The Florida Roundup - Florida’s infant mortality crisis, new FAFSA issues and FAMU’s failed donation

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

This week on The Florida Roundup, we looked into a special series from the South Florida Sun Sentinel that examines that state’s infant mortality rate. First, we speak with health reporter Cindy Krischer Goodman (00:21) before speaking with Dr. LaRae Brown, director of UF Health Women’s Specialists — North and Dr. Rodrigo Ruano, Director at UHealth Jackson Fetal Care Center and Division (09:09). Then, we looked at how a revamped federal form for financial aid for students is causing delays with the (19:22). Plus, fallout over a dubious major gift donation to Florida A& M (27:57). And other news from across the state from a deadly bus crash near Ocala (37:18) to severe weather in the Panhandle (40:28). We also heard from our listeners from last week's mailbag (45:44).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being with us this week. We're going to start with a really difficult topic, infant mortality. It's not something that gets a lot of attention, but there can really be nothing more devastating for a family experiencing the death of a newborn or soon-to-be-born baby. Florida spends millions of dollars on the health of moms-to-be and babies, but Florida's infant death rate has not changed in years. It's been flat for about a decade, while the number of expecting moms who do not go to the doctor while they're pregnant has jumped. So are you a new parent, a grandparent, aunt, or uncle? Tell us about the access to health care for the newborn in your life. You can call us now 305-995-1800, 305-995-1800. You can send us a short email as well. The inbox is open. The address

is radio at thefloridaroundup.org, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. We'll be speaking with two doctors coming up live on this Friday. So your phone calls now at 305-995-1800. First, Cindy Kircher-Goodman is the health care reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who reported a three-part investigative series examining infant mortality in Florida. Cindy, thanks for joining us today on the Florida Roundup. What are these Florida newborns dying from?

Well, a variety of different things, but a lot of it is premature. They're born prematurely, and therefore their organs aren't fully developed, and many of them die within the first month. And prematurity, in some cases, is something that can actually be prevented. So that's why this series of articles was so important. Who are the newborns who are at highest risk of dying? Infant mortality among Black babies is double that of white babies in some counties in Florida. The risk of prematurity is much higher for babies of color. And a lot of that has to do with the health of the mother. So when you do go into NICUs, you'll see a high proportion of the babies in NICUs are black or brown.

And that's particularly true in the rural communities of Florida. Lots of statistics and lots of policy here that I do want to talk to you about, Cindy. But there's, of course, the families and the people behind these tragic stories. Tell us the story of Tiffany Williams. Oh, it's heartbreaking. And Tiffany really exemplified a lot of what's wrong in Florida. She had tried to speak up to her doctor many times to say that there was something wrong. She said she never, the doctor never took her seriously. Tiffany ended up

going to birth prematurely and her baby died. And then she had to bury the baby, which was, it's a heartbreaking story, but it's, it's unfortunately she's one of many, many women in Florida who would go through this very sad story. And that was a very common complaint that I heard over and over again from women, pregnant women in Florida, who just told me the doctors don't listen. They don't listen. I tell them that something's wrong and they don't listen. And it's unfortunate. I think that's one of the changes that we need in healthcare. We need to get doctors to listen more to their patients. How has the state of Florida responded to the stagnant data on infant mortality? It has not gone down despite technological miracles. It hasn't gone down in over a decade

despite not just advances but money being spent by the state. It's just not going to the right places. One of the biggest problems is that we don't have enough maternal care. We don't have enough obstetricians. I can't imagine that's going to get any better. We have rural hospitals closing, closing labor and delivery wards. And in some cases, women have to travel an hour to get any kind of maternity care. So that's one of the biggest problems, I think, that we're facing in Florida. Let me ask you about the possible impact of Florida's new abortion ban,

banning most abortions after six weeks. That went into effect this month. There is an abortion question on the ballot this fall for Florida voters to decide the fate of. But in the meantime, the Florida law is essentially most abortions are prohibited after six weeks. How might that impact maternal care and infant mortality? Well, I think we can expect to see more babies. I think we can expect to see more vulnerable babies, vulnerable to infant mortality, we possibly may see obstetricians leaving the state. There's a lot of concern and fear around health care, maternal health care. So I think we may see not only obstetricians leaving the state, but from what I'm hearing is that they're going

to have a hard time attracting residents to Florida. The state has seen higher infant mortality rates in the past as recently as the 1990s. I say as recently, but nonetheless, within the last 30 years, it was higher than where it's been in the last decade. What did the state do to address it back then? And are any of those tools available now? Well, I think that was that just at the beginning when the problem was first discovered. They started doing a lot more. They started actually giving a lot more attention and a lot more funding to it. But I think in the last 10 years, the funding is stabilized and the attention hasn't been there. This issue of infant mortality has not yet been addressed.

