The Florida Roundup - Homeowners insurance and climate risk, Florida scores drop on nation’s report card, weekly news briefing 

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke about the similarities and differences between California and Florida when it comes to property insurance with KQED Science reporter Danielle Venton (03:30) and Anne Greggis with the Palm Beach Post/USA Today Network (12:54). And later, we were joined by Jeff Solochek, Tampa Bay Times education reporter, to talk about how Florida scored on the Nation’s Report Card (30:52). Plus, we looked at what’s at state for Florida with the proposal to do away with FEMA (37:21), remember the late Geraldine Thompson (41:42), and learned about young bird watchers (43:13).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us this week. Now we had planned on connecting this hour with colleagues in San Francisco for a live cross-continent conversation about home insurance. After all, both states have been struggling with an unstable insurance market and spiraling costs adding to our affordability challenges. Now we're not going to be simulcasting in California this week, but we expect to very soon. In fact, we hope to have the top insurance regulator from each state with us sometime in the weeks ahead. We still want to talk about home insurance this week though. After all, it remains one of the top concerns of Floridians. We'll be speaking with a reporter

about the California home insurance market, especially the uncertainty after the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, and its potential to impact the cost of insurance here that's coming up in just a moment or so. Florida's insurer of last resort recently announced one in five of its policyholders will see their insurance rate drop this year at renewal. That does not necessarily mean your insurance premium will go down. Home values keep rising in Florida and the cost to rebuild a home has shot up in recent years.

So let's get into it here. What's your experience with home insurance? Have you gotten that renewal in the mail or maybe an order for an inspection? Have you shopped around at all by yourself or with an insurance agent? Florida lawmakers have passed more than a dozen bills in recent years hoping to stop the insurance market from collapsing. So how have these reforms impacted you and the cost of risk for what may be your biggest investment, your home? Call us now the phone

lines are open 305-995-1800 305-995-1800. Or you can send us a quick email radio at the Florida roundup.org. Our inbox is open. We're monitoring it live on this Friday radio at the Florida roundup.org. Chris actually sent us an email before we were live on the radio. Chris wrote us I came to Florida as a younger man just out of the US Army. After years of working construction in the Florida heat, I was able to purchase my first house. That was 1994.

It was a quaint 1950s block house, which I improved on bit by bit over the years as finances and time allowed. The house was a mile from the Gulf in Southwest Florida. Eventually, Chris says, I had two trucks, a boat, and a house that I had made my home and they were all covered by the same carrier. I was never late with a payment. I had never filed a claim and my home was always over insured. Chris goes on and says somewhere around 2016 I received a call from my insurance company. It informed me that I needed to

repaint one section of the back of my house or my homeowner's insurance would be dropped. Chris says I had stuck out and painted over 95% of the house myself. The last bit was a small bump out in the dining room. A little over a month later, I had the letter of cancellation. Chris says I'm now just an old carpenter and I sort of wish that I would have simply invested the premium payments into the stock index fund there surely would be enough to rebuild my home in the inevitable event of a storm and he says probably enough left over

for a few dozen eggs with a wink yeah Chris I'm sure your story is is resonating with a lot of Floridians certainly you can share yours 305-995-1800 or radio at the floridaroundup.org. Daniela Vinton is with us now, a science reporter for our colleague station KQED in San Francisco, because we wanted to learn more about the insurance situation in California after the devastating wildfires just a few weeks ago. Danielle, thanks for joining us on the program today. Nice to talk to you. Good afternoon. I'm so glad to be here. So what kind of shape is the California home insurance market

in these days as the damage is still being tallied from the Los Angeles wildfires? Yeah, I mean, it's not too much to say that California's insurance market is in a crisis and has been for a couple of years. The state recently passed some sweeping legislative reforms, regulatory reforms, the biggest updates in 30 years to try to stem some of the crisis. And then we had these utterly devastating fires in Southern California.

You know, so it's, so things are shaky right now. Things are rocky. It's premiums are going to go up very likely and a lot of people are really worried. What were the focus of the reforms that the California legislature and governor put in place before the wildfires in Los Angeles this winter? The focus of the reforms was basically giving insurance companies more of what they wanted California had very strict regulations that were designed to be Pro consumer to keep costs down and to keep rates from rising too fast. That stemmed from

a period in the 1980s when car insurance prices were just going through the roof kind of for, it seemed like for no good reason. And so voters passed a proposition to have these very pro-consumer reforms. And as a result of that, insurance prices in California are actually lower than average compared to other states, especially other states with similar risks like Florida. Yeah. It's much lower than the average rate in California is much lower than the average rate in Florida. It's a larger market certainly because it's a larger state with a much larger population, but the average homeowners rate in California is much lower.

