The Florida Roundup - School districts plan closures, impact of state immigration laws and Florida’s Wildlife Corridor

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

This week on The Florida Roundup, we spoke with several education reporters from across the state about how districts are considering school closures due to shrinking enrollment. First we heard from Jacksonville Today reporter Megan Mallicoat about Duval County Public Schools (05:45), then we focused on Hillsborough County Public Schools with the Tampa Bay Times’ Marlene Sokol (13:10) and then we spoke with WLRN’s Kate Payne about Broward County Public Schools (16:24). Then, we spoke with an Orange County Public Schools board member about how their district is looking to build new schools (24:08). And later, we were joined by NPR’s Jasmine Garsd for her reporting on the impact of Florida’s anti-immigration laws one year later (31:57). Plus, a series of reports about Florida’s Wildlife Corridor and the 2021 law to conserve millions of more acres (37:18).

This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for listening this week. Three of the largest public school districts in the state will be smaller next year. The school districts in Broward, Hillsborough, and Duval counties are considering closing more than three dozen schools combined. As this school year comes to an end across the state, the next year will begin with fewer traditional public schools in some areas. So what kind of shape are your public schools in? Call us now, 305-995-1800. 305-995-1800. Our inbox is open as well. You can find us, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. radio at thefloridaroundup.org. The Duval County schools are facing the most significant changes with up to 30 schools closing.

The district has 30,000 fewer students than it did a decade ago. It seems like choices are being made on top of us as opposed to the families who moved to these traditional schools because of the benefit and the value add to their property and to their kids' education. This is Jacksonville Councilman Jimmy Pasullo speaking at a Joint City Council school board meeting this week. Now, the Duval School District has experienced an increase in the total number of students, but more are opting to use state education vouchers to attend private schools.

I'm very concerned about all this. I very much am. I have two A schools in my district that are supposedly on the chopping block, two B schools as well. An outside consultant has recommended closing at least 10 elementary schools as part of a plan to close a $1.4 billion budget gap. Jacoby Pittman is a Jacksonville councilwoman. We know we want parents to have options, but the neighborhood schools are not going to be an option if we're going the way that we're going. Hillsborough County, meantime, has been working for more than a year on a plan that will close five schools beginning next year. We have to make sure that we're putting our priority on people that are going to make a difference with students, not a building. That was Hillsborough County School Board member Nadia Combs at a meeting last summer

when the board was deciding the fate of the schools selected to close. I think the intention might be good, but the plan is flawed. We didn't work the plan out good enough to make this move. work the plan out good enough to make this move. So my answer will be no. The night next week or month is no. Board member Henry Shake Washington was among the three members voting no that night, but four approved the plan to close the schools. So over the next three years, four middle schools and one elementary school will be, quote, fully repurposed. In other words, closed in Hillsborough County. Now in Broward County, the district there is talking about closing three schools and making major changes in a handful of others as it wrestles with declining enrollment.

One proposal would move the Montessori program from one elementary school to a nearby school. Fiona Young is a fourth grader at Virginia Schumann Young Elementary, nicknamed VSY, which would lose its Montessori program. I feel like we should maybe lower the stress down and maybe not change VSY because it's the best. Please leave us alone. That was at a town hall meeting on Monday night. Now district leaders say major cost cutting is needed after thousands of students left public schools in recent years. Howard Hepburn is Broward's superintendent. These are tough decisions. It's about people, especially our kids, right? And it's definitely going to have an impact on any community. So how is it in a state with a growing population,

an estimated 1,000 people a day are moving here, how is it that public school districts are losing students? Competition and cost. Competition to traditional public schools from charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling, and the climbing cost of living, housing, transportation, insurance costs all going up. Demographics tell some of the story.

While the state's population has grown by 6% over the past five years, there are actually fewer babies and toddlers. The number of people in their mid to late 20s, a traditional time to start families, also has been dropping. Angie Gallo is the vice president of the Florida School Board Association and a member of the Orange County Public School Board. It's hard when you have to kind of right size your community or you have to close school because even though that school may be under capacity, that's a community school to that community and

those families. And that's difficult because nobody wants their school to close. We'll hear more from her later on in this program. So how have schools in your neighborhood changed or maybe stayed the same? Parents, teachers, students, we want to hear from you live on this Friday. What is the future of the traditional public school? Maybe you've decided to move out of the traditional public school into a different type of education environment. Tell us about it. 305-995-1800. 305-995-1800. You can also email us. The inbox is open. Radio at the Florida Roundup dot org. Radio at the Florida Roundup dot org. GNR sent us this note writing, it is clear what the intention of the Florida Republican leadership and their cronies are planning to accomplish privatization of Florida's education

