Jessica Bakeman

Florida leaders at the state and federal level are hoping to prevent human trafficking through education.

Proposals now in front of the state Board of Education and Congress would make sure kids learn about human trafficking in schools.

During a meeting Friday morning in Jacksonville, the board is slated to consider a new regulation that would mandate that trafficking awareness and prevention are taught in public school health classes.

A controversial institute focusing on Chinese language and culture at Miami Dade College is shutting down after it became an issue in the institution's tumultuous presidential search.

Like other similar programs around the country, Miami Dade College's Confucius Institute has been criticized as a tool for spreading communist propaganda for the Chinese government. Although the institute opened in 2010, it has been thrust into the spotlight recently as the college's presidential search started, stopped and then started again.

For people who don't have consistent access to food, the effects of Hurricane Dorian could linger for weeks.

Floridians who were scheduled to receive federal SNAP benefits, or food stamps, between Sept. 1 and 14 were allowed to get that help early, on Aug. 31, so they could prepare for the storm. But advocates worry they could run out of food by mid-September.

Jefferson County isn’t just Florida’s first all-charter school district. It’s also home to the original “schools of hope.”

State lawmakers created the program in 2017 with the aim of attracting more charter schools to Florida. The publicly funded, privately run schools would get extra state money and regulatory incentives if they open in neighborhoods where traditional public schools have failed for years.

Read the full investigation at Chartered: Florida's First Private Takeover Of A Public School System

Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie said the district has experience helping people displaced by natural disasters and is prepared to do it again for Hurricane Dorian survivors.

The Broward school district took in more than 1,000 students after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and 1,500 after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands two years ago, Runcie said during a news conference  in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday morning.

Updated at 5:00 p.m. to include additional closures.

Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County public schools will be closed Tuesday as Hurricane Dorian threatens parts of South Florida. 

The Miami Dade College board unanimously appointed a retired veteran administrator to serve as interim president while trustees restart the search for a permanent replacement for Eduardo Padrón, who retires tomorrow.

Rolando Montoya will return to the college as its interim president for the remainder of the search process, which trustees estimated could take up to another year.

To state leaders who support charter schools, rural Jefferson County was a poster child for public school failure.

By the summer of 2016, the small Panhandle school district had racked up a decade of Ds and Fs under Florida’s high-stakes system for rating school performance. More than half of its middle/high school students had been held back at least twice. At the hands of a dysfunctional local government, the district had devolved into one of the worst in Florida.