe alternatives are now much more accessible. Policy shifts favor charter schools and open enrollment across district lines; and education savings accounts and tax credit scholarships incentivize alternative school options. 

This means the traditional assumption that most students in a district’s boundaries will attend its schools no longer holds. It also means districts need to rethink how they can continue to successfully serve their students and communities. And it means that it is more important than ever to think about how districts and states serve students with disabilities so they don’t fall through the cracks. 

Enrollment declines create immediate pressure. Districts still have to maintain buildings, transportation systems and central office functions even as student numbers fall. Political realities often make it difficult to close under-enrolled schools. And districts must continue to meet legal obligations, especially for students with disabilities.

Over time, this leads to hard tradeoffs. Resources shift away from classrooms just to keep systems running. Meanwhile, are often the first to leave. That can concentrate marginalized students and students with disabilities in the schools with the fewest resources and the least capacity to adapt. Staffing becomes harder. Financial strain grows. Academic outcomes can suffer.

Left unchecked, this becomes a downward spiral that, in some places, ends in state intervention or financial insolvency. States will increasingly face a choice: develop a new playbook for districts or manage the consequences of decline. 

Two paths districts must pursue at the same time

For decades, districts operated as vertically integrated systems: They ran the schools, delivered the services and served nearly every student in their area.

That model no longer reflects reality. Today’s districts face two distinct but connected challenges:

First, they must compete for students by offering schools and programs that families will actively choose. That means understanding what families want and building options that respond to those preferences.

Second, they must support a broader ecosystem of public education,finding ways to serve students, families and schools beyond those they directly operate. 

Districts that succeed will do both.

Competing today isn’t about marketing existing schools more effectively. It’s about rethinking what schools look like.

Some districts are already moving in this direction. Orange County, Florida, is facing enrollment declines for the first time in decades. To meet new demands, they’re exploring screen-free microschools and other specialized programs. Elsewhere, districts have launched classical education schools modeled on approaches gaining traction in the private sector. In Houston, a district-run virtual academy now serves more than 11,000 students, helping offset losses elsewhere.

The most effective efforts share a common thread: They start with understanding what families want and build new models from the ground up.

Other cities like Denver, New York City, Indianapolis and New Orleans have expanded school options while maintaining common enrollment processes, accountability frameworks and access to services like transportation and special education.

States can accelerate this work by removing barriers. Creating more flexibility around staffing, seat-time requirements and program rules can make it easier for districts to launch microschools, hybrid programs and career pathways that reflect how families want their students to learn.

At the same time, districts can no longer afford to disengage from families who choose other options.

In many places, families are piecing together education across multiple providers: a few district classes, an online program, tutoring or homeschooling. In Florida, more than half of districts now offer classes or services to students using scholarships or education savings accounts, often on a fee-for-service basis. This keeps districts connected to students and creates new revenue streams.

But doing this well requires clearer rules. Questions about pricing, accountability and safety are often unresolved. States can help by setting expectations for part-time enrollment and unbundled services, making it easier for districts to participate while protecting students.

There’s also an opportunity to simplify choice. Many families just want an education that works; they don’t want to have to navigate a complex marketplace of options.

Even as student enrollment declines, districts will continue to control significant assets: buildings, buses, food services and specialized expertise,especially in areas like special education. 

Those assets don’t have to sit underutilized. Districts that partner with charter schools offer a template for how to use these assets in new and novel ways. In places like Miami, Indianapolis, Camden and San Antonio, charter schools have been able to lease space, opt into transportation or food service or purchase maintenance and security services. This lowers barriers for new providers, improves use of taxpayer-funded infrastructure and creates revenue streams for districts. 

Districts can also play a larger role in delivering specialized services, particularly special education. Smaller schools often lack the capacity to provide comprehensive support for students with disabilities. With the right funding and flexibility, districts can offer these services across multiple schools and providers. 

States set the conditions for success

Districts didn’t become rigid by accident. State policies that impact funding formulas, staffing rules, accountability systems have shaped the current model. Now those policies need to evolve.

States can help districts adapt by:

• Funding students, not systems, while maintaining strong accountability
  
• Removing barriers that limit innovation and flexibility, such as seat time requirements or teacher certification rules
  
• Clarifying rules for part-time enrollment and shared services
  
• Ensuring districts are compensated for serving non-enrolled students
  
• Modernizing facilities policies to support shared use
  
• Stepping in when districts cannot or will not adapt

The era of school districts as monopolies is over. But their core mission remains: ensuring every student has access to a high-quality education.

The question is not whether districts will change. It’s whether they will change fast enough, in ways that strengthen, rather than weaken, public education.

Districts that embrace both being a competitor and a connector have a path forward. With the right support from states, they can remain central, trusted institutions in a more dynamic and diverse education landscape. 

Disclosure: Travis Pillow wrote this commentary while working as the director of thought leadership and growth at Step Up For Students. He has since taken on a new role as a spokesperson for the Texas Education Freedom Accounts program at the Texas Comptroller’s Office.

Voters in Florida could have a chance to enshrine religious protections in schools in the Florida Constitution, the same protections already established in statute.

The measure, , pitched as establishing a constant constitutional law as opposed to more-often-altered statutory law, passed the House Education Administration Subcommittee Wednesday. It has another committee date before heading to the full House.

Bill sponsor Rep. Chase Tramont, a Republican from Port Orange, called it “a very common-sense resolution.”

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“All of this is in state statute right now, so it is current law. My argument would be that protecting religious liberty and expression is arguably the most necessary thing to do. Laws are constantly being shifted, repealed, amended, and all sorts of things that happen,” Tramont said during the first committee stop Wednesday.

Lawmakers are proposing language for voters to approve that would prohibit school districts from discriminating against students, parents, and school employees based on religious viewpoint.

“A school district shall treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner that the school district treats a student’s voluntary expression of a secular viewpoint,” it states in part.

Schools must allow religious expression in coursework, artwork, clothing, and prayer, as already protected under the 2017 Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act.

Tramont pointed out that the resolution does not mention any one religion and does include all faiths.

“That’s part of free speech — part of freedom of expression is the ability to be acceptance of all faiths,” Tramont said.

The resolution passed with one vote in opposition, Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon, who voiced concerns about how it could alter curriculum. She indicated a willingness to support the measure on the floor.

Devon Graham from American Atheists said the resolution is not necessary.

“The sponsors and supporters will say that nowhere in this bill is any specific religion mentioned, but this will just boost religious protections. This is not our first rodeo. This is all double speak that we’ve heard before,” Graham said during public comment.

Graham pointed to the that provides moment of silences in public schools, pitched initially as being a chance for self reflection and later lauded by the governor as a religious freedom measure and signed by him at a synagogue.

“Without supporting or discouraging student prayer, each public school must require teachers in first-period classrooms in all grades to set aside at least one minute, but not more than two minutes, daily for a moment of silence, during which a student may not interfere with other students’ participation,” the proposed amendment reads.

Graham also referenced that Satanists would not be permitted to participate in the school chaplain program passed in 2024 as “cherry-picking” religions.

SJR 1104, identical, has two committees to pass, too. It is sponsored by Sen. Ralph Massullo, a Republican from Lecanto.

For the joint resolution to be placed on the ballot, each chamber must approve it by a three-fifths vote.

The resolution, if passed, would be put on the ballot for the Nov. 3, 2026 election. It would require approval by at least 60% of voters to pass.

Of course, the U.S. Constitution provides religious protection, too. It requires teachers to remain neutral in treating religious matters in school.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Rather than treating district buildings as contested territory, communities, districts and charter operators should view underused public space as an opportunity to expand access for students and make better use of the public’s investment in education infrastructure.

Experience from across the country shows that, even in a state at the forefront of education choice like Florida, legal frameworks aren’t enough to guarantee the equitable use of public resources. Charters’ access to public facilities also depends on local solutions and genuine collaboration between districts and charters.

In a co-authored by our organizations, the Florida Charter Institute and Momentum Strategy & Research, we analyzed 20 Florida counties that contain 90% of the state’s charter schools. Our findings show that enrollment in traditional district schools has steadily declined throughout the past decade, leaving over 645,000 seats available in district facilities. Charter school enrollment, meanwhile, has grown by more than 136,000 students over the same period. 

We estimate that 12% of all district facilities currently have the space available to house an average-sized Florida charter school. In fact, while falling student enrollment is a growing financial problem for Florida’s school districts, our research shows that the number of district-operated buildings slightly increased across the state during this period. 

Publicly available data shows that newly opened charter schools in Florida spend nearly one-quarter of their annual budget acquiring and maintaining suitable facilities. The state provides limited facility funding to defray capital expenses, but that covers only a portion of what charters pay toward their buildings. As a result, Florida charter schools rely on an industry of building developers, landlords and lenders, often placing them in commercial spaces that don’t meet students’ needs — even as hundreds of district facilities operate under capacity. 

We recently surveyed over 100 charter school leaders in Florida. Their responses indicate a growing need for solutions to the state’s facilities problem: 76% said their school was at or near enrollment capacity, and 52% responded they are exploring or planning to grow beyond their current facility. “Facility issues are the number one issue facing our ability to maintain or expand,” said one charter school leader in Naples, while an Orlando-based charter school referred to facilities funding as its “main source of concern.”