It's a fraction of what it is here in Florida. So what are the early expectations about the impact of the Los Angeles wildfires on renewals as California homeowners start going to their mailboxes in the weeks ahead? Insurance companies say that they're still committed to California with a possible exception being State Farm. State Farm's finances are in a bad state or in a bad condition and they have requested an emergency rate hike of an average of 22% which just got denied by the state. There'll be a hearing about that next week. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's a bit early to tell, you know, how available insurance is going to be in the next months to

years. One impact we've seen already in California is the impact on the state backed insurer of last resort. Both states have this in common for different reasons. There's the fair, I think it's called the fair plan in California. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Here in Florida, it's called the citizens property insurance company. How big is the fair plan before we talk about some of the impact here? I mean, in some areas, it can, it can ensure it can actually be the insurer of first resort, rather than the insurer of last resort. There's certain zip codes where it can insure 15% or more of houses. And that's really not how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be a tiny fraction of the homes insured. But yeah, I mean, most states actually have something like this, a program where you can go to get

some insurance when no traditional carriers will take you. In Florida, citizens that state backed is the largest property insured in the state has the biggest market share. It's been trying to work it down. I think it was this week, maybe in California, that the insurance commissioner announced this $1 billion assessment or fee to other insurance carriers, essentially other insured people, to help support the Fair Plan. Explain a little bit how that works. That's right. And I just want to mention, you know,

I'm not as familiar with Florida, of course, but in California, the Fair Plan is not actually state-backed. It's set up by the state, it's regulated by the state, but it's run as an independent association and it's backed by other insurance companies in the admitted market. And it was severely, severely over leveraged, especially in places like the Pacific Palisades. Basically its liabilities were a lot more than the money it had in the bank. And yeah, it ran out of funds and got permission to levy a $1 billion assessment on insurance companies. Insurance companies are gonna take about half of that

and then policyholders with those insurance companies, so people like me, are gonna be paying the other part of that. Yeah, it rhymes with the situation here in Florida where there's this independent company, the Citizens Property Insurer, has the ability to levy, what do they call them, assessments or levies on other types of insurance if it kind of taps out on its financial resources. And it can levy that not only on other home insurers, but all other kinds of insurance in Florida

if it needs to go down there to protect itself and to make homeowners as whole as possible after some kind of widespread disaster. There's been... Go ahead. I was gonna say, I think there's so many similarities between California and Florida on the other side, opposite sides

of the country, but really just kind of different sides of the same coin. It's fast. Yeah, no. Right? I mean, the politics are so different at a statewide level, of course. And the natural disasters that the two states face,

very different. But boy, the risk profile is pretty similar. And the impact on the housing market and the affordability crisis that both states have been experiencing when it comes to housing for a good number of years also very similar. Well, that is what I think is the real is the real you know, nut of the crisis here. If we can't fix our insurance market

and states like Florida can't fix the insurance market and find a way to properly stabilize them. It really runs the risk of people not being able to afford homes because if you can't afford insurance, you can't, your mortgage is no good. And if you can't, let's say you don't need insurance cause your mortgage is paid off. Well, if something happens to your home, then that value evaporates. If you don't have insurance, I mean, the government does not come and bail you out and make you whole.

Fixing insurance is so crucial to our economy and to people's well-being. Yeah. Danielle, I appreciate you sharing your reporting with us from California. Thanks so much for being with us here in Florida. Glad to be here. All right. Danielle Vented, science reporter with a partner station here in public media, KQED, based in San Francisco.

Sid in West Palm Beach has been listening to the conversation. Sid, thanks for your patience here on the radio. Oh, hello. I just wanted to express my concern that our politics in Florida are so focused on these social issues about being anti-woke or anti-immigration. And it doesn't seem our state government gives a damn about these homeowner insurance rates. It's really affecting myself and other Floridians. Just wish they would really get to the meat and potato issues instead of the social issues that most of us don't really

care about that much. Well, lawmakers have done, I think I counted them the other day, there's like 18 different pieces of legislation in just the past three years that are focused on the insurance industry, Sid. But tell me about your direct experience finding home insurance. Well, my insurance, citizens this year what the twenty three thousand per year and that's that's the thing it is a large house that has a carriage house behind it the student structures