system. There's copious amounts of money to be made by destroying the public education system, pure unmitigated greed. GNR then signs off kind regards. I'll send your note to us, radio at thefloridaroundup.org. Megan Malakote is with us now, education reporter for our partner Jacksonville Today. Megan, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. How did Duval County Public Schools come up with this plan to close up to 30 school buildings? Yes, thank you. So they had an outside consultant come in and kind of take a broad view of the school system as it is right now. And they decided that there's, it could be more efficient than it already is, is what the district is saying, that there's lots of schools that their feeder plans don't feed, you know, like an elementary school might feed to a couple different middle schools or a couple different high schools. And so they wanted to consolidate it. And really it comes down to a lack of funding, that it costs a lot of money to run schools.

And so when COVID hit, what they had expected, the funding that they had expected to have changed because we saw more students opt for charter schools, more students opt to use the new private school vouchers. And so the funding that's coming into the district doesn't necessarily get to fund its traditional schools. Talk to us about that funding, because as we mentioned, the total number of students in the Duval County school system has been going up, but those that are opting for traditional schools, that's where the decline has been happening. Well, that's right. And it's I believe the most recent numbers I saw said that we have about 140,000 students, funding for 140,000 students coming into the district, there's only 120,000 being funded in traditional schools, something like that. And the district

does expect that to continue. Because remember, the funding that comes from the state and other places follows the student. And so if a student decides to go to a charter school or a student decides to use the new voucher program, that funding does not come back into the district. So how far along in the planning process is the school board regarding identifying which schools will potentially be closed permanently? Like I said, the outside consulting firm identified, I think it was about 30 schools, a couple of months ago and presented it to the school board in a plan. They did not look at the schools themselves. They simply looked at which schools make the most sense as far as feeder patterns, the age of the school, things like that. And they did not take into consideration the schools themselves. So that's certainly a step that's yet to come. But the schools would not close, I believe they said this week, they said as early as the next

school year. So not this upcoming school year, but the school year for, I guess it would be 25, 26, would be the soonest it could close because there's a regulation, I suppose, that says that the schools cannot close unless they're announced by December. And December has already passed. Yes, it has. And I suspect that there has been a lot of public response to the idea of some of these neighborhood schools closing. What generally has struck you about the response from the public as the basic shape of the plan has become public? Yes. Well, it's interesting for me to watch. It's not the first district that I've observed going through this type of plan because it's not unusual in and of itself to have to close schools from time to time. But it is fascinating for me to watch the community circle around

its neighborhood schools because this is the value of public schools, right? Is that they are the core of our neighborhoods, at least they should be. And so you watch in Jacksonville right now is that you see groups of community members coming from, you know, lots of these schools that have been put on the chopping block, so to speak. And I was at the school board meeting earlier this week, and you saw just groups from all these schools coming out, probably saw at least a half a dozen schools represented in the people that had come out. And so they had signs that said, save our school. Or they had one of them, they brought their students with them to show.

And it was interesting to me to watch the schools come together and be the neighborhood community group that they are. Yeah. Let's hear from Mandy, who has been listening in from Jacksonville Beach. Go ahead, Mandy, you're on the radio. Hi, yeah, thanks for having me. And I was also at that school board meeting as well. My kiddo goes to a neighborhood school called San Pablo Elementary, and we're one of the ones that might potentially be absorbing one of our other beaches elementary schools. And you know, my concern is that Florida right now is operating under a surplus. And the fact that they're continuing, you know, their state policy is allowing to let public schools continue to scrape by with the bare minimum is

really embarrassing. I think it's pretty it's pretty shocking that our local legislative representatives, so Clay Yarbrough in particular, earlier this year, you know, he submitted a request for over five million dollars to fund a gymnasium expansion at Classical Jacksonville Academy, which is a charter school. So really, you know, I think what a lot of the parents here are wanting to happen at the state level is to see some rollbacks. So to get HB1, the voucher expansion program, you know, rolled back. It used to have an income cap that I think was very appropriate

and allowed more equity for lower-income families. And now it's just being abused by people who don't need the help to send their kids to private schools and these charters. There's also just no oversight over these charter schools. They're allowed to now get a share of our half penny surtax that we pass. And there's no oversight. There's no requirements for them to report how they're using those financials. The ones that do report, they spend so much of those tax dollars on their rental payments. Yeah. Mandy, I appreciate you providing all of that perspective. Obviously, a highly informed parent and voter there in Jacksonville Beach.