I think also one of the problems is that we have had an increase in mothers who are not healthy. We have higher levels of obesity, high levels of diabetes, high levels of hypertension, and we're not addressing those in the mothers. That's what's happened over the last decade. Those rates are going up, and therefore the mothers are going into pregnancy less healthy than they've ever been. We're talking about infant mortality in Florida with Cindy Kirscher-Goodman, a health reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. She has done an investigative series on infant mortality here in Florida. Your phone calls and emails coming up at 305-995-1800, 305-995-1800. Are you a new

grandparent, parent, parent aunt or uncle what about access to health care for the newborn in your life you can email us radio at the florida roundup.org radio at the florida roundup.org cindy the state spent 170 million dollars on maternal and infant health in the last fiscal year. What are those spending priorities for the state of Florida? Well, they spend the majority of the money goes to Healthy Start, which is actually a very good program. However, it's under-resourced. There's not enough boots on the ground, so to speak. There's not enough people going out into the community to help the women who need the resources and to actually educate the women who become pregnant that they need to get prenatal care. So that's

one of the issues. There's also a lot of money going to places after the baby's born when some of the money needs to go to funding prenatal care. You mentioned prenatal care here because you found in your reporting the number of moms-to-be who did not have a prenatal visit, not even one, more than doubled in a decade. Why is that? not on Medicaid to begin with. So by the time they get Medicaid, they're late into their pregnancies. It's apparently a very frustrating, time-consuming process. And some of the women who have Medicaid are finding that the doctors don't want to take them because their reimbursement rates are too low. So when we have this small amount of providers and big demand, they're going to take the women who have good private insurance first. It's a lot of different things happening at once. And these women end up in the emergency room often or in labor and delivery having never seen, have never had a prenatal care.

Cindy Kirscher Goodman is a healthcare reporter at the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporting a three-part series on infant mortality here in the Sunshine State. Cindy, difficult reporting, but thank you for sharing it with us here on the Florida Roundup. Thank you. It is an important topic and I appreciate you highlighting it. 305-995-1800 to share your story of access to healthcare for a mom-to-be or a newborn. Andrea in Tallahassee, Sarah in Jacksonville, hold on, we'll get to health care for a mom-to-be or a newborn. Andrea in Tallahassee, Sarah in Jacksonville, hold on, we'll get to your calls in a moment. Dr. Larea Brown is with us, an OB-GYN, Medical Director at UF Health Women's Specialists and Chief of the Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UF Health North, that's in Jacksonville.

Dr. Brown, welcome to the program. What do you make of that lack of prenatal care? What has fueled moms-to-be from not taking advantage of prenatal care opportunities? First, thank you for having me on today. And yes, this is a very heartbreaking situation to think that in an industrialized country with numerous hospitals and physicians, that there are still barriers to patients obtaining prenatal care. But it's multifactorial. Like was mentioned earlier in the call, there's definitely a systemic mistrust of the healthcare system in general,

based on some historical trends, especially with more vulnerable or marginalized populations, such as Black or brown women, with their interactions with medical care. So there is some reluctance there. But there are also some very serious concerns with the lack of obstetric providers and actual places where people can go to obtain maternity care. At least 20% of the counties in Florida are maternal care deserts where patients have to travel at least an hour to obtain prenatal care. So if you can imagine for some of our constituents in this state that are already battling and juggling, you know, social,

economic, psychological, mental health issues, it's just one more burden that, you know, prevents that access. Dr. Rodrigo Ruano is also with us, Dr. Brown. He is the director of the UHealth Jackson Fetal Care Center, Jackson Memorial Hospital, and University of Miami Health in Miami. Dr. Ruano, address the preventability of the causes of infant mortality as this rate has been stagnantly flat for 10 years. Good afternoon and thank you for having me here to talk about this important issue that we are facing. You know now, and then I agree that it is

a heartbreaking situation and the way that I see this is that we are facing like a challenging situation every single day in Jackson, you know, and then University of Miami also. We are trying to provide the highest level. And then I think something that is very important is to have a multidisciplinary approach because one of the main reasons of the high infant mortality is prematurity, as we discussed before. And the prematurity, there's a discussion if you can prevent, but we can't if we have

a good prenatal care that was mentioned before. So first, the patients need to start prenatal care. They need to have access to prenatal care. They need to start prenatal care as soon as possible. Why? And I'm going to explain in a few minutes. But because that's the opportunity for us to map and to diagnose problems like diabetes, hypertension, that can impact in the fetal life. Those are challenges that a

mom-to-be may have. Exactly. And then if we have this opportunity to check, right, once the pregnancy is starting, beginning, if we have this opportunity to check, right, once the pregnancy is starting, beginning, then we have a possibility to make a plan. We are facing situations, as was mentioned before, that some patients, they don't have prenatal care and they arrive in the ER or triage, obstetric triage, with a complicated situation. Then we are running, I tell my students that we are running after a problem. So we really need to do a good prenatal care. That's the first step.