but it's just becoming unaffordable of the house has been up since nineteen twenty eight so no hurricane state it down and uh... it's just crazy how much insurance costs are. And most of the legislation, I perceive it as anti-consumer. Where California is pro-consumer and their rates, I'm hearing on your show, are substantially lower than Florida. So we need to shift from anti-consumer legislation where you can't get attorney fees from an insurance company in court, for example, to pro-consumer. And I think that regulates insurance companies much better. Sid, thanks for your patience and for sharing your story with us from West Palm Beach. Great

to have you here on the Florida Roundup. You want to join the conversation? You can. 305-995-1800. 305-995-1800. You can send us a quick email as well, radio at the floridaroundup.org. So we heard the situation a little bit in California. Let's talk about Florida here. And Gegas is with us, insurance reporter for the Palm Beach Post and the USA Today Florida Network. And welcome to the program. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Governor DeSantis, just this month announced rate reductions for a lot of homeowners who count on citizens for insurance, especially homeowners in South Florida. What's driving the insurance rate lower?

They would say that part of the perfect storm that Florida faces has been stilled. We can't control the hurricanes. No, we cannot. But we could control the thinking was that a rate at which homeowners were suing their insurers. And they say that was causing that rate of lawsuits was causing the reinsurance market, which ensures the risk for the insurance companies,

it was spooking the markets and driving the reinsurance costs up, which is actually, this reinsurance is actually 30% of your insurance bill. So they say this, you know, we need time to let this work. But, you know, once the reinsurance markets calm down about Florida's lawsuit crisis, then we'll see insurance relief. So we know there's been, as I've mentioned, somewhere between 12 and 18 different pieces of legislation that have passed and signed into law in the past three years regarding insurance. The two big reforms, you just referenced one of them, which was on the lawsuit side, it changed who pays attorney fees. Another big change that I would say is this rules around the AOB, right? The assignment of insurance benefits. If a contractor comes

in and says, hey, I can do all this repair work, but sign over your insurance so I get the check as the contractor as opposed to you as the homeowner. Have we seen more impact of those? You talked a little bit about the attorney's fees piece here. Have we seen enough time go by where we're seeing some real impact on what ultimately homeowners are paying for premiums? Yeah, the rates are going down, yes. But the problem is that premiums are not going down because of they say it's because of the inflation, they're attributing it to the amount that homes have increased in value. So since you're even if your rate is going down, if your house is getting more valuable, your premiums still going to go up.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The replacement cost is how I've had it explained to me by insurance experts that the inflation of building materials, and then of course, just the underlying value of the home, maybe you purchased the home for, you know, $300,000 or so, or that's what the mortgage was when you first bought the house, but now the house has doubled in price, the underlying value of the insurance has gone up along with that. So that premium, that disconnect between rate and premium, that's a sobering place for Florida homeowners

to be when they read the headlines, Anne, of, oh, the insurance rate may be going down. Exactly. Yes, they tell us, oh, this many companies, and it sounds like a lot, have either having zero or reducing their rates. And people are getting their bill and saying, this is not what I signed up for. This isn't working out. Yeah. And hold on. Paul has been listening in from Coral Springs, Florida in Broward

County. Paul, thanks for your patience. You're on the radio. Go ahead. Good afternoon, sir. How are you today? Good. The comment I wanted to make was about the lawsuit being brought against insurance companies themselves. I don't know if anyone touched on this yet, but if you have a hurricane hit the West Coast of Florida in Fort Myers and then someone in Dupiter, Florida on the East Coast filing an insurance claim for their roof, the insurance company gets sued by the homeowners through an attorney for such a frivolous impossibility.

They have to answer them and then they end up settling out a court for them which runs our rates up. Yeah. Well, that certainly was the argument a few years ago to change this one-way attorney's fees so that the risk of having to pay the lawyers involved in those lawsuits really falls to either party as opposed to just one party. That said, Paul, in your experience, right? I mean, it is possible that a hurricane that hit Southwest Florida could create damage across the peninsula in Jupiter. We've seen that. If the hurricane crosses over, yes. I'll just give you a general example of the provolusness of people who just want a new roof and they think they deserve it, so they do the insurance

company to get a new roof that's valued at $150,000 and they're asking for a half of a million. Yeah. Paul, how about your experience with homeowners insurance? You want to share it with us? My experience is very similar to those people who have been calling in. It just keeps on going up and going up, and I hold a mortgage, so I have to have it, obviously. And I jump from carrier to carrier. In fact, last year, I actually reduced my interior content to almost nothing just to bring my rights down.