Mandy, joining us there about the Duval County school system, Megan Malacote with The Education Reporter with Jacksonville Today. What about Mandy's broader point there about locally elected officials? And I don't mean school board or city council members there in Duval or Jacksonville, but rather the state representatives that have that have been perhaps in a real key position regarding some of these state policies and funding decisions by the state toward public education. Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that is that the funding decisions that are affecting Jacksonville most right now are coming from the state. It's not, you know, the city council drew attention to this in the clip that you played at the top of the show, that the charter schools get some money, but the local public school system does not have a way of saying, no, we need to close charter school XYZ because we need these schools over here. Instead,

they have to turn to close some of the traditional schools in order to make the numbers come out in the black. We're going to hear how that is playing out in Broward County as well. Megan Malakote, education reporter for our partner Jacksonville today. Megan, thanks for sharing your reporting. Sure. In Hillsborough County, Marlene Skokal covers education for the Tampa Bay Times. She's with us now from our partner station WUSF. So Marlene, 58 schools in Hillsborough are a third empty, 11 are more than half empty. Yes. What has happened to enrollment for Hillsborough County Public Schools?

Well, as in other communities, it is the growth of charter schools, school choice. Also in Hillsborough County, magnet schools. A couple of decades ago, Hillsborough went very aggressively into opening magnet schools, you know, to keep kids interested in their subjects and to promote racial integration. So I would, looking at the numbers, a combination of charters, magnets, of course, more recently the state vouchers where you can send your child to private school. But this has been going on for years. And I've watched the growth in charter schools exponentially every year. Now they educate about 17 percent of the public school students in Hillsborough County, where when I first came on the job, it was like six or seven percent. I understand the number in Broward and

Duval is like 20 percent. So these schools are being emptied out and hollowed out. So it has been almost a year since the Hillsborough County School Board made the final decision to start closing a handful of schools. That will start next year. What's the status of those closings and is it a fait accompli? Is it going to happen? Yes. In fact, I've been working on a story today and in communication with the district. They closed one school last year, just elementary school. They closed it in June because it was doing really poorly in terms of being able to hire teachers and bring the kids up to grade level in their skills. Another five, you know, at the end of May, they won't be schools anymore.

And the buildings will, the district made a commitment not to sell the buildings or to allow them to become surplus. So the buildings will be used, you know, offices, community centers and whatnot. But all of the kids will be shipped off to other schools for the next school year. They've redrawn the boundaries and what's been the response from those families and students affected and the teachers? You know, teachers were given, they worked with the union to give them I guess some preference in getting their next assignment. I spoke with one of the five principals this morning and she said that almost all of her teachers have found

good places to land. In terms of community opposition, there was a lot more of that last year when they were redrawing boundaries throughout the district. This year, one of the elementary schools, there were some people who came out publicly opposing it, but what's done is done. And once the superintendent started reassigning the principals of these five schools into their next assignment, people kind of realized there wasn't anything they could do. Marlene Schoechl covering education for the Tampa Bay Times at our partner station WUSF in Tampa. Marlene, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Thank you.

It is across the state in these large school districts. Kate Payne is the education reporter in South Florida at our partner station WLRN, where she covers Broward County Schools, the largest, second largest school district in the state. Kate, how many schools in Broward could be closed? So right now, the latest proposal is that three schools identified for potential closure in Broward, but these proposals from the district, from the superintendent, are very much still an open conversation. It's still in development, and we'll hear more next week.

How civil, how loud is that conversation when it's happening in public? Yeah, I went to one of the town halls that the district has been hosting earlier this week in Fort Lauderdale, and it was incredible, honestly. A huge showing from especially one elementary school in particular that's not identified for closure, but would get a program change among dozens of other schools across the district. And parents and students, teachers from that school, Virginia Schuman Young in Fort Lauderdale, were vocally opposed, jeering down one of the district officials and just really passionate about their school. How has enrollment changed in Broward over recent years? Does it rhyme with what we heard from Jacksonville and Tampa? Yeah, so over the past decade,

heard from Jacksonville and Tampa? Yeah, so over the past decade, Broward's traditional public schools have lost more than 20,000 students while enrollment in charter and private schools continues to grow. When we look across the district at a capacity level, there are 50,000 empty seats in Broward classrooms. Sounds like an awful lot of empty desks. It is an awful lot. And this is what's prompting the district to take this effort, is they're saying, you know, we cannot continue to pay for half-empty schools, paying utilities, paying those overhead costs to run, you know, schools that are half-empty. Yeah, materials, air conditioning.

