Latest news with #ParkElementarySchool
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DeSantis creates school ‘liaisons' to Hope Florida in Orange and Lake
Amid controversy over its finances, the embattled Hope Florida charity will expand into public schools, with two Central Florida school districts the first to take part, Gov. Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis announced this week. Public schools in Lake and Orange counties will train Hope Florida 'liaisons' as part of a Florida Department of Education pilot program, DeSantis said Wednesday at Fruitland Park Elementary School in Lake. 'There's been a lot that's been done, a lot of positive momentum, but we want to keep it going,' Gov. DeSantis said of Hope Florida. Hope Florida, the passion project of Casey DeSantis, aims to get needy residents off welfare by connecting them with services provided by private organizations. 'It's not really a program as much as it's a philosophy,' DeSantis said. However it is described, Hope Florida has been embroiled in controversy this spring — one that consumed much of the Legislature's current session — about how it ended up with $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement and how much of that money was later funneled to a political action committee. Some lawmakers also raised doubts about how many people the organization actually helped as it has not provided any firm data. In public schools, the new Hope Florida liaisons, DeSantis said, 'will serve as a dedicated person on staff who can act as a point of contact for Hope Florida resources for students, parents and staff,' helping them connect with local charities and faith-based organizations. DeSantis said Orange County Public Schools had started the training program with a liaison in every school. 'School staff have always collected information on community resources and provided that to families in need,' said OCPS spokesperson Michael Ollendorff in an email. Once staff is trained, they will also connect families to 'Hope Florida navigators,' he said. Sherri Owens, spokeswoman for Lake schools, said the liaisons were not paid positions but instead 'an additional responsibility assigned to an existing staff member, usually a mental health liaison or counselor' by each school principal. 'They have received a training video to watch, but there are some additional materials they will receive as well,' Owens wrote via text. Florida lawmaker shelves Hope Florida investigation — for now Hope Florida, once thought of as a platform for a potential gubernatorial run by Casey DeSantis next year, has instead this spring faced an investigation by the Republican-led House. Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, looked into $10 million the Hope Florida Foundation received as part of a $67 million Medicaid overpayment settlement agreement Florida made with Centene Corp., a managed care contractor. Hope Florida then donated that money to two dark-money groups — so called because they do not have to identify their contributors — that then donated $8.5 million to a political committee, set up by now-Attorney General James Uthmeier, which helped DeSantis defeat last November's ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. Andrade said he has evidence Uthmeier and Orlando attorney Jeff Aaron 'engaged in a conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.' Both have denied wrongdoing. The investigation was shelved last week when two nonprofit executives were no-shows when called to testify before the Legislature, though Andrade said he thought the U.S. Department of Justice should now take it up. DeSantis called the investigation 'political' when he spoke at the elementary school. 'People smear what they fear, and if Hope Florida represents a threat to their worldview, they're going to go at it if the First Lady represents a threat, potentially, to what they're doing.'
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘I'm Just So Worried': Newark Educators Fear Federal Funding Cuts Will Have Devastating Consequences
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat. Jennie Demizio, a special education teacher at Park Elementary School in Newark, stood in a crowd full of dozens of educators and union members and listened to speakers talk about the Trump administration's threats to cut funding for education. One by one, speakers listed the potential impacts of federal cuts on programs at New Jersey's universities and colleges, health care, and research. Protesters yelled 'shame' and 'boo' after speakers detailed the effects of funding cuts on schools. After the rally on Tuesday, Demizio held back tears and her voice cracked as she told Chalkbeat Newark how her students with disabilities rely on federal funding to get to school and for services such as speech therapy and classroom aides. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'Half of my students arrive in ambulances. They're on oxygen, they have seizure disorders, and just their transportation alone to get to school costs thousands of dollars a year,' said Demizio as her voice cracked while holding back tears. 