However, charters don’t appear to view district space as an option, as only 18% of survey respondents reported ever exploring the availability of underutilized district space. Those who do are met with resistance: The same Naples-based school noted that there was available capacity in nearby district schools but that “district leadership seems closed to the idea.” A charter leader in Miami commented that the district is “very averse” to facilities arrangements with charters. In fact, while Florida’s charter schools account for 14% of all public school enrollment in the state, only 4% operate in district-owned buildings.

Florida law lacks enforcement mechanisms that would obligate districts to share space with charter schools, instead provide “surplus” or “unused” facility space for charters “on the same basis as it is made available to other public schools in the district.” Research shows that, across the country, laws intended to expand charter access to district facilities often due to similarly vague language.

This year, Florida’s legislature partially addressed the issue through a measure that allows specially designated, high-performing charter schools to . However, the new law provides virtually no incentives for districts and no process to resolve disputes with charters or among competing charter operators. Districts are as the law goes into effect. 

Shared facilities arrangements between districts and charters require more than legal nudges from the state. Several cities, in fact, have demonstrated that such partnerships can effectively support resource-starved public schools. In New York City, for example, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his first chancellor, Joel Klein, promoted co-location to encourage charter growth, guided by the premise that available public school space should . Close to half of New York City charters now operate out of district buildings, and suggests that these arrangements have not negatively impacted student performance. 

In San Diego, the citywide school district established a to support the planning and placement of charters in district facilities. In Washington, D.C., the city developed a successful to house new charters. In Indiana, the 2014 establishment of allowed districts to attract independently run schools, including charters, and promoted facilities sharing. More recently, the Indiana state legislature has pushed Indianapolis to share facilities and buses among charter and district schools. 

Starting in 2008, Denver Public Schools leadership pursued a strategy that encouraged charter growth by sharing the district’s underutilized facilities. By 2017, the district had more charter and “innovation” schools — district-run schools that are afforded increased autonomy —, a strategy that led to “significant, sustained, systemwide improvements in learning.”

While our research revealed untapped opportunity in sharing school facilities, public data does not tell the whole story of whether a given building is suitable for a specific charter — making local agency even more necessary for working out where these opportunities lie.National charter leader Nelson Smith once school districts’ “monopoly” over public school facilities as “an accident of history.” In states like Florida, where charter schools are an enduring part of public education, sharing unused district space with charters is an untapped opportunity, but weak laws and local obstinacy remain obstacles. Stronger legal mechanisms from the state can open the door for change, but it is up to local leadership to implement those changes and, ultimately, rethink how we manage the public schoolhouse.

Florida professors, university faculty, and teaching assistants could soon be able to openly carry firearms on campus, thanks to a sweeping new measure filed by a Republican lawmaker.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, is sponsoring the legislation, entitled “School Safety,” to address security concerns in higher education. If passed, the bill would remove college campuses as gun-free zones — marking a significant shift in how Florida handles gun issues.

It would become one of the few Second Amendment expansion bills adopted in Florida since the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, which prompted a higher gun-purchasing age and red flag laws.

In an interview with the Phoenix, Gaetz called his legislation “sadly timed,” adding that he “never wanted” to file a bill like this.

He referred to a slate of violent incidents in the past few months, including a shooting spree at Florida State University in April, the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in September, a shooting at Brown University over the weekend, and, most recently, an anti-Jewish shooting in Australia that left 15 dead.

“We’re living in a world where our institutions are being threatened,” Gaetz said, adding that he’s already filed another bill aimed at outside of churches, mosques, and synagogues. “I’m sorry that I’m having to do this, but it just seems as though places in our society that we thought were safe, even sacrosanct, are now becoming targets.”

Although he anticipates objections that teachers may abuse the ability to bring a gun to school, Gaetz pointed out that there have been no instances of a school shooting sprouting from an unwell volunteer in the guardian program. This school safety initiative allows trained and vetted school employees to carry concealed weapons on K-12 campuses.

“None of the parade of terribles have happened that the opponents to the guardian program tried to advance,” he said. “While none of that has happened, people have been killed.”

What else is in the bill?

Gaetz isn’t this first Florida lawmaker to try to promote campus carry. At the start of the 2025 legislative session, then-Sen. Randy Fine brought his all-encompassing to its first committee — unlike Gaetz’s, Fine’s bill would have allowed all students to carry — but it was voted down. Fine later left to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gaetz said that the heart of his bill is hardening Florida’s state colleges and universities by requiring better threat assessments, better responses to threats, and better communications between first responders and faculty in emergencies.

would allow university employees, faculty, and students who are also working for a college to either openly carry or carry conceal weapons on campus. It also would expand the school guardian program to the university level and create an offense of discharging a firearm within 1,000 feet of school.

Gaetz said his measure also would require universities to ensure all classroom doors lock during an emergency — especially after FSU students during the April school shooting that their doors could not lock. He estimates that around $60 million will end up being appropriated for the effort, in line with what Gov. Ron DeSantis requested in his last week.

An identical bill has been filed in the House by Rep. Michelle Salzman.

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If such a change goes into effect, “pediatric hospitals will be overwhelmed with [childhood] infections that have virtually been non-existent for the last 40 years,” said Florida-based infectious disease specialist Frederick Southwick. Southwick attended a Dec. 12 public comment workshop on the issue hosted by the Florida Department of Health. 

“We’re in trouble right now,” he added, pointing to and the likelihood that some diseases could become endemic. “We’re getting there, and this [ending the mandate] would just do-in little kids.”

The session delved into the proposed language the department has drafted for a rule change that would do away with vaccine mandates for four key immunizations: varicella, more commonly known as chickenpox; hepatitis B, pneumococcal bacteria and Haemophilus influenzae type B, or HiB. Currently, children cannot attend school in Florida without proof of these four immunizations, among others, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. 

Although Florida is not considering removing the mandate for the MMR vaccine, health experts see the move it is contemplating as eroding childhood immunization generally. It comes when in South Carolina because of a burgeoning measles outbreak.

Rana Alissa, president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was also in attendance to express her concerns. She told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· this week that thanks to the success of vaccines, she’s never had to treat some of these “horrible diseases,” including HiB, which can lead to meningitis.

“Don’t make our kids — Florida’s kids — guinea pigs to teach me and my classmates and other pediatricians how to manage these diseases,” she implored.

Tallahassee parent Cathy Mayfield lost her 18-year-old daughter, Lawson, to meningitis in 2009, a few months before she was supposed to leave for college and just before she was due for a booster shot. (At the time, the booster was not recommended until college, according to Mayfield.)

“You just don’t realize until it happens to you,” she said.

She hopes others will learn the importance of vaccinating their own kids from her family’s story. 

“All the information I learned through our tragedy about vaccinations made me very supportive of the safeguards [they] offer,” she said.

“You’ve also got to realize,” Mayfield added, “that your decisions affect your community, and that’s something I think has gotten lost in 
 all this conversation and hesitancy about vaccinations.”

Equating vaccine mandates to slavery

The workshop, which was announced the day before Thanksgiving, was held in Panama City Beach, in the Florida Panhandle, far from the state’s main population centers. About 100 people showed up to the session, which was characterized by attendees as but civil. Northe Saunders, president of the pro-vaccine advocacy organization and who was there, estimated that about 30 people spoke in favor of keeping the current vaccine mandates, while approximately 20 spoke in opposition.

Some speakers opposed to vaccine mandates included conspiracy theories in their arguments, according to news reports and numerous people present at the workshop, echoing language heard from the federal government since Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, took over the Department of Health and Human Services.

One attendee argued that giving children multiple jabs in a 30-day period “accounts to attempted murder,” according to . A number of others questioned if this year’s reported measles outbreaks, which resulted in the in Texas, had actually occurred.

Florida leaders’ desire to become the first state to was announced in September by its surgeon general, Joseph A. Ladapo, standing beside Gov. Ron DeSantis in the gym of a private Christian high school. In sharing their plan, Ladapo claimed that “every last [mandate] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” 

Only four vaccines are mandated through a Department of Health rule and are therefore under Lapado’s purview. The remaining nine, which in addition to the MMR shot include polio, are part of state law and can only be changed through legislative action. 

Experts told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· this is a much more difficult feat, one that state legislators — even conservative ones — don’t seem to have an appetite for. Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor and leading vaccine law expert, said such a legislative attempt would “warrant legal action.”

‘We really need to turn this around’ 

The debate in Florida and other states over mandatory childhood immunization comes as the country teeters on the edge of losing its measles elimination status. This year alone has seen nearly confirmed cases, the most since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. by the World Health Organization. Just over 10% of cases have led to hospitalization. The current South Carolina outbreak has infected at least , and among those forced to quarantine are students from nine schools. 

Significant educational implications from the outbreaks emerged in a by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, which found that absences increased 41% in a school district at the center of the West Texas outbreak, with larger effects among younger students.

The spread of measles is also a warning of the ramifications of dropping vaccine rates, according to William Moss, executive director at Johns Hopkins’ International Vaccine Access Center.