Staffing, air conditioning, staffing, air conditioning. Absolutely. Very expensive. We're going to continue to talk about the changing nature of traditional public schools here on the Florida Roundup. 305-995-1800 is your phone number as the school year is coming to an end throughout the state. What's it been like for you and your neighborhood? 305-995-1800. Radio at florida roundup.org is our email address radio at the florida roundup.org a little bit later on in the program we will be taking you along the florida wildlife corridor and it's not a singular corridor as it tries to connect all of florida for florida wildlife and plants that is a little bit later on in this program as you're listening to the Florida Roundup

from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. Thanks for being along with us. I'm Tom Hudson. We're talking about Florida schools and how three of the six largest districts in the state are closing some traditional schools as enrollment drops. In a few minutes, we will hear from one school district planning on adding more than a dozen new schools in the next decade. 305-995-1800 is our phone number live on this Friday. Simon sent us this voice memo. I was a professor at Florida Atlantic University for 32 years, during which time I had the opportunity to teach vast numbers of students who had graduated from Florida high schools. They had a writing center at Florida Atlantic University, which rather than mainly teaching technical writing or specialised professional

writing or creative writing as one might expect, actually spent most of their time teaching the sort of writing skills that might have been expected of a competent graduate from the seventh or eighth grade of a high school. And so though some of the brightest students I've ever taught have come from Florida Atlantic University, they couldn't be counted on a couple of hands, whilst the vast majority of them were really not prepared to benefit from anything like a university level education. Simon, a retired college professor here in Florida, giving us his thoughts on the quality of Florida public school student education as he encountered it in the college scenario. Kate Payne covers public education at member station WLRN in South Florida. at Member Station WLRN in South Florida.

What role, Kate, as school districts are wrestling with closing schools because of dropping enrollment in traditional public school environment, what role does the quality of education, how well a school is doing, play into those decisions? Yeah, so for Broward County, which here in South Florida is the district that's really wrestling with this enrollment crisis right now, the performance of the schools has been one of many factors that district officials are considering in making these decisions of which schools to close or consolidate or to change programming for. But there's a whole slate of other factors as well.

for. But there's a whole slate of other factors as well. Sheer enrollment, demographic shifts in the surrounding neighborhoods, are families moving there? Are they having children, fewer children? As well as, you know, the historic significance of schools and also factors like, you know, if we close elementary school A, is there capacity in the surrounding schools to take those students in. So there's a whole spectrum that officials are having to weigh here. Renee writes us in Broward County, the governor has made life very difficult since the COVID-19 faceoff on reopening. Ironically, as the county is looking at closing schools, some of those campuses being considered have already received investments in infrastructure. So campuses are being fixed up then to be liquidated to possibly a charter school,

Renee writes. It does not make any sense. Callie is listening in in Gainesville. Go ahead, Callie, you are on the radio. I heard one of your comments is stated magnet programs were accomplishing racial integration. That is the opposite here in Alachua County, where the regular program and the magnet program are in separate parts of the building, even have staggered class times.

They're not even in the hallway at the same time. And the two programs are extremely ethnically identifiable, with 95 percent of the black kids in the regular program, white and a few Asian kids in the magnet program. And I think that's a part of this whole movement to change schools because conservatives in America have been on a tear since the days of school desegregation to find a way to have separate schools again and to winnow the curriculum down to America always hero curriculum, cutting out blocks of history. Kelly, I appreciate you giving us that perspective in Gainesville. Those magnet schools oftentimes are seen as schools within a school,

and Kelly has that experience there in Gainesville, joining us here on the Florida Roundup. Terry writes us an email at radio at thefloridaroundup.org. As a retired person living in Melbourne, I can't tell you how distressed I am to hear of this erosion of our public schools. It is also happening in the state where my second home is, which is Iowa. Terry writes, well, Terry, you and I have that in common. I don't have a second home in Iowa.

