Gov. DeSantis announces $89M investment in Florida workforce education

| 2/3/2022

Gov. DeSantis announces $89M investment in Florida workforce education

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday announced an $89 million investment in career and technical education (CTE) to support workforce training initiatives at state colleges and school districts statewide. Speaking at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, the governor also marked a total of $3.5B spent on CTE initiatives in Florida since he took office in 2019. The governor said $10 million will go toward creating CTE charter schools, where DeSantis said high school students will be able to gain credentials in high-demand fields while earning their GED. [Source: Click Orlando]

Faculty groups blast Florida bill to make presidential searches more secret

A bill that would keep parts of the presidential selection process secret at Florida’s public colleges and universities is drawing harsh criticism from faculty leaders, who call it an authoritarian move. With presidential searches underway at four state universities, faculty organizations in Florida and beyond say the legislation threatens to blur the line between higher education and politics. More from the Tampa Bay Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Florida’s Bethune-Cookman, Edward Waters University among historically Black schools to get bomb threats

Edward Waters University warned students via social media early Tuesday morning that it had received “an anonymous bomb and threat of violence to the EWU campus this morning.” EWU was one of at least 13 HBCUs that received bomb threats Tuesday. This came on the heels of at least a half-dozen historically Black universities in five states and the District of Columbia that received bomb threats Monday, with many of them locking down their campuses for a time. More from WJXT and the Tampa Bay Times.

Some Florida schools are looking for superintendents. It's not an easy task

Superintendents across the country have been thrown obstacle after obstacle in the past few years – from pandemic shutdowns and online learning to increasingly volatile school board meetings. It’s a tough job and four school districts across Florida – Pinellas, Broward, Lee, and St. Lucie – are searching for their next superintendent. Miami-Dade, the fourth-largest school district in the nation, just secured their newest leader last week after a hurried process. Pinellas is in a similar situation, trying to find a replacement for long-time superintendent Michael Grego who is set to retire this summer. These searches are challenging. [Source: WUSF]

FIU to build facility to simulate 200 mph hurricanes, 10-20 foot storm surge

With climate change making hurricanes more powerful, Florida International University has received a major federal grant to design and build a facility to simulate a hurricane with winds as ferocious as 200 mph — and a 10- to 20-foot storm surge. “This would be a state-of-the-art facility. It would be the first of its type; currently no other facility like this exists anywhere in the world,” said Arindam Gan Chowdhury, the principal investigator of the project and an engineering professor at Florida International University. [Source: Miami Herald]

ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:

› Plans for state loan program to finance charter schools’ buildings advances [Florida Politics]
Plans to give charter schools access to $10 million in state money to finance their school buildings received a nod from the Senate Education Committee Tuesday. Republican Sen. Manny Diaz’s legislation (SB 1690) survived its first committee stop. The bill proposes a third-party administrator to dole out the money coming from the state’s general fund. The interest paid would be used to defray the cost of the program’s administration.

› Pinellas schools make a reading push, just for boys [Tampa Bay Times]
Amaree Burr-Comer didn’t always pay attention to the books he was reading. “I would just read it to be done,” the McMullen-Booth Elementary School fifth grader recalled. That was before he got involved in the Pinellas County school district’s Boys Read Book Battle two years ago. Created as part of a larger strategy to overcome a literacy achievement gender gap, the battle exposes boys to new materials and teaches them in a competitive environment how to read for meaning and retention.

› Florida Memorial University establishes tech partnership seeking to close Black wealth gap [Miami Herald]
Florida Memorial University is collaborating with music executive and philanthropist Ted Lucas to launch a program that educates students and helps them land jobs in the tech industry — a move aiming to close the racial wealth gap among Black and white households.

› Jacksonville University renovating Kinne University Center [Jacksonville Daily Record]
Jacksonville University will start renovations this spring of the Kinne University Center banquet room to create more space for student use. The Kinne Center houses the Riverview Cafe, Starbucks, the bookstore and post office. JU will renovate the large banquet room “to create a more modern and functional space for students,” said Laura Phelps, senior director of communications.

Tags: Education eNews

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