Second, I think a multidisciplinary approach. Once we have a complication, like if a patient has diabetes, we need to talk to endocrinologists. We need to make a plan. And then can prevent sometimes preterm delivers, prematurity. Hipertension, the same.

We can control the blood pressure of the patients. And the importance of starting the prenatal care early is because we can also do an ultrasound. And this is my work also. Why? Because ultrasound, we can confirm the number of the fetus, of the babies that this mother is carrying. How many babies? Exactly.

All right. So that's important because if our twins increase the risk of prematurity. Second, we can clearly confirm the gestation age. Then we can understand, for instance, another reason of increased high mortality, infant mortality, is smaller babies. We call fetal growth restriction. So we need to have an idea. And anomalies also.

So that's very important that they have access also to a second trimester ultrasound screen for us to understand if the baby has or not a problem. Dr. Rano, Dr. Brown, Andrea from Tallahassee has been listening in to the conversation. She's been very patient. Andrea, you're on the radio. Go ahead. Tell us your experience, please. You all hear me? Yes. Loud and clear. Go ahead. you're on the radio. Go ahead. Tell us your experience, please. Andrea Brown, U.S. North Carolina, Well, hear me? Yes.

Loud and clear. Go ahead. You're on the radio. Andrea Brown, U.S. North Carolina, Okay. Just wanted to say first and foremost, Dr. Brown at U.S. North, you helped deliver my baby and I owe you my life. Andrea Brown, U.S. North Carolina, Oh, wow. And just hearing your voice, I'm sorry.

I got like a little shaky there. But here when I was in Tallahassee, I did not have good access to prenatal care because I was on Medicaid. And the Medicaid provider I had during the beginning of my pregnancy, not many offices took it. And I was already high risk. Then halfway through my pregnancy, I found out I had the option to actually change that provider. And then once I changed that provider, it still wasn't enough. So I ended up having to leave Tallahassee, drop out of school at Florida State to go to Jacksonville to deliver my baby. And thanks to the Healthy Start program, I knew what the signs of preeclampsia were. And I had

to convince my parents that there was something really, really wrong. I had a headache that wouldn't go away. I noticed I was starting to swell. And we raced over to U.S. North. And sure enough, I had preeclampsia right at 37 weeks. And, you know, had my induction. We tried everything we could to get baby out. And I ended up having a C-section. And I know I hemorrhaged a little bit.

I don't remember much of that C-section, but thank you, Dr. Brown. I was okay. And then after I ended up having a uterine infection, which I don't remember much of that, but I just remember how awful it was and having eclampsia after. And I owe you my life. and having eclampsia after, and I owe you my life. And I think that the state of Florida needs to do a much better job at taking care of mothers, especially those mothers that are on Medicaid, those mothers that have to work, that are students. I think we need to make sure there are more boots on the ground

for the Florida Healthy Start program, because if it weren't for my Healthy Start home visitor, I would have never known the sign, and I probably wouldn't be here today. So yeah, we need to make sure that they have funding, that they have education, so that they can go into more homes and meet these mothers where they're at,

so that way, at least if they don't have the best care, they know how to advocate for themselves. Andrea, I'm glad you called. I'm glad that this story has resonated and you were able to share your story, very personal, between you and Dr. Brown here. Congratulations on the birth and the child and health and happiness, Andrea, to you and your family. Thanks so much for sharing the story with us. And health and happiness, Andrea, to you and your family. Thanks so much for sharing the story with us.