That's exactly where I grew up before I found myself here with sand in my shoes in the Sunshine State. Kate Payne, thank you for sharing your reporting with us here on the Florida Ronda. Much appreciated. Thank you. You know, while Duval, Hillsborough, and Broward County school districts are working to close some school buildings, the school district in and around the Orlando area expects to have to build several new buildings in the years to come. Angie Gallo is the vice president of the Florida School Board Association and a member of the Orange County Public School Board. Board Member Gallo, thank

you for joining us for this conversation. Why do you think Broward, Hillsborough, Duval, where populations are increasing, are having to decide to close traditional public schools? That's a great question. I haven't done a deep dive into what's going on in those counties because the situation here in Orange County is different, but I know that when you have moments of large growth and then circumstances within education changes, we do have a lot more choice available to our parents here in Florida than we have in the past, then you will have, I think, a need to like right-size your county and make sure that you're making very good financial decisions on behalf of your constituents in your community. You mentioned that the situation in Orange County is a lot

different, and it is. In fact, this week, you and your fellow board members were in a workshop talking about the need to add schools over the next decade or so. Why? We're experiencing a lot of growth here in Orange County, specifically on the west side of town, Horizon West, and that area, some in the Apopka area, and then the Lake Nona area as well, has just seen a huge growth spurt. So because of that, we've needed to add more schools and our projections over the next 10 years is the need to add more schools as well. And what makes you confident that those newborns or toddlers today, or the folks that will be newborns and toddlers in the next five and 10 years will turn into traditional public school

students and not charter school, homeschool, or private school students? Well, I think that's the challenge with projections, right? I think we're all kind of experiencing that from a school board level is how do you plan 10 years out? How do you plan five years out when you don't know what the landscape will look like? When you don't know what choice a parent will be choosing, you know, here in Orange County, we really try to focus on our school district, the choice that is offered within our school district. We're looking at some innovative ideas with some partnerships to make sure that we keep our students and continue to grow our students because we recognize, especially now, that there's so much choice out there for parents to choose from. We want us to be their best choice. Well, how has competition from those other choices,

charter schools and even new laws allowing a wider use of school vouchers to be used for private schools, how have those changes impacted your view of traditional public schools, particularly in the future as you're looking at the growth there in Orange County and to decide how to invest potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of public money? I think that's a challenge, right? The need to be conservative fiscally with the dollars, the tax dollars that we're giving, because it's not an abundance of money that we're given. So that's the biggest challenge is how to prioritize, how to right size. We will course correct through the next few years. If we see enrollment declining in certain areas, then we'll probably reprioritize and look at other areas that may need schools versus that areas.

There could be an instance where maybe we have a planned middle school that we won't open that middle school if the need or the growth isn't as large as we've anticipated it to be. But to your point about how do we compete or how we changed, I think it's made us more competitive. It's made us be more innovative. We have to think outside the box

to really be creative with other entities that are looking at the same students or wanting those students to come to their school. And it's not a level playing field for all of us, right? Like we, we add, we have to adhere to certain guidelines and restrictions that private schools don't have to adhere to. So the challenge is really just thinking outside the box, kind of being flexible in how we do build and knowing that we may need to make changes along the way. Not only private schools don't have to necessarily follow those same rules, public charter schools don't also have to follow those same rules necessarily.

I think that the charter schools are really, with some of the legislative changes that's happened over the last few years, are really kind of more in line with traditional public schools than they have been in the past. They're still different. They still have, you know, they don't, they have different rules, but for the most part, they have accountability when it comes to growing and building. They don't have the same requirements. Like we have to show a need before we can grow. We have to have a certain limit over capacity so that we're not building a school half empty. So there's different requirements in that regards. But as far as once they have the students on their campus and accountability, they have far more accountability than private schools do. School boards oversee public charter schools

and charter schools generally have a bit more leeway in how they spend public money. Are you satisfied that the oversight is adequate today? You know, I'm only going to answer this for Orange County. Fair enough. Because that's the only thing I have control over. And I would say in Orange County, I think we have a department, our choice department does an excellent job. They are in charter schools on a monthly basis,

the different charter schools. We just had a charter school that recently had some issues and we had to look at intervening and possibly closing it down. And we were able to get them to where they need to be before we closed them down. So we do hold them accountable, especially financially accountable, but we're only can do so much right as a school board because they are kind of their own entity and they can Lauderdale about the need to close schools, about underutilized schools. Meantime, your debate in Orange County is how to manage the growth and the expected increase in student population over the next 10 years. What are the lessons that you're listening for out of Jacksonville and Tampa and Fort Lauderdale? It's hard when you have to kind of right size your community or you have to close school because even though that school may be under capacity,