Yeah, so not to insure the furniture, the art, or the paintings, or electronics inside the house. That's right. Yeah, looking for all those kinds of opportunities. Paul, thanks for sharing your story there from Coral Springs here on the Roundup. 305-995-1800 is our phone number, talking about home insurance here in Florida. Ann Gegas is our guest insurance reporter with the Palm Beach Post in the USA Today Florida Network. And I want you to hold

on if you can, because you've done some reporting about some additional legislation that has been proposed ahead of this legislative session that would, some argue, roll back some of the reforms that some folks credit for bringing down the rate of increases of insurance. So there's still plenty more to talk about. And you can join our conversation 305-995-1800, 305-995-1800. Or send us a quick email, the inbox is open, radio at the floridaroundup.org, radio at the floridaroundup.org. Stick with us. We've got plenty more to come. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup.

I'm Tom Hudson. Next week on our program, what's in the water? Maybe not fluoride in the future in some Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Next week on our program, what's in the water? Maybe not fluoride in the future in some Florida water systems. The state Surgeon General recommends local water systems do not use fluoride. Melbourne has voted to stop adding it. Port St. Lucie stopped temporarily. Lee County has voted to stop as well. Fort Myers voted to keep fluoride in its drinking water. So does your drinking water have fluoride added to it? Do you know? Do you want to know? Do you care? Do you want it or not? You can

email us radio at the Florida Roundup dot org fluoride in Florida's drinking water radio at the Florida Roundup dot org. We may share your story next week. We received an email from Callie this week. Callie wrote us writing, Can you share at this time what will be your topic for the live from UF event? Well, we are so glad you asked Callie. March 7th will be live from Gainesville at our partner station WUFT. We'd love to have you in studio with us. We're going to talk about higher education in Florida. How could we not? Right? I mean, we're going to be at the flagship university for the Sunshine

State. We'll talk about higher education. We're going to be at the flagship university for the Sunshine State. We'll talk about higher education, we're going to talk about one of Florida's unique features, especially around central Florida, freshwater springs. And yes, we will have some live music. So you can join us in Gainesville March 7, register for free at w u f t dot o r g w u f t.org. As I said, it's a free event. Space is, well, it's a bit limited, so we want to be sure to have you register, and we will see you there. It's almost spring break as we go to campus at WUFT in Gainesville March 7th.

Now, more home insurance here. Ann Gega is still with us, Insurance Reporter for USA Today Florida Network. And I mentioned earlier that there's been all this legislative reform over the past many years, and there's a new proposal that has hit the legislature that wants to kind of revisit some of the reform. Tell us a little bit about what this proposal would do if it sees the light of day in Tallahassee over the next couple of months. Well, it would add back into the equation, the one way attorney's fees, if certain

conditions are met in the outcome of the lawsuit, is seen as something of a backlash to reports that we've heard about how insurance companies aren't exactly, you know, being responsive and ponying up the amount that it costs to repair the damage. And I suspect this is going to be lobbied hard against by insurance companies and other interests. I would expect that, yes. Already, just speaking to a few insurance company representatives, they say this is not the route to go. We need more time to get this under control. Yes, it's not exactly what was promised when the legislation

was, but we're getting there. That's the argument. Yeah. What is kind of the state, your sense of renewals and non renewals for the state of Florida? Because there's been such a, as part of that, you know, part of the cracks that we saw of the market over the last several years where homeowners being kicked out of their insurance companies. I haven't heard too much about that. When I first started reporting on insurance in July, I was hearing about sometimes the insurance companies feels they have too much one liability

in one area and they pull back and people get cancellations. I haven't been hearing as much about cancellations as I was just six months ago. So it seems to be easing up just from my observations. Yeah. And we got an email from Francine. She writes us, I've been in my house close to 40 years in Davie. This is in central Broward County, one claim that resulted in a new roof 15 years ago, my homeowners insurance started at $2,300. And now I pay

$8,600 for a home of 2100 square feet. I contacted 12 insurance companies and none would consider me unless I replaced my roof, which doesn't need replacement. Francine says I am retired and may have to move from South Florida. That's a story I suspect resonates with a lot of your sources, Anne, through the years as they've been wrestling with this fast escalating cost of home insurance, and particularly those who have been in their homes for a good long time and are on a fixed income. particularly those who have been in their homes for a good long time and are on a fixed income. Yes, the roof is a big focus of much anxiety and storm and drain. Because often people get cancellation notices about their roof when they haven't even gotten

a visit from an inspector because insurance companies now send drones to look at how your roof is doing. And there's a big, you know, there's a big tension between roofers who say your roof lasts this long. And state regulators are saying, not so much in Florida. Yeah, yeah. The next big fight is about, you know, what materials are going to get you a discount. Yeah, I'll share with you. I was asked by my insurance carrier, which is not citizens to do a self inspection of my home, including photographs of the roof. And it's it's stipulated in the directions.