Dr. Brown and Dr. Ruano, we have just a couple of minutes left, and I want to hear from each of you here to address the supply side of it. Both of you had talked about, obviously, the importance of prenatal care. And, boy, Andrea's voice, there is the reason why that access is so important. But that access also relies on the availability of professionals like yourselves, Dr. Brown and Ruwanda. How does Florida go about addressing that supply side of maternal care so that Florida mothers can get the care? Excellent question. can get the care? Excellent question. Like we was mentioned a little bit earlier about, you know, residency training programs, just applicants being a little apprehensive about some of the legislation in our state. That may not be something that we can immediately address

the workforce with regards to physicians. But what we can do is embrace other birth workers that may be able to just kind of spread their wings and also make patients feel more comfortable with the health care system, such as the use of doulas and midwives. We work collaboratively with many of those other birth workers at our institution, and I know at many places around the state. That may be a temporary band-aid to kind of bridge the gap to both regain trust and provide access. And I know there's been some recent legislation about freestanding birth centers to kind of reach those deserts and also just provide a bridge. You know, many people may be afraid of physicians in hospitals. So I think that that would be a good start.

Dr. Ruano, we have about 30 seconds, but I want to hear if you're... Okay, okay. So I'm going to do very quickly. But first thing is that it's a difficult question to address. But Jackson Memorial Hostel and University of Miami, we are hiring more people.

And we believe also more of the situations. And we are proud of our residency and education team because this is their future, right? And then I agree also with about midwives and advanced practitioners, other nurses working with us. And I just wanted to highlight that sometimes, one second, okay, that's very important to do something even before the patients are getting pregnant, which is a preconceptional consultation. So I think this can be the key for helping in the future also. Thank you. Dr. Rano, Dr. Brown, thank you very much for sharing your expertise with us here on the Florida Roundup.

We have more to come from your Florida Public Radio stations. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Okay, so click on the decision letter. Okay, status update. Decision letter right there. Okay. Scared. These are families and friends gathered around a high school senior just a few months ago. They were checking their email.

Decisions are now available. Hitting refresh on their inbox, it was decision day for Florida universities. Oh my God, I got it. Oh my god, I got it! These students were invited to become Seminoles or Gators. They were accepted to Florida State or the University of Florida. Welcome to the Seminole family. These are annual scenes that play out in millions of homes every spring across the state, across the country. But the acceptance letter is just part of the process of heading off to college.

For families, the next step after a student gets accepted often is the free application for federal student aid, nicknamed FAFSA. The federal form is used to figure out how much federal financial aid a student is eligible to receive, and this year, well, it's been a mess. The federal government redid the form in hopes of making it easier, but it was released late, the review process has been delayed, and lots of families in Florida just didn't apply at all. Meantime, the deadline for a student to commit to a school has come and gone. It has meant some students and their families may have had to decide where to go to college without having the full financial picture. Several state universities here in Florida delayed their student acceptance

deadlines in hopes the federal financial aid offers would be cleared up. Billy Joe Hamilton is Associate Vice President of Enrollment Planning and Management at the University of South Florida. Billy Joe, thanks for joining us here on the radio program. I imagine it's been a very busy few months and pretty intense few weeks here with the FAFSA delays and waiting for students to accept their invitations to become freshmen at the University of South Florida. What does the freshman class look like, the class of 2028? So far, it's really strong here at the University of South Florida. So we are up in deposits, which is significantly higher than where we were last year, between

6% and 7%, which is a little surprising. We have extended our admissions deposit deadline. You may be aware that nationally that's always been May 1st, right? You couldn't require students to commit prior to that date. And so ours was the 15th, which was Wednesday. We are accommodating students who say, you know, I can't really make a decision until I get my financial aid offer. And so we're working one-on-one with students to make sure that that's not a problem, not only with their admissions deposit, but with applying for housing and things like that. Any expenses that, you know, they're going

to incur that require them to know what their financial aid is. So we're getting ready to send out a new batch of award letters today. As of Monday for new freshmen, we were down about 17% in sending out award letters. And the award letters are the financial offers for what a student or their parent or guardian would pay for tuition. It would include the federal financial aid and then a new scholarship that USF would want to offer on top of that. Right, and the state of Florida. So just to be clear, for every seven letters you had sent out a year ago, one of those has been missing over the past week as you neared this extended deadline on Wednesday. And that can be the result of two different things.

