Around the state: Several University of Florida administrators and donors say President Ben Sasse’s resignation from the school was forced after his relationship with the chair of the board of trustees deteriorated, the state Board of Governors announces that an investigation of UF spending will “encompass office of the president expenditures,” Broward schools’ director of safety and security resigned just days after the rollout of metal detectors at high schools caused long lines and delays, the Polk school district reports significant school bus delays during the first week, Osceola’s school board pauses its consideration of having volunteer chaplains in schools, the faculty representative on the New College’s board of trustees is taking a year’s leave of absence, and several school election races heat up with voting in the primary Tuesday. Here are details about those stories and others from the state’s districts, private schools, and colleges and universities:
Broward: District director of school safety and security Jaime Alberti resigned just days after the rocky rollout of walk-through metal detectors in 38 high schools last week. Confusion about what students needed to take out of their backpacks led to long lines and delays in entering schools. Superintendent Howard Hepburn said they had expected “kinks” in the process. Administrator Ernie Lozano will temporarily direct the safety and security department while the district looks for Alberti’s replacement. Sun Sentinel. WTVJ. WPLG. Policies about district employees’ campaign activities will be enacted after three uniformed school police detectives posed for photos endorsing school board candidates, school officials said last week. “The district will implement guidelines that prevent the use of the district name and/or uniforms while participating in activities outside of the employee’s district function,” said district spokesman John Sullivan. Sun Sentinel.
Orange: The district’s absence notification system, put into place in April, resumes operation today. It requires schools to notify parents at the beginning of a day when their children are not in school and again at the end of the day. The system was put into place after the death of 13-year-old Madeline Soto in February. Her mother didn’t know the girl wasn’t in school until the end of the day. Madeline’s body was found several days later, and the mother’s boyfriend has been charged. WKMG. The District 6 school board race is attracting a lot of attention and campaign donations. Jeni Grieger and Stephanie Vanos are competing to replace Karen Castor Dentel, who is giving up the seat to run for the county supervisor of elections position. Vanos has raised more than $120,000 and Grieger about $44,000, and partisan politics became part of the race when Vanos was one of 11 statewide school board candidates endorsed by the Florida Democratic Party. Florida Politics.
Duval: The conservative activist group Moms for Liberty successfully backed two candidates for the school board in 2022, but critics of the group have been pushing back in this election cycle. “Don’t Let Moms for Liberty Control Our School Board,” the county’s Democratic Party is urging voters on its website. Campaign contributions are pouring in on both sides. At least three of the four school board races will be decided in Tuesday’s primary election. Florida Times-Union. Jacksonville Today. Florida Politics.
Polk: School bus delays were pervasive during the first week of school, including more than 100 buses being late Friday by 20 to 60 minutes. The problems are not unusual when schools reopen, but a new process requiring students to swipe their identification cards on a reader when they get on buses could have been a contributing factor because many students still have not received their cards, forcing drivers to verify riders from a spreadsheet. Lakeland Ledger. Three school board elections will be decided Tuesday: District 1 incumbent William Allen is being challenged by Bernnie Brandt; Travis Keyes and Marcus Wright Jr. are competing to replace Lori Cunningham, who decided not to run for re-election in District 2; and District 4 incumbent Sara Beth Wyatt faces Rebekah Ricks. All the candidates answered questions on their qualifications, priorities and more. Lakeland Now.
Lee: Significant bus delays have also been reported in the Lee County School District. Some students are reporting their buses arriving at least an hour late. District officials said the first two weeks or so of a new school year always bring bus problems as new drivers get used to their routes, and that meetings will be held to assess the problems. WINK.
Osceola: School board members paused consideration of allowing volunteer chaplains in schools to counsel willing students after hearing concerns about the First Amendment and interest in participating from the Satanic Temple. “I need more time to make a decision,” said board chair Heather Kahoun. “I haven’t had an opportunity to think about these things, to think about the implications regarding the First Amendment, regarding federal litigation that we could receive if we were to approve this as it is today.” USA Today Florida Network.
Clay: A part-time, off-duty school crossing guard working for the sheriff’s office was arrested Saturday and accused of exposing himself to a woman at a local business. Johnny Ray Long was fired, said a sheriff’s spokesperson. WJXT.
Escambia: An assistant principal at Pensacola High School was arrested last week and accused of secretly filming a nude 17-year-old girl in her bedroom in 2019. Sean Roby, 55, has been charged with video voyeurism. District officials suspended Roby pending the outcome of the investigation. WEAR.
Okaloosa: School Superintendent Marcus Chambers talks about the first week of school, the upcoming vote on a half-cent sales tax for school infrastructure, the introduction of eSports, new schools coming in Crestview, and more. Northwest Florida Daily News.
Leon: An already hotly contested race for the District 4 school board seat has intensified with the news that one of the candidates is suing the city of Tallahassee. Challenger Jeremy Rogers, a city firefighter, claims in the lawsuit that he was denied reasonable accommodations for mental health concerns related to his mother’s death in an arson fire. He’s running against incumbent Laurie Lawson Cox, whom he blames for “leaking” news of the lawsuit for “political gain.” Cox denies any involvement in making the information more widely known. WFSU. Tallahassee Democrat.