It said don't put yourself in any danger. So don't climb up on a ladder or a tree to try to get a photograph of the roof. I'll see what comes back when they look at that report. But I was really curious about how this is going to work. It's way out. Claude has been listening in Pembroke Pines. Claude, great to have you on the program. You're on the radio. Go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. I think my case is related to the last one that I just heard. I bought this house brand new. I've been in it 24 years. I've been paying the insurance company more than 15 years.

I never had a claim, not even for $1. Last couple of years, they bumped my insurance premium. I had a lot of discussion with the agent. I had to eliminate some of the items that were covered so I could, although I had to pay an increased premium, but a limited increase was done. Increase my deductible and all this kind of thing. So then all of a sudden I received a letter from the insurance company telling me that as of the end of the insurance year,

the end of the term, they will no longer cover me because there is a problem between themselves and the agent. I mean, what am I doing between the company and the agent? I don't know. So I call the agent and they tell me, says well how old is your move that's the question how old is your move man it's 24 years i said well he said that's your problem okay so is it capitalism or what do you call it because i've been paying these guys for over 15 years. Yeah. They're gonna have to pay for one single dollar.

And same thing is happening with Car Reach to us as well. Yeah. Claude, I appreciate you sharing that story from Pyrnbrook Primes. It's, Anne, a lot of what have you done for me lately, maybe, right? When you, as a homeowner, when you think Claude's experience and Francine's experience, no or very few claims, low claims over the course of decades, and then to open up that invoice or to get the cancellation notice to say, well, what have I done here? What have I done wrong in all this?

Is your question addressed to me or to the... Well, yeah, Claude, I appreciate you sharing your story. Anne, are you still with us? Yeah. So the idea of Claude, no claims, getting potentially dropped by his insurance company, he's already pared down the coverage. How are folks like Claude and others responding to these higher rates and perhaps having to shoulder even more risk for their homes. Well, the hope of the legislature is that you'll have

more insurance companies to choose from. And indeed, we have had 11 new insurance companies join the market in the private sector. A lot of people, I mean, the Democrats are a bit leery of this given that many of these were designed to take out insurance policies from citizens. And the alarm is that they are under-capitalized and won't really get, don't have the wherewithal

to get through the Big storm does hit. Mm-hmm. Yeah and Gagas. Thanks for sharing your reporting with us much appreciated Thank you for having me Yeah, and as insurance reporter for the Palm Beach Post in the USA Today Florida Network David has been listening in from Southwest Ranches David go ahead. You're on the radio Hey there. Thank you for taking my call. I am an attorney that practices what's called first party litigation for the consumer. And first party means you sue your own insurance company, whether it's auto or homeowners. I do both of them. And since these changes in first party litigation eliminating the attorney's fees factor, the

insurers in every perspective are becoming far more aggressive. And one of my friends that is a public adjuster told me just last week, she said, I'm reconsidering whether to post my bond for my public adjuster because the carriers are just telling us you don't like my offer to us problem with making the the bring a lawsuit there's no way to recover there's no incentive to the insurance company to pay the claim at a reasonable amount they they rely on a non-employee Investigator that comes out and inspects the home and gives their own determination. They have no Responsibility whatsoever nothing to penalize them for a

under reporting or in one instance a colleague sent me a photo of one of these inspectors going to a home. He put his moisture detector against the wall where there was a leak, but he had his finger in front of the sensor so he couldn't pick up an accurate reading of the moisture in the wall. Yeah. Yeah. What a practice. David, I appreciate you sharing your experience as a attorney there, as a counsel. And this is one of the things that the proposed legislation is putting up for lawmakers to perhaps debate. We'll see if it gets into a committee, is creating a bit more of a formula of these attorney's fees as opposed to one way or the other. Our home insurance conversation will continue certainly in the weeks ahead here on the Florida

Roundup. Next week will mark the five year anniversary since lockdowns and stay at home orders started thanks to COVID 19 kids were sent home from school won't return to the classroom for months or even longer. As classes pivoted online teachers and students trying to cope with this reality of a virtual classroom. Students have been back in their classrooms for a few years now, but many are still struggling

with math and reading. Statewide here in Florida, students scored worse than they did on recent national tests than they did back in 2022. Math scores for eighth graders lowest in 20 years. Reading scores for fourth graders fell to more than a two decade low. So parents, teachers, students, have you noticed a learning loss lingering after the pandemic? How have teaching and learning changed because of the pandemic? Call us now quickly. We're going to talk about this for about five minutes. So we want to hear from you. 305-995-1800.