One, the students haven't applied. And we've seen a kind of an uptick in applications in the last week. So whether or not students just kind of said, hey, I'm going to wait till the dust settles a little bit on this and then I'm going to apply. And then we still have we checked yesterday. We have about 500 the Department of Education had indicated were not accurate. So these are folks that applied for the federal aid and their application has some problem with it. Correct. Identified by the Department of Education as an error on their end in processing them. So we are starting to dig through them

kind of on a one-to-one thing. And if the indicator is, you know, they're going to be less eligible, and we already know they're not eligible for anything maybe other than a certain kind of unsubsidized loan, we're probably going to move forward on those just to clean them up and get them out to students. The other issue that came out last week, as it's been a weekly thing of kind of new issues, is that they're not going to be up and running for us to submit corrected applications on behalf of students until the end of June. Which would be like six weeks before the fall semester begins. Exactly, exactly. Now, we can obviously look at these students and kind of give them an idea of what they may or may not qualify. But again, it's a concern that these students may opt out and just say, you know, I just, this is too much. I can't navigate through this process this year. I'll lay out,

I'll come back next year or maybe come in the spring. And of course, our biggest concern is these are probably our neediest students that need the most help and they're not able to get through this process. So how has this mess of a process impacted the student profile for the freshman class of 2028? Well, I think we're, because we're so far behind, you know, the 17% in getting applications, you know, we're still seeing USF as a pretty high, what we call an access institution. We have a lot of Pell Grant recipients, similar to FIU and UCF, where we're kind of high in that. And we haven't really seen a lot of shift in that yet. The devil's in the details when school starts in August, if these students actually end up showing up. Has this delay with FAFSA and all the additional work that it has required,

will that affect the number of freshmen, for instance, on campuses for USF next fall? Our pool looks very good, but students over the past several years have been depositing in multiple institutions more often. And so now we're in that period, starting between summer and August, where we're concerned about what we call melt. Students have deposited, but they don't sign up for orientation, those kinds of things, to where that is maybe an indicator of their intent not to come. So our admissions office is all over that, working with the students, you know, trying to say, hey, are there any barriers that we can help you get over

in order to enroll here in the fall? So that's typically a summer activity for them. I would say it's probably a little more intense this year just because of where we're at with the FAFSA issues. What should students and parents who have still not received a FAFSA offer be thinking about today as the deadline to accept an admission at a university in Florida has passed? We've been telling parents to be patient, and they have been. We're experiencing pretty much. I mean, this is kind of nationally known. If you've got a college student, you're probably aware some of this is going on, how long they're going to continue to be patient. I mean, we're not very patient. The financial aid

profession is kind of being over a little bit, being patient, but they've been very patient. And if they haven't, if a parent has been waiting, please do it now. I wouldn't wait any longer if I was sitting back and saying, hey, I'm going to try to get this, you know, here. I want to know that the system is working perfectly before I fill out the FAFSA. Please don't do that. Start right now. Because for the most part, people are getting through a lot better right now. And in the long run, despite all the delays that we've had, this is going to be a much improved process for families once they get the bugs worked out. But it's just it's just been a very poorly rolled out and implemented process from the Department of Education. So ever the optimist there at the University of South Florida, Billie Jo Hamilton. I know. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm hopeful. Thank you.

She's the Associate Vice President of Enrollment Planning and Management at the University of South Florida. Now, it has been a college graduation season to remember at Florida A&M University. It isn't for student protests or campus demonstrations, though. It was for, at the time, what the university thought was a $237 million donation. It was so much money, the numbers just didn't even fit inside the box on an oversized check that university president Larry Robinson held up at one of the school's graduation ceremonies. The donation came from Gregory Germani, the CEO of Batterson Farms. That's a small hemp manufacturer based in Texas. Now, there were several red flags in the days after this very public announcement.

What exactly was donated? How was it valued at over $200 million? And why did hardly anyone in the university know about it? Since then, the university says the donation has, quote, ceased. This week, this is what Robinson told the school's board of trustees. I wanted it to be real and ignore some warning signs along the way. There was no personal gain, but the impact on our students and our university would have been extraordinary. Devron Gibbons is the vice chair of the Florida A&M University Board of Trustees. Devron, thank you for joining us here on the radio program.

What do you want to learn from the investigation that you and your fellow Board of Trustees approved this week? Tom, thank you so much for asking that question. I think we just want to get to the bottom of what actually took place. What happened in this process? How can we become better as a university? How can we change our policies and procedures to get back to the prominence that FAMU has seen over the years? And unfortunately, this is a bit of a black eye right now for us, but it's not something that we can't recover from. I think one of the things that happens at a lot of historically black colleges and universities is that they're understaffed. And as a result of that, sometimes we don't have all the systems and other things in place and bodies to actually be able to carry out such large gifts or do all the vetting and make sure that all the processes are followed.

Now, that's not an excuse because in any shape or form, we should have done everything that we could to make sure that we utilize all the policies and procedures related to federal, state, and local laws to ensure that we did this the right way. What is your understanding today of what was actually donated, what the asset was? The school put out that press release saying it was 14 million shares of stock with an intrinsic value of at least $239 million. That was the eye-popping number that everybody saw. So fortunately or unfortunately, I'm in the financial services field, and so therefore I question when people move stock, was there a pending IPO?