that's a community school to that community and those families. And that's difficult because nobody wants their school to close. I think the lessons to be learned is you really kind of have to look flexible. And I'm not saying that in five years, Orange County is not going to be in a situation where we're going to have to do targeted rezoning because we already have some schools that are under their permanent capacity and looking to be fiscally responsible. How do we do that and still engage the community to make those hard decisions and those good decisions that might need to be made? So I think there are lessons to be learned. I think when we look at those other counties, how they handle it now, how they go about it,

the decisions that they make I think will help us in Orange County, if we get to that point, make it easier because of those that will have gone before us. Angie Gallo is the vice president of the Florida School Board Association and a member of the Orange County Public School Board. Member Gallo, thanks for your time. Appreciate your perspective. You're welcome. You have a great day. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. It's now been about a year since Florida put in place a new immigration law cracking down on undocumented workers and companies hiring them.

Jasmine Garst is NPR's immigration correspondent and the host of The Last Cup. Jasmine, welcome to the program. Thanks for your time. Hi, thanks for having me. You spent some time in Florida here reporting on the impact of this law in the past year. Remind us, first of all, what this state law does. Sure. So this is one of the most severe immigration laws in the U.S. Among other things, it makes driving while undocumented illegal. It requires hospitals to gather information about immigration status.

It punishes businesses who employ undocumented people. And it makes bringing an undocumented person into the state of Florida a crime of human smuggling. So it's it's quite severe. There's punishment for the undocumented migrants. There's punishment for companies who hire them. There's punishment for people who perhaps help them as well. You visited some agricultural communities, particularly those in the Gulf Coast. What did you find there?

Yeah, I spent time in central Florida in communities like Plant City. And what I was told by farmers is that people just left overnight, 30 to 40 percent of pickers, not all of them undocumented. Some whose spouse is undocumented or dad is undocumented. And it's just created a climate of fear that felt unsustainable. And it's hurt the bottom line for farmers. For the workers who were still there, what did they tell you? They spoke of a climate of intense fear. Over and over again, I heard this worry.

What if I go to work in the morning and I don't come back? What happens to my family then? Now, just to give you a sense of the level of fear, in these communities, there's been a boom of what's called right this. It's like an informal transportation system, kind of like an Uber or a Lyft, but off the grid. And the drivers told me that since the law passed a year ago, they increasingly transport people who are afraid to drive to the supermarket, to work, to take their kids to school. Not only that, Reiteros told me that for a fee, they increasingly are moving families out of Florida to northern states like the Carolinas or Virginia or New York, places where they feel safer. And you found that it's not only the ag industry, which is vital here in Florida,

but other industries that are pretty important to the state economy. Yeah, absolutely. So the law has widespread impacts. The Florida Policy Institute estimates this could cost the state's economy $12.6 billion in the first year. So one example is roofing, right? I spent time in Fort Myers, which is still recovering from hurricane damage. And I spoke to roofing companies who told me they lost about 10% of their workforce. And they, like many business owners nationwide, have been asking the federal government to expand migrant worker programs and also to give asylum seekers quicker work permits. And also to give asylum seekers quicker work permits. Those permits, the H-2A visa, how does that work?

What role does it play? So H-2A visa is a temporary agricultural visa. You know, basically farmers contact a labor recruiter who recruits the workers, brings them over for a period of time. And the ag operator houses, feeds, transports the workers. And them over for a period of time, and the ag operator houses, feeds, transports the workers. And there's a lot of criticism of the H-2A system. On the one hand, farmers will tell you it's expensive. It's a bureaucratic nightmare, like so much of our arthritic immigration system. It belongs to another economic era. It was designed so foreign workers wouldn't compete with American jobs. You know, on the other hand, there's been so many accusations of worker

exploitation with H-2A. Farm owners trying to cut the costs and workers therefore living in inhumane conditions. All of this has been happening with the state here in Florida of an unemployment rate that is historically low, and in some cases in South Florida, below 2%. Yeah, I think, you know, I think Florida, economists also say Florida is a really interesting kind of microcosm for what's happening in the U.S. Florida has an aging population, very much dependent on foreign labor and on immigration for population growth and for work, which is really what's happening nationwide. Right. And so you have like kind of two things going on here. You have this political discourse that sees immigration as a threat and, you know, something that needs to be squashed. And then you have an economic and demographic reality, which is very different. Yeah, very different. Jasmine Gartz, NPR's immigration correspondent. She is the host of The Last Cup and was in Florida recently reporting a year after the

state immigration law. Jasmine, thanks for sharing your reporting with us. Thank you so much. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being with us. So imagine if this was your commute. Just the chirps from the birds above.