Alachua: A Gainesville location that once housed an after-school program run by police will be home to a charter school in the fall of 2025. The former Reichert House Youth Academy Building in Gainesville is now Baxter’s Place, a charter school that got underway with a summer program. Curriculum is now being prepared and up to 30 students are being recruited for the first class. WUFT.
Bay: Students at Central High School in Panama City have started their four-day school weeks, with every Friday off. School officials said they switched to the format because a high number of students work. “We had a lot of students that had a high absenteeism because they had to work,” said principal Jeremy Knapp. “It just benefits them mental health-wise because they’re not as stressed out of trying to figure out, How do I go to school? How do I work? How do I make this all work throughout the school year.” WJHG.
Citrus: After 20 years as school superintendent, Sandra Himmel is retiring and her successor will be elected in Tuesday’s primary. Both candidates are administrators in the district. Scott Hebert was the 1999 Florida Teacher of the Year, principal at Homosassa Elementary School and is now a district administrator, and Jason Koon has been a coach, band director, assistant principal and the principal at Lecanto High School for the past eight years. Florida Politics. Four candidates are running in Tuesday’s primary to succeed the retiring Ginger Bryant, who has been the District 2 school board member for 24 years. They are: Crystal River City Council member Ken Frink; Laura Gatling-Wright, an online teacher for the Florida Connections Academy; Homosassa lawyer Dale Marie Merrill; and Citrus High School geometry teacher Victoria Smith. If no one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, the two top finishers advance to the runoff Nov. 5. Florida Politics.
Putnam: Construction has begun on a $68 million elementary school in Crescent City that is scheduled to replace Middleton-Burney Elementary in the fall of 2025. The new school is part of the district’s 10-year plan to revitalize the district’s schools. “It is a new day in Putnam County, and these precious children here deserve the best that we can provide for them,” said Superintendent Rick Surrency. Palatka Daily News.
Monroe: District 2 school board candidates Zach Bentley and Yvette Mira-Talbott talk about why they’re running, what they see as the key issues in the district and what they hope to do about them, and how they would help teachers in a multilingual setting. The election is Tuesday. Key West Citizen.
Colleges and universities: Several University of Florida administrators and donors are saying that Ben Sasse’s resignation as president was forced after his relationship with board of trustees chair Mori Hosseini deteriorated. Independent Florida Alligator. Florida’s auditor general’s investigation of UF spending will “encompass office of the president expenditures,” the Board of Governors announced Friday. In his 17-month tenure, Sasse “more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies,” reported the UF student newspaper. Sasse denies spending money “inappropriately.” Tallahassee Democrat. Amy Reid, the former chair of the New College of Florida’s now-defunct gender studies department and the faculty representative on the school’s board of trustees, is taking a year’s leave of absence. Reid had been at New College since 1996 but opposed the state’s conservative makeover of the school. She will work at PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes free expression. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Jaime DiDomenico, vice president of the Wrench Group, and Brittany Riner, president of Liber Consulting, have been appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis as trustees to the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. Office of the Governor.
Credit recovery: Programs that allow students to recover credits and stay on track for high school graduation are used by districts across the state and praised by many school officials for giving struggling students a second chance. But some question whether the program actually helps the students or simply makes it easier to earn a diploma. WUWF.
Gun violence in schools: Gun violence is increasing at U.S. schools, according to a report from the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety and David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database. The number of shootings at schools was up 31 percent last year, making it the second-worst year since Everytown began tracking incidents more than a decade ago. USA Today.
Around the nation: U.S. Supreme Court justices declined Friday to overrule two lower-court orders that block the Biden administration’s proposed rules barringr sex discrimination in schools receiving federal aid. The rules include measures to protect transgender students, but those will be on hold until the challenges are resolved in court. NPR. Education Week. Florida has one of the lowest rates of student loan debt per student, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The state ranks 41st out of 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 12 measures of indebtedness and earning opportunities, according to the personal finance company WalletHub. WTVJ.
Opinions on schools: Ben Sasse’s departure as president of the University of Florida provides an opportunity this time to do what didn’t happen the last: conduct the presidential search genuinely in the open, with broad, meaningful input from the university community. Tampa Bay Times. The hirings of Sasse at UF and Richard Corcoran at New College of Florida seemed to usher in a sea change in how higher education is run in Florida: experienced administrators were out, politicians were in. Now every high-level vacancy in a Florida college prompts a fevered and terrified concern: which low-life politician is Gov. DeSantis going to stick them with next? Nate Monroe, Florida Times-Union. If we’ve learned anything from the Sasse episode, it’s that it’s very, very expensive for Floridians to keep subsidizing Gov. DeSantis’ selfish aspirations for higher office. Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post. Our lawsuit against the state over its book challenge policies isn’t about parents wanting to decide what’s right for their children. It’s about people thinking they should get to decide what’s right for everyone’s families. Stephana Ferrell, Nancy Tray and Anne Watts Tressler, Orlando Sentinel. Florida needs an estimated 2,250 highly qualified personal finance teachers to teach the subject this school year. John Pelletier, Orlando Sentinel. Donations to a Tallahassee political action committee used to trash two Indian River County School Board candidates offer a lesson: Don’t donate to PACs. Your contributions might be misused, and your name linked to them forever. Laurence Reisman, TCPalm.