If there was a pending IPO, Tom. An IPO, an initial public offering when a company first sells stock to the public. That's exactly right. Is it a publicly traded company? There are all kinds of rules and other things associated with stock transfers. And so that began to raise a lot of eyebrows and questions in my mind, just from being involved in the financial services industry for so long. Yeah. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. HBCUs have received some historic donations in recent years. Spelman College in Atlanta earlier this year received $100 million in donations from a businesswoman and her husband, a money management chairman. Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott,

has donated more than a half billion dollars spread across many historically Black colleges. The Netflix founder has made gifts. What do you think is driving some of these pretty significant transformative gifts for these universities? I don't know what the driver is, but I will say that I think that a lot of folks across the country are starting to see that there are quality folks that come from HBCUs. We provide quality education. Our business school, our architectural school and engineering school, our FMU, the pharmacy school, all have been schools that have been sought after and the students go into the corporate America and they do well. have been sought after and the students go into the corporate America and they do well. Mackenzie Scott, I mean, I applaud what she's doing and all the other folks that are doing such great things, the Netflix persons. And I mean, it really has helped the bottom line of

these universities. The endowments of HBCUs are not as large as the University of Florida or the University of Texas. So, you know, these are things that would allow for these great institutions to carry on and provide the future leaders of tomorrow, whether they're black, brown, blue, or white. But it should be applauded because for years, a lot of HBCUs have been underfunded. And these necessary funds will allow for them to continue to let young minorities, as well as other people from the general population just come to the university and see that they can receive the same quality education as you would get anywhere else. I want to ask you about that public funding of

Florida A&M University, a historically black college here in Florida, a state school. Last fall, the U.S. Education Secretary and the U.S. Agriculture Secretary wrote letters to 16 governors, including Governor DeSantis here in Florida, saying that land-grant historically Black colleges have missed out on $13 billion in funding over the past 30 years nationwide. FAMU is one of those state land-grant historically Black colleges. How would you describe the state of Florida's funding of FAMU? So let me, I have a different perspective. Florida A&M is one of the two land-grant universities in the state.

One is the University of Florida, and one is, of course, Florida A&M University, right? It was two different pieces of federal legislation that led to both of those universities. That's exactly right. And so I also sit on the community college board, St. Petersburg College, which is one of the top three or four in the state in terms of size and also in terms of the quality programs they put out. And then I sit on Bethune-Cookman University's board over in Daytona Beach, which is another predominantly African-American university or HBCU, right? And the way I look at it is, while HBCUs have been underfunded, but can you point to one particular governor or

administration that has not found a piece where they're trying to help the university along? When it comes to Florida A&M, I think one thing that I would like to see and that we are continuing to work on as a board of trustees, and I think we finally got a group of people who are focused on this like a laser beam, is to compete and be at a quality high level in terms of research and output and students and graduation rates and so on and so. And so I would like for us to move in that direction. Yes, in the past, we've been underfunded. I can't point to one particular person that hasn't said, I don't want to help Florida A&M University. I've been on boards in higher ed here in the state of Florida since Jeff Bush. Every time I've gone to any governor with an innovative idea or program, guess what? It's been funded. And to be clear, in that letter, the two cabinet secretaries say this is a situation that clearly predates all of us. It goes on to offer up a suggestion about addressing the funding disparity over the course of several years in the state budget in Florida.

How does that strike you as a potential solution or a way to address that imbalance in funding that you've experienced, you've seen? Tom, I would entreat you to look at the last two budgets and this Florida state system here, coming from the legislature, Florida A&M, and each one of those has had banner years. So I think that the governor is listening. He gets it. He understands it. I think that he understands the quality of education that comes out and the outputs of Florida A&M University. So I think if you look at the Florida legislature over the last couple of years here, they have put their money where their mouth is and tried to fund in a major way to help us catch up. Debra Gibbons is the vice chair of Florida A&M University's Board of Trustees. Devron, thanks so much for your time. Best of luck.

No, thank you. We did look at the state budget that begins in July. It calls for about $154 million for historically black colleges and universities in Florida. 72% of that is going to FAMU. Stick with us, still to come, the tornadoes and high temperatures over the past week in Florida. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Just as the sun was rising Tuesday morning, police say a pickup truck drifted across the center line of State Route 40 in Marion County near Ocala and slammed into a bus carrying dozens of farm workers on their way to a watermelon field.