Maybe you're on your lunch break as a teacher, a parent, you're waiting for the school pickup to come along. 305-995-1800. Jeff Solichek is with us, education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times. Jeff, great to have you back again. Thanks. Thank you. What should we make of these lower test scores in Florida? Well, I was talking with an educator this morning who said that what we should look at with

these national scores is how does Florida fit in to the national scheme? It sort of gives us a gauge of where we are. And it looks like Florida is doing better still in many areas than nationally, but still on a decline. And when I spoke with another teacher this morning, she said, she sees that some of these kids who are taking the tests really did struggle. There was their formative years when they were first starting school when COVID took place.

And now they still aren't really fully adjusted to school. So in some ways. How concerned ought we be for this trend over the past few years of lower test scores? It's hard to say exactly what's going on because, you know, Florida has changed its standards, changed its testing. And at the same time, we've seen that these national tests have come in and they only test a small number of students in Florida.

And so it really is hard to say this matters to my kid in particular. You talk to one district and they say, look, we're doing so much better. And another will say, look, we're doing so much worse. Yeah. We're talking about education and test scores in Florida here on The Florida Rondo from your Florida public radio station. Jeff Solichek is education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times. The education commissioner here in Florida, Manny Diaz, criticized these tests and where

Florida came out. He criticized the methodology, noting that it was only students attending traditional public schools who were tested. Describe more, Jeff, about this criticism and kind of where it, how it hits the education community here in Florida. It's fascinating to me that Florida is very excited when Florida looks good, and they praise how well we're doing on this test. And then when we don't do as well, the commissioner comes in and says,

hey, look, you tested the wrong group of kids. I don't know what it suggests if we have a worry that the children on vouchers and in homeschooling and in private schools are the ones that we need to test in order for our scores to be going up, especially when they only test about four or 5,000 kids in the grade level for this test. Yeah.

Matthew has been listening to this conversation, Jeff. Matthew is in North Lauderdale. Go ahead Matthew, thanks for calling in. You're on the radio. Hi. Yes, I was 15 when we went into the lockdown. And of course my parents were telling me that, well school is all that matters, but when it went into lockdown, it seemed like that was able to take it back to you. And a lot changed.

I definitely didn't focus on my school. I did end up having to go to summer school the year after. And now, I mean, I'm supposed to be in college, but my mind's turned towards a change in education has just been altered, especially since I was young. I used to be on all the honor rolls and everything when I was in middle school, elementary. Yeah. Matthew, thanks for sharing your story with us. Tough years, those formative years.

Tough regardless of where you happen to be in school, but Matthew, they're starting his sophomore year in high school during that Matthew, they're starting his sophomore year in high school during that pandemic, Jeff, and really still feeling the repercussions of it five years later. Yeah, there were a lot of people who really suffered because they didn't have connections with other people in the classroom.

It was easy to turn off your camera, pretend like you were there, or not even pretend like you were there, and do whatever you wanted. So fit this into the larger debate that's happening, a debate that's going on here with the new Trump administration who has promised to eliminate the federal Department of Education. And these tests that come through to give us a sense of a measuring stick of where Florida lies within student

achievement. That's an interesting point, because they are going through and canceling a bunch of the data that they're collecting, which is used by schools to at least get a sense of where their students are going and how their schools are performing. But I read just this morning that they have said that they're going to protect the NAEP test, the NAS test that we're talking about. Yeah. And so it expects to come up year again, this measuring stick will stick around, even despite maybe Commissioner Diaz's complaints about it. Yeah, it's something that the nation participates in and Florida is still a big one.

Indeed it is. Jeff, always a pleasure. Thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Absolutely. Thank you. One of the best in the business education reporter, Jeff Solichek with the Tampa Bay Times. Don't forget again, live, you want to talk more about education, higher education, we're going to do that March 7th live in Gainesville. We will be on campus at the University of Florida with our partner station WUFT. You can join us in Studio Two, live on campus in the journalism building there, Weimer hall. We got plenty more to come here as we go searching for owls in Sarasota that's still to come on the Florida Roundup from your

Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Great to have you along. We've been talking about home insurance this hour, something homeowners probably think about only a few times a year, certainly when the bill comes and when a hurricane spins up in the Atlantic or Gulf. That's also about the same time FEMA hits the headlines, right? Well, Donald Trump, the president, has pledged to reform FEMA. Few states have as much at stake with any changes to FEMA than Florida.

