Education

South Florida counties may prohibit teachers from carrying weapons.

Besides the public’s opposition to arming teachers, there’s plenty of evidence it can be downright dangerous. New Times has identified a litany of troubling incidents involving Florida educators and guns, including many that have gone previously unreported.

The livelihoods of college professors have gotten increasingly precarious over the last few decades. Universities keep cutting nonscience programs and offering fewer professorships while hiring more teachers as “adjuncts,” who make just a few thousand dollars per class, per semester. A recent report from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) found that 70 percent of Florida public-university professors are now adjuncts.

In 2018, Miami-Dade County residents passed a ballot initiative that gave a $232 million pay raise to public schoolteachers. That seemed logical since Florida teachers rank among the lowest-paid educators in America. While the ballot’s language clearly stated the raise was supposed to go to public schools only, Florida’s…

More than 10,000 people of Haitian ancestry live in Miramar, a city with the fifth-highest Haitian population in Florida. Naturally, the local public schools have a large number of Haitian students — after the devastating 2010 earthquake on the island, Miramar High School took in 46 Haitian refugees, more than…

As it stands, not every child who grows up in Florida gets access to the state’s full slate of college financial-aid packages. If you’re born in the United States, you qualify for everything, from the state’s Bright Futures scholarship programs to a whole host of other grants. But if you’re…

DeSantis’ advisory board includes two members of the Florida Citizens’ Alliance, which hates Islam.

Earlier this year, the Miami-Dade County School Board decided to consider installing sensors in school bathrooms to deal with what they called the epidemic of teens vaping on campus. The district is still researching that idea, but in the meantime has come up with a different solution: making kids sign…

Most Americans (up North, at least) likely made it through high-school history class without their teacher flying a Confederate flag in the classroom. It’s perfectly easy to teach kids about the pro-slavery Confederacy without draping the Rebel banner across the room.

Teachers will get a raise if MIami-Dade voters approve a referendum that would allow the county to raise $232 million a year through an increase in property taxes over the next four years.

Florida International University students really can’t seem to stop themselves from being gigantic assholes. From frats to campus conservative groups to, ahem, other campus-conservative groups, New Times keeps catching FIU kids acting like complete garbage. In recent years, FIU President Mark Rosenberg has had to suspend Greek Life on campus, college…

Tobacco is gross. Nobody likes tobacco anymore. It’s not cool. Joe Camel can go fall off a bridge. The only people who smoke tobacco pipes in 2018 are steampunk weirdos, creeps who like Hugh Hefner too much, oil barons, and Sebastian the Ibis, the mascot for the University of Miami…

On February 20, an eighth-grader at Miami Beach’s Fienberg-Fisher school got into what amounts to a food fight. Another student doused him with water. He threw milk back. The students’ substitute teacher disciplined the boys, and that seemed to be the end of it.

This past Tuesday, New Times published internal chats showing members of the Florida International University chapter of Turning Point USA joking about white nationalism, “Jew-hating,” underage cartoon porn, and Syrian refugees raping white women. But so far, school administrators have done nothing. In fact, amid a national outcry over the leaked, racist chats, TPUSA even set up a table on the FIU campus today to hand out buttons and “Socialism Sucks” posters.

Back in 2017, New Times obtained screenshots of gross chats among Florida International University’s Campus Republicans. They joked about the Charlottesville neo-Nazi attack last year and threatened to “call ICE” on fellow, undocumented students who were begging Congress to pass the DREAM Act. Now, New Times has received chats from another FIU…

Since the day after the February 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, David “Cobra” Clemente has been a constant presence, standing guard when students arrive at 5:30 a.m. and when they leave around 2:40 p.m. In the beginning, he was surrounded by other red-beret-topped Guardian Angels who patrolled the school as volunteers — and won the affection of many worried parents and shaken students.

Kanye West has unlimited resources. He is one of the world’s most famous people. Yet he apparently has no better place to hunt for new political ideas than the Florida charter-school world, which sucks so hard that pop-rapper Pitbull is legally allowed to run his own school in Miami.

In September 2015, social studies teacher Fran Wernersbach was reassigned from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High while the school district investigated a slew of allegations against her, including that she’d ridiculed her class, sworn at administrators, and spread rumors about a student. She was told to contact the principal if she needed to set foot on campus, because her daughter was a student.

During his career at South Miami Senior High School, Armando Alejo got rave reviews from students for being a laid-back guy who taught difficult concepts in a way that was easy to understand.

One of the biggest providers of mental health counselors in Florida schools, Motivational Coaches of America (MCUSA), has come under fire after an investigation by the Palm Beach Post found that some employees say they haven’t been paid and that high turnover has led to counselors abandoning children who have grown to trust them.