“Measles often serves as what we [call] the canary in the coal mine,” he said. “It really identifies weaknesses in the immunization system and programs, because of its high contagiousness.”

“Unfortunately, I see a perfect storm brewing for the resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases,” he added, “… We really need to turn this around.”

Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , and in the preceding months changed policies surrounding the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) combination vaccine and this year’s COVID 19 booster — all based on recommendations from an advisory committee hand-picked by Kennedy. The universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, in place for decades, was credited with nearly eliminating the highly contagious and dangerous virus in infants.

Lynn Nelson, the president of the National Association of School Nurses, fears that other, more conservative states will now look to Florida as an example.

“We already have seen outbreaks all over, and they’re only going to escalate if you have an area of the country whose herd immunity levels slip down further than they already are, which I think will happen if those [anti-mandate rules] come into effect,” she said. “That, in combination with some of the other misinformation that’s coming out, people will feel validated in decisions not to immunize their children.”

Florida’s Department of Health appears to be moving ahead to end requirements for the four vaccines it controls, despite indicating nearly two-thirds of Floridians oppose the action. Proposed draft language presented at the Dec. 12 workshop would also allow parents to opt their kids out of the state’s immunization registry, Florida SHOTS, and expand exemptions. 

Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. Parents across the country are able to apply for exemptions if their child is unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons and most states — including Florida — also have religious exemptions. Part of the proposed changes presented at the Dec. 12 meeting would add Florida to the 20 states that additionally have some form of , further widening parents’ ability to opt their kids out of routine vaccines. 

The public comment period remains open through Dec. 22, after which the department will decide whether or not to move forward with the rule change. In the interim, advocates are pushing state health officials to conduct epidemiological research around the impact of removing the vaccine mandates and studies on the potential economic costs. Florida is and out-of-state visitors. 

Without that information, pro-vaccine advocate Saunders said these critical public health care decisions will be made “at the whim of an appointed official.” 

“The nation,” he added, “is looking at Florida.”

Texas has launched a partnership with Turning Point USA to create chapters of the right-wing organization on every high school campus in the state.

Gov. , Lt. Gov. and Turning Point USA Senior Director Josh Thifault revealed the initiative during a news conference at the Governor’s Mansion on Monday. They did not outline any plans that would require schools to initiate the clubs, but Abbott said that he expects “meaningful disciplinary action” to take place against “any stoppage of TPUSA in the great state of Texas.”

“Let me be clear: Any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” the governor said, referring to the name of the high school clubs.

The announcement comes after Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who stood behind Abbott at Monday’s gathering, privately met with Thifault in early November to discuss expanding the organization’s presence in the state’s schools, which was by The Texas Tribune. Four days after that meeting, Patrick said he would $1 million in campaign funds to help bring the project to fruition.

Turning Point USA was founded by Charlie Kirk, the late right-wing activist who was often praised by conservatives as a champion of free speech and criticized for comments that many other Americans found hateful toward LGBTQ+ communities, non-Christians, people of color and women. Kirk was killed in early September while speaking on a college campus in Utah.

Following Kirk’s death, Abbott and Morath accused some teachers of posting social media remarks promoting violence and mocking the conservative activist. The state has since begun investigating submitted to the education agency about educators’ alleged comments — a move that considering teachers’ First Amendment protections. The agency has typically conducted such investigations for violations like threats or abuse.

Kirk’s organization has traditionally operated on college campuses, promoting itself as a hub for young people committed to conservative values. The group is also known for having created a so-called professor watchlist, which allows users to search for educators perceived as supporting and promoting liberal viewpoints in the classroom. Turning Point’s work has at times caused tension, particularly among who have because of the negative spotlight placed on them by the organization.

The group’s “Club America” chapters, meanwhile, operate in high schools. The clubs aim to “build strong networks, spearhead impactful initiatives, help students register to vote, and inspire meaningful conversations about the foundations of a free society,” according to .

Turning Point organizers say they have received about starting local chapters since Kirk’s death, while claiming that some students wanting to launch chapters have faced pushback from their schools’ administrators.

Republican officials in Oklahoma and Florida have also announced partnerships with Turning Point to expand the organization’s presence. Those partnerships rely on interested students to initiate the clubs, while Turning Point provides them with organizational support.

Oklahoma’s former right-wing superintendent, Ryan Walters, had to go after the accreditation of schools that refused to welcome the conservative group.

Petitions calling for of the school chapters have also emerged, with some students and parents the national organization for what they describe as “racist, homophobic, and sexist hate speech on college campuses across America.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremism, Turning Point as an organization with a strategy of sowing fear “that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.”

Texas’ partnership with Turning Point marks the latest attempt by Republican officials to push education further to the right, after years of them accusing public schools of indoctrinating students with left-leaning beliefs about race and gender. The state, for example, has passed laws schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms — an effort currently facing — and on how educators teach America’s history of slavery and racism.

Abbott on Monday sought to distance Turning Point from any particular political party, comparing it to organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes currently present in many public schools.

“This is about values,” Abbott said. “This is about constitutional principles. This is about a restoration of who we are as a country.”

The governor acknowledged that it is highly unlikely he would endorse a similar initiative for more progressive, left-leaning causes, but added that “it would not be illegal” for them to exist in public schools. Abbott signed earlier this year, a sweeping state law that with an LGBTQ+ focus.

Existing partnerships between Turning Point and other states have already about the constitutionality of state governments using their resources to promote political causes in public schools, with legal experts saying it’s unclear whether the initiatives cross any lines but that they do warrant further observation.

Abbott and Patrick said Monday that Texas already has more than 500 high schools with Club America chapters. Thifault said Turning Point’s goal is to have 20,000 chapters in high schools across the nation.

The president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, Zeph Capo, recently told the Tribune that groups with a divisive political presence like Turning Point may have a place on college campuses. But he does not think that they belong in high schools, where students are more impressionable.

Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This first appeared on .

They were right.

In Tennessee, the nonprofit Wilberforce Academy is suing the Knox County Schools in federal court because the district refuses to allow a Christian charter school. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is on the school’s side. He issued last month that the state’s ban on religious charter schools likely violates the First Amendment. 

“Tennessee’s public charter schools are not government entities for constitutional purposes and may assert free exercise rights,” he wrote to Rep. Michele Carringer, the Knoxville Republican who requested the opinion. 

The legal challenge in Tennessee comes as a Florida-based charter school network prepares to submit an application to the Oklahoma Charter School Board for a Jewish virtual charter high school. Peter Deutsch, the former Democratic congressman who founded the Ben Gamla charter schools, began working on the idea long before the case over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School even went to court. The 4-4 tie in May means that an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision blocking the school from receiving state funds still stands. 

“The prior decision shows that there’s an open question here that needs to be resolved,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm representing the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation. “We hope the court will get it right this time. We hope the federal courts get it right without having to go to the Supreme Court.”

Idaho also confronted the issue earlier this year. The state’s first charter, Brabeion Academy, initially the school as Christian. But it in August as a nonreligious school and will open as such next fall. 

Deutsch, Skrmetti and other supporters of faith-based charter schools base their argument on three earlier Supreme Court rulings allowing public funds to support sectarian schools. They say that excluding religious organizations from operating faith-based charter schools is discrimination and violates the Constitution. But leaders of the charter sector and public school advocates argue that classifying charter schools as private would threaten funding and civil rights protections for 3.7 million students nationwide.

“Unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a future case and rules otherwise, we advise all charter school associations and public charter schools to adhere to the letter and spirit of the law in their respective states,” Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement.

‘Not on our watch’

When the Supreme Court considered St. Isidore, Deutsch, was prepared to advocate for Jewish congregations to open schools that not only teach their language, but also their faith. He called the case “a historic opportunity” to bring Jewish education to thousands of children.

To Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, the debate is settled, for now. In November, he said his office would “oppose any attempts to undermine the rule of law.” 

Americans United, which advocates for maintaining church-state separation, has also issued a warning over the new school. The organization represented parents and advocates in a separate case over the school. 

“Religious extremists once again are trying to undermine our country’s promise of church-state separation by forcing Oklahoma taxpayers to fund a religious public school. Not on our watch,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO, said in a press release.

The legal fight over religious charter schools began in 2023, when the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board voted 3-2 to approve a charter for St. Isidore, setting off a closely watched case that spanned two years. At the time, the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City, a nonreligious group, called the charter board’s decision unconstitutional. Rachel Johnson, the group’s executive director, didn’t return calls or emails requesting a comment on Ben Gamla’s proposal.

None of the members who originally voted on St. Isidore serves on the state’s new Oklahoma Charter School Board. But for one person involved with Ben Gamla’s application, this is familiar territory. Brett Farley is on the proposed school’s board, according to a letter of intent the foundation submitted to the charter board in November.

Farley once held a top position with the and is also executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, which focuses on public policy issues involving the church. While preparing the St. Isidore application, with Notre Dame law Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, whose scholarly work formed the basis of the legal argument for the school.