Or the sounds of ducks gathering in a nearby pond. Now instead, imagine dodging semis and trucks and interstate traffic, avoiding new neighborhoods springing up in what was once wild nature. Well, from the 10,000 islands to Pensacola, the Florida Wildlife Corridor aims to connect lands and waters to help all kinds of animals move about. Panthers, bears, grasshoppers, and also wild plants. Now the corridor is not a singular passageway. It is millions of acres held together across the state. About half of the areas are protected in some way. A 2021 law aims to conserve millions of more acres. Some of our partner

stations teamed up with the Florida Trident. That's a non-profit investigative journalism organization from the Florida Center for Government Accountability. We start in southwest Florida, the home of the endangered Florida panther. Here's WGCU's investigative reporter Eileen Kelly. Development out here in eastern Lee and Collier counties is supposed to be limited, abating the impacts development has had on water resources and threatened and endangered species. Welcome to the fastest growing part of southwest Florida, as the state adds on average more than 1,000 people a day. While many welcome the growth, saying it spurs the economy and provides additional workers, others see it quite differently.

Environmentalists say the planned communities, Kingston and Belmar, which are the size of small cities, could hurdle the Florida panther from the endangered list to extinction. could hurdle the Florida panther from the endangered list to extinction. Permitting and legal challenges has put these two projects on hold. But construction crews continue to line these once-quiet roads, clearing trees and laying water lines for other planned communities already given the green light. A giant sign boasts a soon-to-be feature attraction at a community under construction, Indoor Pickleball. Local and state governments have been in a rush racing each other to see which one could destroy the things that make Florida special. Unfortunately, the wildlife, the rural lifestyle is paying the

cost for it. Joe Frank is an elder in the Seminole tribe. We are standing alongside a road cutting through the Florida Wildlife Corridor. There's not too many other places in the world like it. For those of us that grew up here, we love it. It helps sustain us, so we kind of hate to see it be destroyed by greed. Frank's wife, Rhonda Roth, is a scientist. She's deeply concerned about the environment, looking for signs that a panther has been nearby.

I want to see their prints. I want to know that they're there. I want to know that they're healthy and that they have a good food source. And seeing prints is encouraging, especially if you see adult and kitten prints. We don't see any paw prints, but we do see a constant reminder of why the panther is struggling to survive. Cars and trucks speed down this road. I think people need to stop driving fast. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, at least 46 panthers have been killed by cars and trucks on this very road. Below where we are standing is an under-the-road wildlife crossing, a 24-foot-wide and 7-feet-tall steel culvert,

allowing animals safe passage through just a small portion of the wildlife corridor. Lots of things use these passages, so bear, deer, gators, little guys too, you know, rabbits, hogs. Yeah, no, it's a good thing. We just need more of them, that's all. Once prolific throughout the state of Florida and beyond, a mere 10 to 20 roamed Florida in 1967. But in an incredible story of ecological recovery, eight Texas big cats were brought in to mate with the Florida panther in the 1990s.

Today, an estimated 200 Florida panthers roam the state, mostly here, though, in fast-growing southwest Florida. This celebrated feat may not last much longer, as more panthers are killed than are born each year. Just having grown up here, you feel protective of it. Frank is 70. He's spent a lifetime living and working in many areas that are now considered part of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. I get involved in this because I'd like to see it protected and make sure that the prophecies I grew up hearing don't come in my lifetime. Eileen Kelly with Amanda Inscore Whittemore and Andrea Melendez in Eastern Lee and Collier Counties. This is Molly Duregg in Split Oak Forest in Orange County.

Development is booming in greater Orlando. More people are moving here than almost anywhere else in the country. But nestled within all of that is Split Oak Forest, where I'm standing right now. It's a March afternoon when Valerie Anderson with Florida Native Plants Society is showing me some of her favorite parts of Split Oak Forest. Do you see the blueberries? The little blueberry flowers? Look right here. This is a shiny blueberry. It's Florida's smallest blueberry. And it's in flower right now. When we think of wildlife, we tend to think of animals.

That's how it's defined in Florida law. Animal movement is the main focus of the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which is supposed to preserve and connect natural areas serving as wildlife habitats. Those connections are important so animals, like the Florida black bear, can move around safely, avoiding highways and development. But the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act lawmakers passed in 2021 doesn't enforce anything, just encourages agencies that acquire land to invest in so-called opportunity areas, the 8 million acres of corridor land that aren't protected from development.