'I'm just so worried we're going to lose this funding.' Demizio's fears echo those of many educators in Newark and across the state who feel that students will lose essential resources because of the administration's threats to education. The protesters hope school districts, higher education institutions, and local leaders will band together to fight looming cuts and protect students and staff. The protest in Newark was part of the 'Kill the Cuts' demonstration, a national day of action with protests in over 30 cities across the country. About 50 city educators and labor unions gathered in front of a bust of John F. Kennedy at Military Park on the windy Tuesday afternoon, where they held signs that read 'hands off my students' and chanted 'stand up, fight back.' The protest in Newark centered on threats to health care, immigrants, research, and the Trump administration's threat to withhold federal funding from school districts and universities that don't eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs deemed unlawful by the administration. Last week, federal officials gave state education agencies 10 days to certify the elimination of DEI efforts in schools or risk losing federal funding. That directive threatens roughly $1.2 billion in federal funding for New Jersey schools, including $77 million for Newark Public Schools, the state's largest district. That funding makes up around 5% of the district's $1.5 billion budget for the upcoming school year. 'There's no way that municipalities can totally foot that bill,' said Demizio.'I'm in a classroom where there are nurses, aides, and, you know, I think I feel like special education teachers, especially, are vulnerable at this moment.' Last week's attack on DEI programs in schools comes days after federal education officials also announced they would revoke deadline extensions to spend federal COVID aid that had been approved by the Biden administration. As a result, 20 school districts across New Jersey could lose an additional $85 million in federal funding for infrastructure projects already in progress. That includes Newark Public Schools, which was approved for a $17 million extension to finish installing artificial intelligence cameras last fall. Paul Brubaker, the district's director of communications, did not respond to questions about the status of the district's AI cameras project or budget plans if federal funds are cut. For Shelby Wardlaw, a professor and vice president of non-tenure track faculty at Rutgers University, the attacks feel personal. International students are worried about getting their visas revoked, and immigrant students fear they might be targeted due to their legal status, Wardlaw said. In recent days, roughly a dozen Rutgers students 'in good academic standing' learned their visas were revoked 'without explanation,' according to an April 6 letter from Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway. Across the country, more than 300 international students and recent graduates have had their legal status changed by the federal government. Additionally, some Rutgers faculty members are concerned about cuts to DEI initiatives and the impact that could have on teaching and learning. Melissa Rodgers, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, spoke to the crowd on Tuesday about the devastating effects funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health and anti-DEI initiatives will have on medical and scientific research. Rodgers, a biomedical professor, has been investigating the impacts of sex on kidney disease, research that's now at risk under proposed cuts, Rodgers said. Wardlaw and her colleagues want Rutgers and other universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance Conference to band together to share legal resources and funds to combat federal funding threats to higher education. Last month, the Rutgers University Senate passed a resolution calling on those universities to form a 'Mutual Defense Compact' to protect and defend 'academic freedom, institutional integrity and the research enterprise,' according to The Daily Targum, Rutgers student-run newspaper. 'Universities are bastions of knowledge and resistance that would oppose an authoritarian overreach, and they're going to come after us first,' Wardlaw told Chalkbeat on Tuesday. 'They're trying to break us as a potential site of resistance.' Protesters at the Newark rally also heard from union leaders, civil rights activist Larry Hamm, and gubernatorial candidates Sean Spiller and Mayor Ras Baraka, who urged educators, laborers, and immigrant rights activists to band together to fight federal threats. 'We must resist,' all three speakers urged the crowd on Tuesday. 'The same people that were trying to stop [workers] from having fair working conditions and a rise in their wages were the same people who were opposed to ending Jim Crow Laws, opposed to civil rights, and opposed to democracy and justice,' Baraka told protesters. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also spoke on Tuesday and called the Trump administration's move to cancel funding for Johns Hopkins University and $400 million in grants to Columbia University an assault on education. The AFT is a party to eight lawsuits against the Trump administration's attacks on education, access to records, and public health, according to the group. 'We have young people engage in critical thinking and problem solving so they can discern fact from fiction, so they can stand up for themselves, so they know how to think,' Weingarten said. 'That is what we do and what this administration is so fearful about.' This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Destination: Victory
How do you become a geography whiz? For fourth-graders Kyle Ostereich and Gus Peller, the answer's all over the map. Ostereich and Peller – having just claimed first and second place in Thursday's Park Elementary School National Geographic Bee – revealed the secret of their success to the Leader. 'I just like to study maps a lot,' Peller said. 'Me too,' Ostereich added. 'It's just for the fun of it,' Peller noted. Ostereich also accumulates knowledge by reading globe-trotting adventure books. The contest was grueling and close, with the field narrowing to Ostereich and Peller after 10 questions that mainly centered on U.S. geography. The two made it through a three-question championship round, leading to a fourth tie-breaker question. The game-winning query? Name the large chain of volcanic islands that stretches about 1,200 miles westward from Alaska (The answer is the Aleutian Islands.)