łÒČč°ùČÔ±đłÙłÙ’s is that nonprofits running charter schools are like private contractors, and as with other publicly funded programs, can’t be excluded just because they are religious. She’s also close friends with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who recused herself from the St. Isidore case. Experts speculated that Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three liberals on the court, resulting in the 4-4 tie.

‘Passion for religious freedom’

The virtual school, the intent letter says, would initially enroll about 40 students, focusing on “college readiness, while developing deep Jewish knowledge, faith and values within a supportive learning community.”

But some are surprised Deutsch isn’t making his bid for a Jewish charter school in Florida, where his existing, non-religious charter schools have thrived.

“I think Florida could be a good option given the new attorney general’s passion for ,” said Daniel Aqua, the director of special projects at Teach Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for Jewish education

The demand for a Jewish charter school would be much higher in Florida, which has Jewish population of nearly 762,000, compared with about 9,000 in Oklahoma. 

Charter founders in Florida submit their applications to local school districts first. The state recently added as authorizers, but Oklahoma, where organizers directly with the state charter board, offers a more streamlined process. 

‘Public Christian school’

But efforts to create publicly-funded religious schools are not limited to the charter sector. A new school in Colorado, Riverstone Academy, calls itself the state’s “first public Christian school.” Now serving 30 students in Pueblo, south of Colorado Springs, Riverstone is what is sometimes referred to as a “contract” school because districts sign agreements with private organizations to provide education services. In this case, Education reEnvisioned, one of the state’s 21 boards of cooperative educational services, or BOCES, authorized the school. 

In October, the Colorado Department of Education warned Ken Witt, the BOCES’ executive director, that the school’s per-student funding is at risk because it is “not operating in a nonsectarian nature.” The letter also went to District 49, near Colorado Springs, one of Education reEnvisioned’s member districts. 

In a response, Witt wrote that he was “alarmed at the threat” that the school might not receive funding. “We did not and legally cannot discriminate against this school on account of its religious affiliation,” he wrote. Examining Riverstone’s curriculum to determine if the school is truly sectarian, he said, would be “unconstitutionally entangling and discriminatory against different forms of religion.”

Witt told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· that funding usually doesn’t flow from the state to a new school until January, so it’s too soon to know whether officials will withhold funds.

‘Keep coming back’ 

“You’re going to see those within the charter sector and outside of it basically taking the same approach” — arguing that private groups delivering religious instruction can’t be denied public funds, said Preston Green, an education professor at the University of Connecticut. 

To Green, Riverstone’s identity as a “contract” school calls to mind a 1982 case, one that Garnett and other proponents of religious charter schools often highlight when they say that charters are not “state actors.” In , the Supreme Court said a Massachusetts private school that received public funds for educating teens with behavior problems did not act under the “color of state law” when it fired six employees. 

The question, experts say, is not if, but when the Supreme Court will eventually see another case about religious public schools Justice Barrett won’t have the same reason to recuse herself, Green said, and he’s not convinced that Roberts would side with the liberals a second time.

The advocates, he said, “keep coming back at this because they think that they’ll get the votes.”

Despite decades of research, arts education is still treated as a “nice-to-have” when education budgets allow. From 2015 to 2019, the conducted a four-year study across 1,700 New York City public schools serving over 1.1 million students. They found that schools offering music and arts programming had lower rates of chronic absenteeism and higher overall school-day attendance than those that didn’t. Similarly, a found that dropout rates fell from 30% to just 6% among students participating in consistent arts programming.

Clearly, the arts are a for academic engagement, resilience and, most importantly, graduation. For example, after tracking more than 22,000 students for 12 years, the found that those with high levels of involvement in the arts were five times more likely to graduate from high school than those with low involvement.

But while over feel the arts are important for education, only , and access remains uneven. Charter schools, the fastest-growing segment of public education, have the lowest availability of arts courses: Just offer arts instruction. Students in charter schools, military families and homeschool programs are too often the ones with the fewest opportunities to engage with the arts, despite needing them most.

This is an issue that the Cathedral Arts Project in Jacksonville, Florida, is trying to solve.

In partnership with and with funding from the Florida Department of Education, our program piloted a year-long arts education initiative during the 2024-25 school year, reaching more than 400 students in charter schools, homeschools, military families and crisis care. Our teaching artists visited classrooms weekly, providing instruction in dance, music, visual arts and theater. Throughout the year, students in kindergarten through high school found joy, confidence and connection through creative learning. Homeschool students brought history to life through art projects, children from military families found comfort and stability during times of deployment and young people in crisis discovered new ways to express themselves and heal. Each moment affirmed the power of the arts to help children imagine what’s possible.

To better understand the impact of this work, we partnered with the Florida Data Science for Social Good program at the University of North Florida to analyze reports and survey evaluations collected from 88% of program participants. Here’s what we found:

Students grew not only in artistic skill, but also in self-confidence, teamwork, problem-solving and engagement. After completing the program, over 86% of students said they “like to finish what they start” and “can do things even when they are hard” — a key indicator of persistence, which is a strong predictor of long-term academic success. Students rated themselves highly in statements like, “I am good at performance.”

Families noticed, too. In the age of screens, nearly three-quarters reported that their child had increased in-person social interaction since beginning arts programming and had improved emotional control at home. Nearly one-third saw noticeable gains in creative problem-solving and persistence through challenges.

According to the survey conducted by 50CAN, parents view the arts as a meaningful contributor to their child’s learning, and they want more of it. In Florida, where families have been given the power of school choice, they’re increasingly seeking out programs that inspire creative thinking and meaningful engagement while promoting academic success. But finding them isn’t always easy. When funding allows, traditional public schools may offer band or visual arts, but these options are often unavailable to families choosing alternative education options for their children.

Now in its second year, our program fills this critical gap by working directly with school choice families across northeast Florida, bringing structured arts instruction to students who otherwise wouldn’t have access. 

What makes the arts such an effective intervention? It’s structure, expression and connection. When students learn through the creative process, they navigate frustration, build resilience and find joy in persistence. These are not soft skills — they’re essential for survival, and increasingly important in today’s workplaces.

Arts education is a necessary investment in student achievement. It’s time for other states to treat it that way and follow Florida’s lead.

The state’s school voucher program has exhibited “a myriad of accountability problems” and caused a funding shortfall for public schools, a state audit released this week shows.

The audit, encompassing the 2024-2025 school year, was presented this week to lawmakers, who are spending the weeks leading up to the legislative session learning the woes of the universal school voucher system in which, contrary to how it was marketed, “funding did not follow the child.”

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Matthew Tracy, deputy auditor general for the state, presented the to each legislative education budget committee Thursday. Tracy’s team recommended the Legislature change the timing of scholarship application windows and provide more financial support to avoid funding shortfalls.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, said that at any given moment the state does not know where 30,000 students are in terms of school categories — traditional public or voucher-supported private or home schools — together worth $270 million in education support.

Gaetz spearheaded an unsuccessful bill last year, , to change various parts of the voucher system.

In 2024-2025, the department paid $655 million to middleman scholarship funding organizations, as statutes prescribe, before school started. That’s part of the questioned accounting practices.

“Any improper payments, any ineligible amounts, you’re paying and chasing those amounts, because the dollar’s already gone out the door,” Tracy said.

Last month, the House held committee meetings during which members asked scholarship funding organizations and the department about miscalculations and processes. Those meetings provided initial numbers of how many students were double-counted or lost in fuzzy accounting. For example, the state’s largest scholarship funding organization sent at least $7 million to families before verifying whether their students were attending a private school or homeschooling.

Earlier this month, legislators approved a $47 million budget amendment to make up for traditional public schools shortchanged by the accounting inaccuracies at the end of the previous fiscal year, even after tapping into $118 million from the education stabilization fund, through which the Legislature can cover voucher-related budget overruns. In the meantime, some districts were caught off guard after education funding from the state ran dry.

Foreseeable for some

Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said the audit showed “a lot of concerning information.”

“I wouldn’t say wholly unforeseeable, given the rapid expansion of the program in the last couple years — which has been a point of concern that I’ve had for many years here — is how are we going to make sure that we track students, have budget accountability, have budget predictability,” Bradley said.

In the past four years, the voucher program has grown rapidly, serving about 500,000 students during the past school year. In 2021-2022, the program had served about 200,000 students. In 2024-2025, the program dished out $3.17 billion in Family Empowerment Scholarship vouchers and recorded another $804.5 million in scholarship programs funded through corporate tax credits, totaling nearly $4 billion dollars.

In some respects, the state went “beyond” state law, but also missed “various opportunities 
 to further accountability over the use of State education funds and timelier and more effectively identify and halt duplicate payments and recoup ineligible amounts.”

“I’m disgusted; this is another, in eight years I’ve been here, ‘I told you so,’ and they’re just getting more and more expensive,” Sen. Jason Pizzo, NPA-Sunny Isles Beach, said.

The audit found that as of June 30, the end of the last fiscal year, $36 million sat in scholarship accounts unspent as did more than $367 million in scholarship accounts for students with disabilities.

At the end of the 2024-25 school year, nearly 300 accounts for students with disabilities held “excess balances,” or more than $50,000 each in unspent money. The sum of the excess alone was $2.3 million.

