As South Florida public schools' enrollment continues to plummet, education leaders have said the bulk of the loss comes from the arrival of fewer immigrants — a result of the federal immigration crackdown, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has backed and helped to enable in the state.
Districts budgets shrink as enrollment plummets, but Lt. Gov. Jay Collins said the state has no regrets — and will help make up for that loss.
" I'll never apologize for being American first and Floridians first," Collins told WLRN in an interview Thursday. "We'll make sure that the funding is there."
Speaking to WLRN, he also backed the introduction of new standards for teaching the history of communism in Florida's schools, which were rolled out for the 2026-27 school year.
The Trump administration's immigration enforcement is causing fear among undocumented families and potentially means they aren't sending their children to school. However, it also plays out in fewer families from abroad moving to the U.S.
Former Miami-Dade County superintendent Jose Dotres said the district used to be able to depend on receiving about 14,000 to 22,000 foreign-born students in a single school year. Last year, it registered just 3,000.
"I understand and I hear what people are saying, that we have less illegal immigrants coming into our schools, certainly," Collins said. "Our prioritization has to be on our citizens."
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Under federal law, schools can’t ask for a student’s residency status. Every student — regardless of immigration status — has a protected right to public K-12 education.
A national education expert on immigrant students said all students — not just immigrants — are affected by their schools having less money.
“New students bring new funding to schools. That means that schools get more resources that benefit not just those students — the newcomer students — but all students,” said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, of EdTrust, a national nonprofit working to close opportunity and achievement gaps in education. She also co-founded the National Newcomer Network.
“Less money means fewer calculators and books, less after-school programming and partnerships with local organizations to provide really cool field trips and things like that,” she said.
Florida's Board of Governors, who are responsible for setting rules for the state's university system, recently banned state universities from admitting undocumented students. It's also part of a "Florida first" approach.
Politicians who support the ban, including Collins and Gov. Ron DeSantis, say state tax dollars should prioritize legal U.S. residents and citizens.
"Taxpayers built these campuses," Florida Commissioner of Education Henry Mack wrote on X. "They are not a prize for unlawful presence."
Collins also said he wants to see higher salaries for teachers.
" A great teacher changes everything. I wanna make sure that they're incentivized to stay and grow," Collins said.
Collins' wife, Layla Collins, is a member of the state Board of Education.
History of communism
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law two years ago requiring the history of communism be taught in public schools. It followed the Republican-controlled Legislature's designation of Nov. 7 as Victims of Communism Day in Florida's public schools, which required at least 45 minutes of instruction on figures like Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro.
"We have such a rich heritage, from our Cuban Americans, our Venezuelans. People who have really, truly seen and felt the pain of socialism and communism," Collins said. " All of those nations that fled to America came here and built lives. This is something critical to them."
Last year, the Board of Education approved new standards offering a deeper analysis of communism and its regional impacts, guidelines for specific courses, material for students with special needs and paves the way to find textbooks that follow the curriculum. It's up to districts to find the material they want to use to teach the curriculum.
"What's being taught from [6th grade] through [12the grade] right now goes into what happens with these totalitarian regimes, how they end up using coercion and force to drive a semi-utopian concept that truly just isn't working."
Opinions about the curriculum have been split. Some favor its adoption for how important it is for students to learn results of communist societies. Others feel the proposal goes too far in telling what students should be thinking about communism and socialism.
Collins said the curriculum doesn't teach what to think. Instead, it teaches students to compare and contrast.
"We make sure that we do the comparative analytics. We make sure that we compare our American values, our principles, our way of life to socialism, to communism, from regime to regime."