The agency has committed almost $20 billion in disaster funding to Florida since 2017. About 13 cents of every disaster dollar spent by FEMA in the past seven years has been spent here in the Sunshine State. When Donald Trump decided to make his first official trip after being sworn back into office, the focus was on natural disasters,

and his first stop was damage left by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. I think frankly FEMA is not good. That was in late January as the president prepared to sign an executive order creating a council to review the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This council will examine FEMA's responses to natural disasters over the past four years and come up with ideas to improve the agency, though the president was clear about the conclusion he's looking for. It just complicates it.

I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away. If you make FEMA go away, there's got to be something that's between the White House and the state. This is David Paulson. He took over as FEMA administrator two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. The White House is not going to manage it. You know, they don't have resources. They don't have the New Orleans in 2005. The White House is not going to manage it.

You know, they don't have resources. They don't have the right people in place. Paulusen knows emergency management from the national level down to the local level. He was the fire chief when Hurricane Andrew hit Miami-Dade County in 1992. Fire chiefs were the top emergency response officials back then.

He still lives in Broward County today. He supports a presidential review of FEMA to ensure emergency management remains the focus. FEMA is not a first responder. That's what people think. We don't go in and do things. We hire people to do things. Management is in FEMA's name, after all. It's not a national insurance policy. The criticism of FEMA hit a new crescendo this fall after Hurricane Helene ran through Florida Florida devastated parts of western North Carolina. Then Hurricane Milton hit Florida. Conspiracy theories and inaccurate information proliferated on social media about FEMA. And last year Florida sued the agency's leader after a whistleblower reported a supervisor told relief workers to skip houses in central Florida with Trump signs.

You're hearing a lot of frustration what people call red tape. This is Craig Fugate. He was the FEMA Administrator during the Obama administration, and before that, he led emergency management statewide in Florida. I'll have to remind everybody, that's not FEMA's money. It's your money. And there's an accountability requirement that Congress requires to ensure that your tax dollars are going where it's supposed to go.

Striking that balance between getting cash into the hands of disaster victims and their local governments and protecting against waste and fraud is difficult. There's a formula for what disaster spending FEMA will pay or more accurately reimburse local governments for. It usually covers 75% of the cost. There's also housing assistance, money to repair roads and bridges, money to fix public buildings and parks. Well, when you're dealing with these big disasters, state and

local governments aren't budgeted for calling out the National Guard for, you know, three or four months, they're not budgeted to pick up all that debris. They're not budgeted for all the overtime. FEMA is still making payments for Hurricane Irma. That storm hit Florida in 2017. It can take more than a decade for a disaster to disappear off of FEMA's financial statements. FEMA is more than a dozen agencies packed into the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is also responsible for immigration enforcement, airport security, cyber security, and the Secret Service.

The department's total budget is over 100 billion dollars. Anyone who thinks that FEMA is going to be fixed within Homeland doesn't understand how big the bureaucracy of Homeland has become. It is just gigantic. That's Jared Moskowitz. He's a Democratic congressman from Western Broward County who served as Florida's emergency manager during Governor Ron DeSantis' first term. We can make FEMA faster, smarter in both response and coordination, but none of this is going to happen, in my opinion, as long as it stays within Homeland. Trump's FEMA review is due in six months. The hurricane season begins in about three. We want to tell you now about the passing of a

towering figure in central Florida politics. Geraldine Thompson was a state senator from the Orlando area and a longtime advocate for black history. She died last week from complications after knee replacement surgery according to her family. Joe Burns has more from our partner Central Florida Public Media. Senator Thompson, a Democrat representing Western Orange County, was first elected to the Florida House in 2006 and served multiple terms in both House and Senate. She was a former college administrator who founded the Wells-Built Museum of African American History and Culture in Paramore. She authored a book on Orlando's Black history. In 2023, she spoke with Central Florida Public Media. I think we have to teach authentic history. We have to be real and present an unvarnished

version. The Reverend Dr. Robert M. Spoonie, pastor at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, says Thompson was more than a politician. I've always looked at her as more so of being a voice for the people, a champion for the people whose mantra was always doing the right thing. Congressman Maxwell Frost issued a statement saying, quote, we lost a giant. She was, he says, a force, a trailblazer, a historian, a fierce advocate, and a devoted mother and grandmother.