Pizzo focused on “float,” the lost value of interest that could be collected on money that is not in state hands when it could or should be.

“Certainly, you could never close out books for a company or an organization the way this is,” Pizzo said, adding that “a bunch of [Department of Education] bureaucrats just don’t understand finance. This is so bad.”

Tracy said it “was not evident that the department had sufficient staff resources to perform its critical duties.”

“I think that this is a cautionary tale to what can happen if you don’t phase things in and you don’t take the appropriate and adequate amount of time with something as transformational as this program truly was,” Senate Appropriations Committee on Pre-K-12 Education Chair Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, said.

The Department of Education said it has addressed concerns raised in the audit that directly implicate the department.

“We’re trusted with these dollars, and we kept using, ‘Does the department have the authority, the authority, the authority.’ I’m left myself asking, ‘Does the department have the ability to actually reconcile these issues?’” Pizzo said.

Separate silo

Gaetz said he will introduce a bill in the coming days to address these concerns.

His bill, to be co-introduced by Burgess and Committee on Education Pre-K-12 Chair Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, would separate the school choice scholarships from the Florida Education Finance Program (FEPF), the mechanism that funds traditional public schools, and would expand the education stabilization fund.

The auditor’s report recommended separating scholarship payments from the FEFP, making it a separate “silo” in the budget.

“The auditor general said in his meeting with the chair and myself that whatever can go wrong with this system has gone wrong,” Gaetz said.

The bill would establish monthly payments to families and schools and provide student IDs to private school students, too, a focus of House committee hearings last month.

“We do not have a perfect bill to introduce, but we have a bill which fixes these issues, which, left unaddressed, will continue to worsen and threaten to disrupt and imperil school choice in Florida,” Gaetz said.

There seems to already be a difference in House and Senate approaches.

House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee Chair Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers, said moving scholarship funding outside of the FEFP “would be a huge mistake and that would end universal school choice in the state of Florida.”

Persons-Mulicka said the problem is not the funding model, but instead the implementation of the program.

“If you change the funding model, create a new funding model, who’s to say there still won’t be implementation problems?” Persons-Mulicka said.

Included in the audit is the Department of Education’s response, which agreed with separating the the school choice programs from the FEFP.

“The Department acknowledges that, while the popularity and growth of the scholarship programs evidence their value and need, the administrative systems supporting these programs must keep pace with their implementation,” Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas wrote.

Gaetz said the program must be “partially reengineered.”

“We can’t just rearrange the deck chairs, we have to make sure that we change course in the ways that the auditor general has recommended,” Gaetz said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

Teresa Brady, who spent 24 years as president of Duval Teachers United in Jacksonville, pleaded guilty in federal court Oct. 9 to multiple counts. Co-defendant Ruby George, who was the union’s vice president for 24 years, pleaded guilty in August.

The pair were accused of swindling roughly $1.3 million each by selling supposedly unused vacation days back to the union and approving each other’s paperwork to avoid scrutiny.

Brady faces a maximum of 70 years in prison when sentenced. George faces up to 60 years. Lawyers for Brady and George did not respond to requests for comment.

Duval County Public Schools declined to comment. The union didn’t return multiple requests for comment but in January that said, “this will never happen again.”

“Duval Teachers United will pursue all legal channels to recoup lost funds and hold those responsible accountable,” the union said. “We want to be clear: Members and current leadership of Duval Teachers United and affiliated unions do not tolerate the undermining of our members or the misuse of valuable membership dollars.”

The union collects $5 million annually in dues from its 6,500 members. Roughly half is forwarded to state and national affiliates.

Federal agents raided the headquarters of Duval Teachers United in September 2023 to investigate potential misappropriation of funds. Brady and George resigned soon after. 

Duval County Public Schools employees accrue 42 vacation days per year, and the time can be rolled over, according to Brady’s . There’s no limit to how much accrued leave employees can sell back to the union at a rate equivalent to their hourly pay. 

From 2013 to late 2022, Brady and George concealed their actual leave totals from the union and its auditor, and falsely stated the amount of accumulated leave they said they needed to sell back “to avoid the leave being a liability to Duval Teachers United,” the indictment said. 

They would sign each other’s leave buyback checks so the union’s treasurer wouldn’t see them. The checks were deposited into their personal bank accounts, many in the amounts of $10,000 to more than $30,000, according to court documents. They would also request reimbursement for expenses that weren’t related to the union and pay each other bonuses without the authorization of the union board.

The leave payouts were hidden in general budget line items for salaries and payroll taxes in the union’s financial statements, the indictment said. Brady and George defrauded the union out of around $2.6 million over almost 10 years. Both were ordered to pay back the amount they stole, but because the money was already spent, the federal government will be seeking other assets, according to court documents.

Public records show that pay for both union leaders fluctuated wildly. Brady’s salary ranged from $160,000 in 2006-07 to more than $326,000 in 2019-20. She received $251,868 in 2021-22. George received $134,000 in 2018-19 and almost $327,000 the following year.

“I accept full responsibility for my actions and their consequences,” Brady . “I am truly sorry for my wrongdoing and the harm I caused to Duval Teachers United and its members. Understanding the seriousness of my offenses, I accept the outcome with humility and sincere remorse while deeply regretting breaching the trust placed in me by [Duval Teachers United], my community and my family.”

In the union’s January press release, it said several steps had been taken to protect membership dues. The organization hired an independent outside bookkeeper and now requires reimbursements to be approved by several union leaders and an outside accountant before payments are processed. The selling of vacation time also has to be approved by the union’s board of directors. 

“The board of directors has received training to empower it in their role as the governing body of Duval Teachers United,” the union said. “Board members have formed specialty committees that oversee the critical functions of Duval Teachers United operations, so transparency and accountability are always a part of our culture moving forward.”

But I don’t want a hotel that excels in only one area. I want every hotel I stay at to have clean sheets and towels, hot water and a quiet environment.

What about schools? Are they more like restaurants or hotels? At the high school level, they might be more like restaurants in that they can offer varieties of experiences that allow students to start to develop specialties. But elementary schools should probably be more like hotels and provide consistently strong services — and outcomes — for all kids.

When it comes to the basics of reading and math, how much within-school specialization is there at the elementary levels? That is, are there schools and districts that do a great job of teaching kids to read but maybe aren’t so good at teaching math?

To find out, I started by looking back at our projects last year identifying districts that did an exceptional job of teaching kids to read by third grade and be proficient in math by eighth grade. Among those positive outliers, I found 140 districts that appeared on both of our lists. That is, these districts were producing outstanding results across subjects and grade levels.

In contrast, we identified 14 districts that were exceptional in one subject but significantly underperformed expectations in the other. Among those, 12 of the 14 were strong in math but weak in reading.

To look at school-level results, I pulled up the 2025 test scores in the state of . Mississippi has some of the best schools in the country, so I figured it would be a good test to see whether they specialized or were consistently strong.

First, I looked to see whether reading scores were correlated with performance in math and science. A correlation of 1.0 would mean the two trends were moving in perfect lockstep, while a correlation of 0.0 would suggest that the two variables were not associated with each other at all. As you can see in the table below, there were very strong correlations across academic subject areas. For example, the correlation across school-level reading and math scores was 0.87, which suggests a very strong relationship. 

These results suggest that schools with high test scores in one content area are very likely to also have high test scores in another subject. (And the opposite.) But that doesn’t necessarily reflect how much the school contributes to a student’s scores. It could just be that the school happens to enroll higher- or lower-performing kids.

So, next, I looked at growth rates. In Mississippi, the state using a model called a value table. Essentially, the state created eight performance levels, and schools receive points if they help students advance to higher tiers from one year to the next.

Do schools with high student growth rates tend to see improvement across multiple subject areas? The answer in Mississippi is yes. In the graph below, each dot represents a school that is graphed according to its reading and math growth rates. The closer the dot is to the diagonal line, the closer the relationship between the school’s growth rates in reading and in math.

Although there are a few outliers on both sides, a “good school” tends to be good across subject areas. That is, there are no schools at either the bottom right or top left corners of the graph, where they would be if they were extremely strong in one subject but not the other. For example, among the 50 Mississippi elementary and middle schools that made the greatest gains in reading last year, none of them were below the statewide average in math growth. 

The opposite was also true: Among the 50 schools with the lowest reading score gains, only two reached the statewide average in math.

Florida operates a similar as Mississippi. When I ran their numbers in the same way, I found similar correlations across subject areas.

Both Mississippi and Florida showed strong relationships between a school’s proficiency and student growth scores. However, that could be a function of the specific way those states have chosen to measure student growth, and it’s not always the case that a school with high proficiency scores will also have high growth. In fact, because proficiency rates are highly correlated with socioeconomic status, prefer growth measures that attempt to truly isolate a school’s impact on student learning.

While questions about how best to measure school performance can be thorny and technical, it does seem to be the case that schools that are strong in one subject tend to be strong in others as well. In an increasingly specialized world,  it’s fortunately rare to find a school that’s doing a great job in one subject area and letting kids down in the other.