Eileen Kelly starts our reporting from WGCU in southwest Florida. A man is behind bars after colliding his pickup truck into a school bus carrying migrant workers. Eight people were killed and 40 were injured. The crash happened at 6.35 Tuesday morning as the workers were headed to a watermelon field in Dunnellan. At some point, they collided kind of in a side-swiping manner. After that, the bus traveled off the road, went through a fence, struck a tree, and overturned. Lieutenant Patrick Royden of the Florida Highway Patrol said nearly everyone on the bus was injured, eight of them critically. 41-year-old Brian McLean Howard was arrested on eight charges of DUI manslaughter. Troopers say Howard was driving a 2001 Ford Ranger across the center line colliding with the farm workers bus.

The farm workers were working for O'Vara Trucking and Harvesting, which is based in Immokalee. According to Department of Labor records obtained by WGCU, the company recently applied for 43 H-2A workers to harvest watermelons at Cannon Farms this month. The H-2A program allows certain companies to bring workers into the United States for temporary agricultural jobs. According to the Associated Press, Florida farms employ more H-2A workers than any other state, about 50,000 a year. I'm Aileen Kelly. I'm Marion Summerall in Orlando. The Farmworker Association of Florida's Ernesto Ruiz says families of the injured workers may be dependent on their wages. And because of this crash, there could be wider impacts for the families. They're leaving their families to a foreign country where they're often treated poorly, not because it's a joy for them, but because it's an economic necessity. His organization started a GoFundMe to support the victims and families.

The crash sent the bus through a wooden fence, hitting a tree and finally coming to rest on its side. This is audio from the body camera of a Marion County Sheriff's deputy. Dozens of the farm workers who could get out of the bus were sitting or laying in the grass. It was the second crash in eight days involving the truck driver who was arrested. According to his arrest report, Brian Howard told police he smoked marijuana oil and took prescription medicine about seven hours before the crash. He said he was on his way to a methadone

clinic to get his daily medication for a chipped vertebrae. Howard has more than a dozen previous traffic convictions. A new federal requirement takes effect at the end of June requiring seat belts in vehicles used by farm workers in the United States on temporary visas. The workers who died in the crash ranged in age from 20 to 46. Twisters and torrid temperatures. That was the weather in the past week here in Florida. Severe weather a week ago brought three tornadoes to the Tallahassee area. Here's Tristan Wood with our partner station WFSU in Tallahassee. Southeast Tallahassee and the areas surrounding Florida State and Florida A&M Universities

received some of the most extensive damage. Lauren Heinrichs, a recent FSU grad who lives close to Doak Campbell Stadium, says she was out walking her dog when she saw what looked like a tornado coming down her street. We ran back inside and immediately right when we got back in, everything just like the heard trees breaking a do the hood of her car, anot home. Railroad Square Art

devastating impacts from resident Ryan Smith went of his friends art studio and destruction. There we ripped off of buildings, absolutely everywhere. Ho stopped by after the stor businesses. I'm Tristan W

F. S. Use iconic circus t the entire big top and twisting the supporting metal beams. Florida State's baseball stadium also was in the path of one of the tornadoes, knocking down the outfield video screen and bending a foul pole. Meanwhile, down the peninsula, hot, hot, hot temperatures. Like, really hot. So across Florida Keys, it looks to remain just under heat advisory criteria, So across Florida Keys, it looks to remain just under key advisory criteria, although it could get into that criteria. And that is a heat index of 108 to 112 degrees. That's National Weather Service Key West lead meteorologist Nancy Barnhart on Monday.

Megan Borowski is our meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network back with us here on the Florida Roundup. Radio Emergency Network back with us here on the Florida Roundup. So, Megan, last Friday's storm system produced those three tornadoes causing a lot of damage throughout Tallahassee and Leon County. How common is that kind of severe storm outbreak in that area, especially this time of year? For Leon County, tornado outbreaks, they do happen. Not all the time. They're not too frequent, but they do happen. And some years are more active than others. We do see typically during El Nino winters into the early spring, we'll see more severe weather outbreaks across

the southeast. And we're transitioning out of an El Nino, but nonetheless, we're still in one. So that's one potential reason of maybe attributing why this particular event occurred. But, you know, just in terms of examples of other outbreaks, we had one actually in early January over the Panhandle. More reports toward the Panama City area, but we did have a Leon County tornado. It was a weak one, an EF0. I mean, there is a history of, you know, maybe once, twice a year. Sometimes we'll skip a year. Typically, you know, our reports are weaker end tornadoes. Now, we have had stronger ones, EF3s in the Panhandle and toward the Leon

County area. This isn't the strongest in terms of tornadoes to hit Leon County, but nonetheless, two EF2s and one EF1 all in the general vicinity of a small area. That's pretty impactful. Yeah, those EF2s winds up to 135 miles an hour. And of course, we saw the damage and the destruction left over by it. The severe weather continued throughout the week. Some heavy rains in the Tampa area, a lot of tornado watches in northeast Florida. What's been fueling it? We're in this pattern where we have troughs dipping down into the plains and then tracking across the country.