A statement from her family says she died peacefully surrounded by family members. In Ocala, I'm Joe Burns. And I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. A few weeks ago, this program was live from Zoo Miami. We were right in front of the flamingos, and we spoke with Baby, a 40-year-old yellow-n naped Amazon parrot who had this to say. Oh, she loves.

That's one way to do some bird watching. Another way is to get out into nature out into the wild. Carrie Sheridan with our partner station WSF in Tampa did just that with some young people who have taken up bird watching. David Schwab is a wildlife photographer in Florida and this time of year he's looking for owls. His number one tip, look up and around. I'll just scan kind of this area and just look for that football. Just looking for that football in the tree that looks just a little bit different and that's how I find a lot of owls. Schwab is 29.

About a dozen kids and their parents are following him on a walk through some woods in Sarasota. They point their binoculars skyward. In an oak tree, they spot a black and white bird with a tuft of scarlet on its head, a male downy woodpecker. These are actually the smallest woodpeckers in North America. That's Sophia Hackman. She's 15 and heads the local chapter of the Florida Young Birders Club. She organized this walk and she knows a lot about the birds we see.

The group carries on walking and then high in the air above a lake two birds start to spar with each other. Everyone stops in their tracks. An eagle and an osprey are fighting over something. 13-year-old Sadie Veltri explains what just happened. The bald eagle and the osprey were fighting over the fish and the osprey ended up dropping the fish so the bald eagle could have it. Everyone is wide-eyed. Birdwatching groups like this, geared toward kids 9 to 17, are on the rise across the country. I think there's a couple of reasons for that.

One of them being the pandemic and more people opting outside and also the health benefits of nature. That's Laura Gerard, Director of Youth Programs at the American Birding Association. These young birders often feel that they're t hometown or in their scho and sometimes that can be not the coolest thing. He

find their people was why teacher in Tampa started Birders Club a few years difference between older birders and younger ones is how fast they learn. I've been just floored by these, we're talking 12, 13 year olds who, they know way more than I do.

And they're persistent. After almost two hours of searching, these kids are still walking in the woods of Sarasota, hoping to find an owl. They cross a little creek, and then in a clearing a flash of brown and white wings whisks by without a sound. Did everyone see it fly? So we'll just just try to be quiet a little bit. The barred owl definitely flew across.

We'll go this way just see if we can locate it. We'll go this way to see if we can locate it. There it is, high in a tree. A hush falls on the crowd as everyone looks up and the owl looks back at us with its dark round eyes above a tiny yellow beak. What do you think of that? It's really cool. It's really cool. After a few minutes, we see the owl's neck bulge and we hear it call to its mate. We hear another owl off in the distance.

The one we can see flies off and the kids follow to see where it went the next generation of Conservationists on the trail. I'm Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota and finally on the roundup our inbox We received several emails about our show at the zoo Trevor wrote us Why do we not have a lot to remove the iguanas? They ruin my patio daily and some are bigger than my dog Why are they allowed to roam free? From a five 561 phone number of Boca Raton we received this email. I have sent 297 iguanas from my yard into their next karmic experience in the El Rio canal with this high-powered pellet gun. I am a sharpshooter,

wrote the listener. The emailer also shared a photo of herself with her weapon of choice. And then we got this note. Hello, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Valerie C. Wisecracker. I am a third generation South Floridian songwriter. I split my time between Biscayne Park, Everglades City, and Gainesville. I'm sending you an original invasive species song. Let's take a listen.

I wanna go iguana deep down in South Florida. I wanna raise some hell like an African snail Gonna eat your green plants and flowers Poop in your pool Poison your pets with my infectious stool Do with a... We know all these critters are certainly an irritation for many of us, but who knew they could also be such an inspiration?

In your pets, in your pets irritation for many of us, but who knew they could also be such an inspiration? Thanks for sharing your song, Ms. Wisecracker. That is our program for today. It is produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WSF in Tampa by Bridgette O'Brien and Grayson Doctor. WLRN's Vice President of Radio is Peter Merz. Technical Director is MJ Smith. Engineering, Health each and every week from Doug Peterson, Ernesto J and Jackson Harp. Amy Sanchez answered our phones this week. The theme music is by Miami Jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. We're coming live to a studio audience in Gainesville March 7th. Go to wuft.org for more

information. Please register, space is limited. We want to see you there. It's free, live on campus at the University of Florida March 7th at the School of Journalism. We'll see you there. Thanks for calling, listening, emailing, and above all supporting public media in your neighborhood. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.