The state’s third graders saw a nearly 5 percentage point jump in just one year, with 87.3% of students now reading proficiently. It’s the largest single‑year gain since the test launched, returning the state to pre-pandemic levels. 

To put those outcomes in context nationally, a 1 to 2 percentage point increase in any state would be considered strong. Indiana’s improvement is proof that well constructed policy combined with bold leadership nets tangible outcomes for students.

Two years ago, Indiana leaders recognized that too many children were falling behind. Instead of implementing modest reforms, they responded with urgency. Former Gov. Eric Holcomb, current Gov. Mike Braun, Secretary of Education Katie Jenner, legislative leaders and education stakeholders across the state partnered to design a strategy rooted in research and shared learning. 

They leaned on a time‑tested pioneered in Florida and adapted successfully in Mississippi that’s built on high expectations, professional learning for educators, early detection, targeted support and instruction aligned with the science of reading.

In Florida, the introduction of comprehensive literacy reform in 2002 marked a turning point. Over the following decade, the state saw NAEP fourth grade reading scores gain the equivalent of .

ČŃŸ±ČőČőŸ±ČőČőŸ±±è±èŸ±â€™s , which was inspired by Florida’s success, integrated educator professional learning, added literacy coaches in the state’s lowest-performing schools to help transfer knowledge into practice and required early screening to catch students who struggled with reading. The state’s third-grade ensured students did not advance if they were not reading on grade level. Other included summer reading camps, monitoring student progress at least three times per year to catch students before they fell behind and allowing some students to advance to the next grade for on a case-by-case basis. These reforms helped elevate Mississippi from 49th in the nation in 2013 to .

Indiana’s version of the strategy is comprehensive and smart. It includes teacher training in how children learn to decode, build vocabulary and understand texts; tools for early identification of reading challenges; and clear expectations that no child will move forward without mastering critical reading skills. Strong curriculum, ongoing coaching and supports are all part of the mix — backed by a historic from the Lilly Endowment and the Indiana General Assembly.

But great plans succeed only in the hands of dedicated educators. Indiana’s teachers, coaches, principals and support staff have embraced this work with determination and care. Across classrooms, they’re putting the science of reading into daily practice. Families and caregivers are reinforcing literacy at home and contributing to a culture where reading is both essential and enjoyable.

The payoff is clear. Schools in Indiana’s , which develops and implements collaborative professional development for K-3 educators, saw an increase of in students passing the statewide reading exam. Progress at this scale in one year is rare and meaningful.

Indiana’s achievement is both uplifting and instructive. It demonstrates what happens when clear goals, proven methods and sustained support come together behind student success. It’s a reminder that literacy policies built on evidence and collaboration can shift trajectories quickly.

This is just the beginning — for Indiana and for other states aggressively tackling the literacy crisis. 

Reading successfully by third grade is foundational, but far from the finish line. Policymakers must maintain their focus on early literacy while expanding their approach to include adolescent literacy, ensuring students continue building reading strength through middle and high school so they can engage with complex materials, think critically and express themselves with clarity. Those skills are indispensable for success in the workforce, the military and higher education.

Indiana has set a goal that by 2027, 95% of third graders will be reading proficiently, and the state has charted a clear path, proving what’s possible when policymakers enact evidence-based strategies to support students. 

Success is never final. It’s a guiding principle. The work in Indiana and across the nation must continue until every child and young adult can read, thrive and embrace their future with confidence.

Our community’s commitment ensures that third graders get a lot of attention. 

But our work starts well before third grade. 

Early literacy begins with early childhood education. In our community, families of newborns get a custom lullaby to sing to their baby. We give families free books and learning kits so they have tools and resources in their homes. We create opportunities for community learning through our connection centers, events, playgroups and more. 

This type of foundational work is imperative. Educators and nonprofit leaders cannot suddenly lean into the science of reading at first, second, or third grade and overlook the fact that what children experience from birth to age 5 can make or break these efforts.

After all, research indicates that disparities in cognitive and social-emotional development are and tend to widen by the time the child reaches age 2. By the time kids start kindergarten, children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds often in reading and math compared to their lower-income peers. 

To close these gaps and put students in an infinitely easier position to read on grade level by the time they finish third grade, and to do so without making Herculean efforts to catch students up, the solution is simple: provide more access, sooner, to high-quality early childhood education. 

In my home state of Florida, for instance, there are more than a million children ages 5 and younger. Two-thirds of these children’s parents work. For the sake of our economy, this is good news. The bad news is that federal and state early learning opportunities in Florida under age 6. Everyone else is left to pay out of pocket for home- or center-based care or cobble together a makeshift solution. Parents are scrambling to make sure their children are looked after. In these scarcity environments, the priority is finding coverage, not necessarily attaining high-quality care that builds cognitive, language, and self-regulation skills. 

This gap between the early childhood education opportunities available to parents and what parents need is kneecapping our state’s future, and Florida is not alone. As a country, getting third-grade students reading on grade level would be infinitely more feasible if more students were building foundational skills in the pivotal early developmental period. And, in a country where just of fourth-grade students are reading proficiently, we need all the help we can get. 

Here in Indian River County, we do what we can with what we have.  The nonprofit provides  high-quality early childhood education for children and training for educators. The integrates language development and health education into support services for young families. These programs and others are supported by a community of individual donors who make it possible to provide direct services to students and give parents the tools they need to be their child’s first teacher. 

Through programs like — which  prepare parents with modeling fun, loving, language-rich interactions that can be done anywhere and anytime — and Carnegie Hall’s , parents learn tips and tricks for creating a learning environment in their own homes, reading together, and connecting the senses to reading through movement, music, and more. Children who participate in these programs and pre-K are more likely to enter kindergarten ready to learn.

When children reach elementary school, I lead works with the school district to provide instructional coaches and reading specialists in every elementary school, as well as to closely monitor students’ performance on interim assessments to determine where to provide extra support. 

Effective early childhood programming is a tested strategy not only educationally but financially. Nobel Prize winner James Heckman and his team analyzed long-term data from high-quality early childhood programs, and they found a on investment per child when accounting for outcomes such as higher earnings, better health, reduced crime, increased productivity and reduced need for special education and social services.

This return is possible only with investment of not just time and money but also attention. Both the science of reading and the science of learning are based on brain development. How we interact with our youngest children, how we speak with our youngest children, and how we provide for our youngest children – starting before they are even born– will determine the extent to which young people grow up with a fair shot at a world of opportunity. 

End-of-year testing results show Florida students were more proficient in math and reading than a year ago.

Statewide progress monitoring , announced by Gov. Ron DeSantis Wednesday, detail how Florida’s students performed in reading, math, social studies, and science.

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Math scores for all students from third grade to high school improved by 3% from 2024, with 58% of students demonstrating a level 3 or higher understanding. The county with the lowest score was Gadsden, with 35% testing at a level 3 or higher, and the highest, Nassau, with 78%.

Level 3, on the state’s scale of 1-5, is considered on grade level. Level 4 is considered proficient and level 5 is considered exemplary. Students who scored below level 3 are considered below or well below grade level.

Reading scores for students in grades 3-10 increased from 53% at level three or higher in 2024 to 57% in 2025. Gadsden County had the lowest performance at 36% at level 3 or higher and St. Johns was the highest at 72%.

“Florida insists that education be factual, student-focused, and parent empowered,” DeSantis said in a news release. “Florida has led the nation in instituting progress monitoring assessments that allow for teachers and parents to provide real-time interventions that support the long-term success of their students, and our approach has paid off.”

The progress monitoring tests are administered three times per year by the state. The periodic testing is designed to allow instructors to make interventions for struggling students sooner. This is the third year of progress monitoring in Florida.

During the Spring 2025 end-of-course assessment for the civics assessment, 71% of students tested at a level 3 or higher; 47% were proficient or higher.

“Today’s results affirm that our first-in-the-nation statewide progress monitoring system is making a difference for our students. Under Governor DeSantis’ leadership, Florida will continue to provide the best opportunities for our students,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said in a news release.

This year Florida on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Eighth grade math scores have dropped in the last three iterations of the test, and Florida students that age ranked in the bottom 10 states for math and reading scores. Fourth grade reading scores on the NAEP were the lowest in 2024 since 2003, while their math scores increased but remain below pre-pandemic numbers.

The data for the NAEP, collected in early 2024, were disputed by Diaz, who questioned the methodology of the exam. Diaz wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Education with “suggestions to help make NAEP great for educational progress once again.”

He took issue with the lack of inclusion of private school students and he believed urban students were included at a disproportionate rate.

Diaz will step down next month to become interim president of the University of West Florida. , the Florida Board of Education named DeSantis deputy chief of staff Anastasios Kamoutsas the next education commissioner.

That includes examining the intellectual and cultural foundations of the holiday: the people, places and events that often get overlooked or erased in social studies curriculums.

Juneteenth, the federal holiday in American history, holds special significance for many educators as it was championed by one of their own. , a former teacher — well into her nineties — led the charge for national recognition. While many schools across the country are off on June 19 in observance, the reason why is not as often taught, says Knowles.