It's all about the jet dipping farther south and being able to bring storm tracks closer to our area. You've got a clash of air masses, you get the ingredients in place. You know, we can get these tornadoes spinning up or even just these severe thunderstorms. You know, also in Tallahassee last week, we had straight line winds of 100 miles an hour. So, you know, these storm tracks are just continued this entire week. And we still have a threat over the weekend for the panhandle for severe weather and for flooding rain. Meantime, 90s in North Florida in mid-May. The heat index, Megan, hit over 110 degrees at the Fort Lauderdale Airport on Wednesday. It's all related. Yeah, so what is powering all this heat and humidity?

So it's all related to circulation around these storm tracks, right? So you have an area of low pressure. The circulation around it is counterclockwise. And so ahead of it, you'll have southwesterly winds or southerly winds ahead of the systems, drawing in humid and warm air from the lower latitude. So we'll get this surge of humidity and really making it feel sticky and quite unpleasant outside. And, you know, we'll get those elevated heat indices and then the storm will track on through and we'll have that clash of the cooler air behind the storm system. And that's how we can get our severe weather as well in these heavy rain rates. Can we draw any predictions about the heat this summer, given the heat this week? I don't think you can relate the weather this week to potentially down the line. Happy rainy season, Megan. All right. Megan Borowski, meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Finally on the Roundup, last week we talked about public education in school districts

in Tampa, Jacksonville, and the Fort Lauderdale areas closing schools. You sent us several emails that we just couldn't fit into that program last week. So here are some of those notes that you shared with our inbox. Alfredo wrote us, in regards to why schools are declining in attendance, it's because many schools are allowing the attendance, it's because many schools are allowing the gender identity narrative to flourish. Emily in Duval County wrote us, as a parent of children in one of the top-rated elementary schools in the state of Florida, we should not be closing high-achieving neighborhood schools that are well-attended

and well-supported. Jacksonville, Florida has had an increased population over the past five years. Jacksonville, Florida has had an increased population over the past five years. Dropping enrollment in public education is due to charter school vouchers. Emily then finished, the people want equal funding for equal standards for all our schools. She wrote that last sentence in bold in her email. Hugh and Loretta wrote, I am a retired Florida public school teacher and coach. My parents are also retired teachers. My wife and daughter are current public school teachers in Florida.

In my opinion, I view education vastly different than most people, and I see a systemic plan to destroy public schools in Florida by Governor DeSantis and the GOP. He writes, it's depressing remembering when Jeb Bush was governor and seeing the progressive downfall of state schools. Shameful. Katie wrote us, I'm a parent of a high school teen in Lake County who has afforded the opportunity to leave the traditional public school system due to the release of the income cap requirements for school choice. I'm a single mother with one job and zero supplemental income.

What I didn't hear on your program was why parents are choosing to leave the traditional public school system in droves. Would we be leaving if we felt our children were receiving high quality education in a safe environment? Katie asks. The list of concerns in regards to public schooling are endless. Minimal performance expectations, violence, drugs, unrestricted cell phone usage, disengaged teachers, tolerance of repeat offending, social-emotional learning techniques. For myself and my son, Katie says, I have seen immense improvements across the board. Renee wrote us, in Broward County, the governor has made life very difficult since the COVID-19 face-off on reopening.

Ironically, as the county is looking at closing schools, some of those campuses are being considered have already received investments in infrastructure, so campuses are being fixed up to then be liquidated to possibly a charter school. It does not make any sense. And then Robin sent us this note. My five-year-old granddaughter goes to Fishwear Elementary School in Jacksonville. Her parents moved purposely to that neighborhood before she was born so she could go to this school. She signs off saying, thank you, a concerned Nana. Well, our inbox is always open for you.

We love to hear from you. Radio at thefloridaroundup.org. Radio at thefloridaroundup.org is our email address. And that is our program for this week. It's produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF Public Media in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. WLRN's Vice President of Radio and the program's Technical Director is Peter Mertz. Engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson, Charles Michaels, and Jackson Hart. Richard Ives answers our phones. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. Thanks for calling, emailing, listening, and supporting public media in your neighborhood. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.