But what does it take to actually protect those animals long term? Biodiversity, the key to a healthy habitat. That means flood protection, clean water, things humans need too. From a biodiversity perspective, it's much broader than just panthers and bears. It's also about ecosystem services. That's Tom Hochter, who built the Florida Ecological Greenways Network, a massive database of Florida's natural resources, which Florida's land protection programs use to prioritize what's most important to save.

But Florida Ecological Greenways Network, Hochter says, it isn't the catchiest name. That's why the Florida Wildlife Corridor was born. Hochter says it's a PR campaign. It leaves out nearly a quarter of Florida's most important ecological lands identified by the Greenways Network. That means those lands aren't in the wildlife corridor. Lands that are still aren't necessarily protected, and labeling land as part of the wildlife corridor doesn't keep it safe from future development. Already, development is happening all around Split Oak. Soon, it'll be happening within the boundaries of this protected area, once CFX,

the Central Florida Expressway Authority, starts building a toll road through part of the forest. State regulators approved the major development project despite Split Oak's layers of existing conservation protections and its location within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. Large, natural landscapes like this being divided into smaller plots, sold and developed, it's exactly the kind of habitat fragmentation

the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act was supposed to prevent. Outside the Orange County Administration Building one February morning, months before the state approves the road, about a dozen people are rallying to save Split Oak. It's years later. We're still fighting. And now it's about more than preserving a forest. It's about demanding that they protect our constitutional rights. That's Kelly Semrad with Save Orange County.

She's talking about back in 2020 when 86% of Orange County voters approved a referendum to ratify Split Oak's protected status in the county charter. Back then, Split Oak already had protections from six different agencies in Florida, including through legal agreements established to protect Split Oak in perpetuity. But still, discussions were heating up about CFX's toll road idea, and Orange County environmentalists wanted more protection for split oak. So they got a referendum on the ballot, which passed by a landslide. Yet, just days ago, the toll road became official when commissioners with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved removing protections from split oak forests. It does meet the threshold of what our duty is of protecting fish and wildlife for the future

because we're getting additional lands. For Valerie Anderson and members of her group, Friends of Split Oak Forest, in perpetuity feels like a broken promise. Anderson was at that rally back in February. This is a fight between what is in the public's best interests versus what is in CFX's and the developers' best interests. You set a precedent that threatens other conservation land. That's Paul Owens, executive director of 1000 Friends of Florida,

a nonprofit pushing for more sustainable growth planning. He says Florida legislators have been unraveling development oversight since at least 2011 under former Governor Rick Scott. Owens says the goal was to avoid over-regulating Florida's growth. But in reality, those changes then made Florida more vulnerable to development today. If we degrade our environment, we are going to erode the foundation of our economy. An economy that depends on people enjoying the outdoors. We have a certain quality of life because of our environment, not in spite of our economy. An economy that depends on people enjoying the outdoors. We have a certain quality of life because of our environment, not in spite of our environment. Back in Split Oak Forest,

Anderson's showing me a map of where developers offered Orange and Osceola County's 1,550 acres of nearby land in exchange for giving up 60 acres of Split Oak. But Anderson says that swappland, as she calls it, isn't worth the trade. It's not that the swappland has no ecological value or no value as conservation land. It's that the value is not worth exchanging for the ability to protect all conservation land in the future. Anderson says that's what split oak represents. Split oak is going to be used as the case study for what happens when toll roads meet protected conservation land in Florida in the future. Supporters of the toll roads say it's needed to accommodate Central Florida's booming population. That kind of growth is why Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Wildlife

Corridor Act in 2021. But Anderson says while the idea behind the Florida Wildlife Corridor is great, to make it a reality, state and local governments must be held accountable to its vision of preserving Florida's natural resources from development. We need to come together as a society and as a culture to look at that and say, no, that needs to be protected. Molly Duregg, Central Florida Public Media. And finally on the roundup, wildlife is well represented here in Florida on the field, court, and ice. There are the dolphins and jaguars playing football, of course, the marlins and rays on the baseball diamond. Minor League Baseball's blue wahoos are in Pensacola, the jumbo shrimp in Jacksonville, and the Daytona Tartugas. And one breed is still vying for a championship this season. Hockey's Florida Panthers.

That is the Florida Roundup this week, produced by WLRN Public Media in Miami and WUSF Public Media in Tampa. By Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. Vice President of Radio at WLRN 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 the phones. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. Thanks for calling, listening, emailing, and above all, supporting public radio in your neck of the woods. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.