Knowles, CEO and founder of the educational consulting firm Teach Heal Build, focuses on creating culturally affirming classrooms and communities. In April, he published the latest installment in the BOLDLY BLACK workbook series “Mathematics and Science in Ancient Africa.” The set was designed for third graders to explore topical principles and practices tied to Black culture — offering lessons they may not encounter in a traditional school setting.

Ahead of this year’s Juneteenth holiday, Âé¶čŸ«Æ·â€™s Trinity Alicia spoke with Knowles about what’s shifting in social studies instruction — particularly in Florida, the power of culturally responsive curriculums in today’s political climate and what motivates him in today’s sociopolitical climate.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Âé¶čŸ«Æ·: This year marks the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, but it’s only been recognized as a federal holiday since 2021. Why is it so important, from an educator’s perspective, that Juneteenth became a national holiday?  

Juneteenth allows both teachers and students to explore some of the deeper, more despondent areas of American history that are often avoided. It helps us step outside traditional narratives and unpack the multiple perspectives and experiences that different people, particularly within the African-American and African diaspora communities, have had throughout American history. In this way, it gives students a chance to better understand the ongoing process of freedom.   

For example, Juneteenth is often seen as the definitive end of slavery, but that’s an oversimplification. In reality, it represents a moment in a much longer and more complex journey toward emancipation. This perspective encourages both teachers and students to engage with history in a more nuanced and meaningful way. 

It was also, for almost as many years, largely left untaught in schools. What impact does that have on America’s students and our society as a whole?  

Having been in education for almost two decades, I’ve seen that when we don’t talk about important historical events — like those highlighted and signified by Juneteenth — we miss the opportunity to open up meaningful conversations in the classroom.   

I’ve witnessed how this silence can lead to the creation of a generation of students who are apathetic, especially when it comes to social justice and socio-economic issues that disproportionately impact marginalized communities. However, when we engage with authentic stories and histories, it gives students the chance to develop empathy, compassion and a broader understanding of others’ experiences. This helps create more open-minded individuals who are better equipped to contribute positively to the diverse society we live in today. 

An educator named Opal Lee, known to be “the grandmother of Juneteenth” was a key advocate for the national recognition of the holiday. What significance does this hold for you knowing a fellow teacher led that charge?

Within the framework of American capitalism, we often fail to give educators the honor, respect and homage they truly deserve. Educators are the ones who mold the minds of our children — they have the power and potential to shape not only students’ academic paths but also their overall life trajectories. When educators are empowered to lead conversations about topics like Juneteenth — and when we recognize that the push to make Juneteenth a national holiday was led by an educator — it highlights the strength and influence we possess as a profession.   

It shows that our impact extends far beyond the walls of the classroom and can resonate throughout society as a whole. We have the ability to unlock the minds of the next generation and to use our knowledge, especially historical knowledge, as a powerful tool for change. By doing so, we not only inspire other educators but also challenge our country to examine all aspects of its past — even the ones that don’t neatly fit the traditional narrative of American history.  

Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of human and civil rights activist Malcolm X, over 10 years ago on Juneteenth, “We’re in denial of the African holocaust.” Malcolm X would’ve been 100 years old last month, and we’re also 60 years from his assassination. On this Juneteenth, what do you want students to remember most about Malcolm X that they might not get from learning about other civil rights activists?  

As we celebrate Juneteenth this year, we must also reflect on civil rights activists beyond the immediate historical context of the holiday — especially when you think about figures like Malcolm X, who are usually misunderstood. His ideals and philosophy were labeled radical when taking a look at what he’s done overall for American history and the Black community in terms of uncovering darker truths as well as the denial of the American government and the experiences of African-Americans.

We live in a landscape right now and we’re told to move on and forget about those things we’re literally still dealing with as a community, but Malcolm X would want us to continue to advocate for our people and our students to be able to share our authentic experiences. And some of those experiences weren’t happy and joyous. But they have perpetrated so much psychological violence, which continues to happen in the classroom. And it was Malcolm X who stated that “only a fool would allow his oppressors to educate his children.”  

What Juneteenth does within Black communities forces us to step up based on the sentiments that Malcolm X expressed within that quote to be able to affirm and be able to become more self-reliant when it comes to our economic issues and social issues. But when it comes to educational issues and being more responsible and more accountable for teaching our history, we’re no longer contingent on systems to be able to teach the truth and history in the United States. 

From the bans on AP African American History courses to the pushback against DEI policies in schools nationwide, how have you navigated this climate as an educator in Florida?

Florida is one of the most prominent hotspots for controversy in education and arguably an epicenter of these debates. We’ve seen significant pushback against inclusive and truthful historical narratives, and it forces educators in schools to sanitize history and continue to perpetuate a fairytale traditional narrative of American history. This sort of censorship disproportionately impacts social studies instruction, which creates a sense of frustration and a disconnect, which leads to a disengagement with students.   

Throughout my work in public education, I have continued to push back and resist by looking at some of our state standards and benchmarks when it comes specifically to social studies and ensuring that I can tie in our stories and tie in those things that people label “controversial” or “political.” I have weaponized the language itself and weaponized some of the state standards so we can continue to tell our stories unredacted. 

Why is it important that Black parents, teachers and administrators are well represented in the decision-making process for schools?

One of the aspects of American history I don’t think that we unpack enough as a community is just some of the deleterious impacts that integration had within the Black community. A lot of the institutions, specifically the educational institution after integration, was absorbed by the dominant, more prevalent society. 

It is important, even within the current state of the system we’re in, that our voices are heard, our perspectives are heard especially when it comes to policies, processes, practices and procedures in education. Those who live in the community can have better, more viable solutions to some of the issues that we contend with within a community. I’ve seen processes within education when people outside of our community are making decisions, and those decisions are not necessarily meeting or accommodating the needs of the community. 

It is beyond critical that Black educators and educational leaders are given space to represent the issues and also the authentic, lived experiences and even some of the cultural norms that exist within those communities so they can be in a position to represent and also advocate for the things that are needed within the Black community.

In your years as an educator and advocate, what surprises you the most about trends and interests among Black students now versus when you were a kid in America? Do Black students and educators come into school — and specifically social studies classes — thinking, “What’s the point?”

Many children, especially those who are informed, are becoming activists around current events tied to identity. Students who are becoming outspoken, specifically a lot of our student-led organizations such as like Black Student Unions, for example, are able to take charge against the racism and bigotry here in Florida and amplify their voices around some of the injustice that is taking place in curriculum, which essentially violates our First Amendment.

You just a new workbook for students, “BOLDLY BLACK: Science and Mathematics in Ancient Africa.” What do you hope to achieve by releasing this series?

Information is widely more available than it was during my high school era in the 1990s simply due to the digital age we live in today. Sometimes we look at technology as being a destructive force, but it influences me to maintain a working knowledge of it in order to effectively show students how to access the information that we couldn’t when we were their ages.

Part of my activism and my solution-based approaches to things we’re dealing with within the Black community, specifically regarding American history that focuses on our experiences, is creating [this] Afro-centric workbook series that is geared towards students from grades three through 12. My third grade title is “Mathematics and Science in Ancient Africa,” and my goal is creating a curriculum that is concise and also digestible within the hands of parents and also community members.

In states where legislation is trying to restrict what we can say and do within the classroom, communities — and specifically Black communities — need to start building their own infrastructures and using some of the space within the Black communities. For example, community centers and also churches are safe, liberating spaces that can be found in Black communities that teach our history. 

Community members and those who may not be experts in pedagogy and pedagogical approaches can pick this up and share this information with their children. Some of those gaps and things that may be missing within the public educational system are now within the hands of the community to be able to educate and affirm all our children.

Thinking about classrooms and curriculums across the country — what keeps you up at night, and what are you most hopeful for?

In this current climate, I have such hope and optimism. I understand that Black communities have gone through far worse. Our whole experience within just the United States even before it became the United States and colonial America has been turmoil. 

But us as Black people have had agency and power to resist the oppression and repression of our voices and our experiences as well as our humanity in this country in the most profound ways. We’ve found ways to resist, push back and also provide for ourselves in order to achieve self-sufficiency in many points within our history. 

I feel hopeful moving forward that even if a public educational space is under attack, we will start to create those liberating spaces in solidarity like we’ve done throughout history in order to rebuild those institutions and infrastructures that were either destabilized or lost through integration. 

Considering all of those variables, there is very little pessimism within me around the things that have taken place and very little fear because, as Kendrick Lamar , “we gon’ be alright.”

Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Kevin Hendrick was looped in on a Feb. 24 directive from his police chief ordering campus officers to detain and question anybody they encounter with a federal deportation order and to alert U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, obtained through a public records request. Hendrick was also notified by district police Chief Luke Williams of plans to deputize school-based officers under a federal program that grants immigration arrest authority to local law enforcement agencies and that’s experienced since the beginning of Trump’s second term — in large part from new partnerships in Florida.

Immigrant rights groups and privacy advocates have for years warned that school-based police officers could share information about undocumented students and their families with federal immigration officials and that the program to deputize local cops, known as 287(g), could give immigration agents a foothold in schools. 

The revelations in Pinellas County, advocates said, offer clear evidence of collaboration on immigration matters between the law enforcement division of the country’s 28th-largest school district and outside police agencies. The instructions given to school resource officers, they assert, could violate constitutional protections against unreasonable detention and children’s legal right to a free public education regardless of their immigration status. 

“It should alarm and enrage every parent, teacher, and taxpayer in Florida that school police are being pressured to become informants for ICE and unconstitutionally detain members of our school community,” attorney Alana Greer, the director and co-founder of the Miami-based Community Justice Project, told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. 

Greer noted the school district police department’s directive to assist ICE, and , were voluntary decisions that undermine community trust and its mission to promote campus safety. “We don’t need or want armed cops in our schools doing ICE’s bidding. ​​These efforts do nothing to keep our kids safe.”

The Florida Phoenix that the Pinellas County school district had applied to take part in 287(g), the nation’s first K-12 school district to take that step. In response to the resulting public outcry, Hendrick, the superintendent, said the district police chief acted in error and without his or the school board’s approval. The district didn’t respond to questions last week from Âé¶čŸ«Æ· about emails Hendrick and other district leaders received from Williams outlining the police chief’s intention to participate. 

Records show the school district’s lawyers had planned to meet to discuss the 287(g) application before it became public and Isabel Mascaranes, the district spokesperson, was listed on the form as the point of contact for ICE “to coordinate any release of information to the media” regarding immigration enforcement actions. Asked by Âé¶čŸ«Æ· what knowledge she had of the 287(g) application before it was submitted to ICE, Mascaranes responded, “Can I get back to you on that?”

In a follow-up email, Mascaranes didn’t elaborate on when she first learned of the agreement, simply noting that she routinely handles “all media requests and releases.” She acknowledged the district police chief “maintains ongoing communication” with the sheriff’s office and other local law enforcement agencies and his decision to submit the 287(g) application was “guided by state and federal directives, intending to remain fully compliant with the law.” 

ICE and the Florida governor’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office also declined an interview request.

Voicemail records obtained by Âé¶čŸ«Æ· show it was ICE — not the district — that withdrew Pinellas school police from 287(g) consideration. 

“ICE will not be entering into an agreement” with the district, Melanie White, an ICE deportation officer, said in a voicemail to Williams, adding that the immigration enforcement agency “will not extend the program in that way” to include K-12 school district police departments “at this time.” 

‘An absolute priority of the Governor’

Perhaps nowhere more than Florida, home to an residents, has Trump’s immigration agenda been so forcefully embraced, with state and local officials looking for ways to bolster ICE enforcement. That includes Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who was tapped by Gov. Ron DeSantis to lead a new State Immigration Enforcement Council. The council was tasked with carrying out a state law extending immigration enforcement far into the realm of state and local police.

Records obtained by Âé¶čŸ«Æ· show Gualtieri threatened Williams and others to get on board or face the governor’s wrath.

While “immigration stuff is confusing,” Gualtieri said in a Feb. 25 email to Williams and the heads of other Pinellas County law enforcement agencies, “it is also at the forefront of Florida politics and an absolute priority of the Governor.”

“The new law puts legal obligations on all of us to ensure we do certain things and the consequences for not doing so include removal from office by the Governor, including his power to remove police chiefs, city managers, mayors and commission/council members,” he continued, adding that he would hold a call to “on how to best comply with the new Florida law.”

DeSantis, who claims he’s created for mass deportations, signed the law in February that establishes prison sentences for undocumented immigrants who cross into Florida after illegally entering the U.S. and requires jails and sheriff’s offices in the state’s 67 counties to participate in the 287(g) program and facilitate arrests. A police agencies to stop enforcing the state law in April, saying it likely violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and “unlawfully encroaches” on the federal government’s authority to enforce federal immigration laws. DeSantis and the Florida state attorney general are  

Florida lawmakers failed to pass a stricter bill this year which would have required all law enforcement agencies with at least 25 officers to form ICE partnerships. That law would have required Pinellas County school district police and other law enforcement agencies outside of sheriff’s and corrections departments to join forces with ICE. Even though that more far-reaching mandate did not pass, dozens of Florida law enforcement agencies voluntarily formed federal immigration enforcement partnerships, including the police departments at .

Pinellas County Schools Police Chief Luke Williams signed the 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under pressure from the county sheriff, public records obtained by Âé¶čŸ«Æ· show. (Source: Pinellas County Schools)

And even though the Pinellas school police were not legally required by the law that did pass to pursue 287(g) or to act in concert with ICE when coming into contact with someone with a deportation warrant, Williams, the police chief, told the superintendent, the school board’s attorney and other districts leaders that they were.

Gualtieri “gave instructions on how deputies and officers should respond to the new law with respect to immigration and immigration enforcement,” Williams wrote in a March 5 email outlining his decision to submit the 287(g) application. “As you know we are bound to follow the law and during the conversation we were all advised that the expectation is that we do so.”

In that same email, Williams said he related Gualtieri’s directions about filing the 287(g) form to school board attorney David Koperski and “and we both agree we must follow the law.” The chief filed the form on Feb. 26.

Even without 287(g) arrest authorities, Williams told the superintendent that school-based officers would follow procedures outlined by Gualtieri to question and detain for up to an hour anyone they encounter with a federal arrest deportation order but who was not otherwise wanted on a criminal charge. 

Gualtieri’s Feb. 24 order came after ICE added some 700,000 people with federal deportation orders to the massive National Crime Information Center, a centralized database that law enforcement agencies nationwide use to track and act on criminal warrants. Without 287(g) powers, the sheriff wrote, local officials lacked authority to arrest people with deportation orders alone. Instead, local officers should contact the local ICE office “to have someone respond to the scene.” 

More than 1.4 million people nationwide have — a third of whom live in Texas or Florida and include longtime residents, people without criminal records and those with U.S.-born spouses and children. A heightened focus on people with final deportation orders regardless of their criminal histories is part of the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown. 

“If an ICE officer cannot arrive at the scene within one hour, then collect as much information from the person as you can and release the person and ICE will have to try to find them through their fugitive operations,” Gualtieri said. After forwarding the message to school-based officers, Williams told the superintendent that “Schools Police will do the same.” 

Schools have for decades been considered a safe haven for undocumented students and their families after the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision enshrined childrens’ access to public schools regardless of their immigration status — a right Trump-aligned conservatives in several states are now actively trying to undo. 

On the second day of Trump’s second term, the president scrapped that instructed immigration agents to avoid making arrests at schools and other  

Trump border czar Tom Homan defended the policy shift in February, claiming Central and South American gang activity in the nation’s schools required there be “no safe haven for public safety threats and national security threats.”

“People say ‘Well, will you really go into a high school?” Homan said in . “Well, people need to look at the MS-13 members and Tren de Aragua members who enter this country, a majority of them between the ages of 15 and 17. Many are attending our schools and they’re selling drugs in the schools and they’re doing strong-armed robberies of other students.” 

On the same day that the Pinellas schools 287(g) application became public, Chief Williams wrote that he had no desire to ferret out the immigration status of students and families, despite his stated intention to facilitate ICE arrests.

“I do not know the status of any of our students, or parents and do not care to,” Williams said in his March 5 email to Hendrick. “I do not want to place yourself or the School Board under scrutiny because I followed my beliefs but failed to follow the law.”

‘A new chilling dimension’

A week after Trump’s inauguration, dispelling social media posts claiming immigration agents had visited a Pinellas high school and outlined how school principals should respond if they were to show up in the future. 

Certain educational records should not be released to federal officials without a subpoena, the memo noted, but ICE agents were in their authority to “bring a student to the front office for an interview” and make arrests. “We recommend cooperating” with ICE’s requests, the memo advises, and educators “should make an effort to contact the student’s parents before the school makes the student available to the Agent, unless the Agent directs the staff otherwise.”

Other districts have adopted starkly different policies. In April, the Department of Homeland Security said agents to conduct wellness checks on unaccompanied minor children who arrived at the border without their parents. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told NPR the officials were denied entry onto the campuses and that school principals followed “a fairly rigid set of protocols specific to these types of actions.”

Renata Bozzetto, the deputy director of the nonprofit Florida Immigrant Coalition which filed the lawsuit against the state immigration law, said the communications between the school district police chief and the county sheriff were “absolutely horrible” and could deter children from enrolling. She said she was particularly alarmed to learn that school district law enforcement officials had access to data about people with deportation orders and questioned to what degree “parents are being run through the system.” 

Federal law restricts the types of student information that public school districts can share with third parties. However, records , like logs of campus crimes, . 

School districts have for decades been navigating how much information they should share about students with law enforcement “but adding ICE to the mix is a new chilling dimension to that relationship,” said Cody Venzke, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union focused on surveillance, privacy and technology. 

That Williams acted on the 287(g) application without formal approval from the superintendent or school board, Venzke said, highlights a lack of district control over its police department to ensure a “student’s right to an education is protected.” The directive to detain anyone with an administrative deportation order absent evidence of a crime, he said, “raises significant equity and constitutional concerns.” 

If school-based officers are “roaming school hallways looking for students that have administrative warrants out against them,” Venzke said, “that is not an educational atmosphere in which students can feel safe and can learn.”