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Ron DeSantis says most Floridians won’t notice ‘schools of hope,’ as they will be in places most people don’t go

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Gov. Ron DeSantis is strongly advocating for the “Schools of Hope” model, which would co-locate charter schools in underused public school facilities.

And as DeSantis said in Orlando, the facilities primarily will cater to children whose parents aren’t doing as much as some others, in places most people wouldn’t even go, with tonier communities insulated from the concept.

“You’re really relieving burdens on the district, right? Because, you know, you’re creating a program where it is going to be targeted at … the least-advantaged students. And in areas where a lot of people say it’s not even worth trying,” DeSantis said.

It’s unclear which people are allegedly saying it’s not worth “trying” to educate some students but not others.

But worries that they will be in places like Windermere or Palm Beach are misplaced, DeSantis said.

“This is not going to be something where a school of hope is going to be coming in and descending on Palm Harbor or Destin or some of these places,” he said, singling out two wealthy communities where more than 80% of residents are White.

He reassured parents that these schools of hope won’t come in where “my Sally or my Johnny goes,” but instead would be in “some hard areas in Miami. Probably Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, probably Orlando, maybe Tampa, maybe Jacksonville.”

In these areas, DeSantis predicts the Schools of Hope will largely go unnoticed.

“I don’t think most Floridians are even going to know that there’s a school of hope. Because quite frankly, probably where they’re setting up, already a lot of Floridians aren’t spending a lot of time in some of these areas, but they’re going to go in,” DeSantis said.

Regardless of whether residents are aware of the schools, DeSantis made it clear his preferred vendor would be the Success Academies championed by arguably his leading political patron over the years, billionaire Ken Griffin.

Griffin has already pledged to devote $50 million to expanding the concept in Florida.

“It’s a difficult mission, but at least with Success Academy, you have an operator who’s been able to do some really, really great things,” DeSantis said.

He credits Success Academies with having “gone into the worst areas in terms of opportunity … the most at-risk … areas where no one else wants to go.”

Lots of vendors want into the taxpayer-subsidized space.

As of last month, 22 School Districts across the state have received at least 690 letters of intent from charter school operators, according to data gathered by the Florida Policy Institute, a member of the Florida Coalition for Thriving Public Schools.

School Districts reporting letters as of mid-November include Brevard, Broward, Collier, Duval, Hillsborough, Indian River, Lake, Lee, Manatee, Miami-Dade, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Sarasota, Seminole, Sumter and Volusia counties.

The letters, sent by privately operated charter school organizations, seek to occupy portions of public schools the state considers underutilized. Under provisions added to the 2025–26 state budget, “Hope operators” may move into those spaces at no cost, leaving districts to absorb maintenance, custodial and other operational expenses.

South Florida had received the most letters at last check, with at least 224 between Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Miami-Dade officials said the district received at least 180 letters, though only 90 were considered valid because many came from Bridge Prep Academy, which is not yet an approved Schools of Hope operator.

The impact also was obvious across the Tampa Bay region, where Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Manatee counties collectively show some of the highest concentrations of claims in the state. Together, the four districts account for more than 80 campuses and more than 46,000 requested seats, according to data compiled by the coalition.

Even as those letters go out, state lawmakers are already working to pull the plug on the program’s most controversial rule that allows charter school operators to move into “underused” public school buildings rent-free. SB 424, filed by Democratic Sen. Darryl Rouson of St. Petersburg, would repeal that provision.

“By eliminating language requiring co-location in public schools, we are ensuring schools do not face the unintentional consequence of an unfunded mandate, and that students can continue thriving in their schools without losing access to spaces they need for academic success,” Rouson said in an earlier statement about the bill.

___

A.G. Gancarski and Jesse Mendoza of Florida Politics contributed to this report.



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Lawsuit filed against Roblox online gaming company over lack of oversight for children

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Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against online gaming platform Roblox for “knowingly” facilitating conditions for sexual predators.

The 76-page lawsuit was filed Thursday in the 8th Judicial Circuit Court in Baker County. There’s no one particular victim listed in the lawsuit, but the filing states, “These predators use the Roblox (application) to find, groom, and abuse children. Florida children have been coerced into taking and sending sexual images of themselves. Others have been physically abducted and raped.”

The lawsuit follows several legal maneuvers by Uthmeier this year challenging Roblox’s operations. There was already one civil action, and Uthmeier launched a criminal investigation of the online platform in October.

In a video statement published Thursday, Uthmeier said that the criminal investigation, which included subpoenas, continues to probe Roblox. But he decided to file the civil action regardless.

“We reviewed the information demanded in our subpoena, and what we found is unacceptable,” Uthmeier said. “Roblox aggressively markets to young children. But fails to protect them from sexual predators.”

The lawsuit alleges Roblox violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practice Act on five counts. The legal action seeks a court injunction to block Roblox from engaging in the acts alleged and civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation and additional penalties up to $150,000.

A key element of the lawsuit is Uthmeier’s office’s claim that Roblox “attracts vulnerable child users by design.” The court action details investigations by Uthmeier’s office that he claims uncovered intentional efforts to lure children into sexually charged circumstances.

The lawsuit alleges that Uthmeier’s investigators created fraudulent Roblox accounts and used them to assess whether the platform was accessible to minors, including by testing age verification and facial age estimation. The investigators posed as a 7-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl and a 47-year-old male. The lawsuit includes screenshots of the Roblox entry page and instructions for creating a Roblox account. The lawsuit alleged that Roblox lacked safeguards to verify that parental consent was obtained.

“Roblox does nothing to confirm or document that parental permission has been given, no matter how young a child is. Nor does Roblox require a parent to confirm the age that the child provides when creating a Roblox account,” the lawsuit said, adding, “Roblox could do more; it chooses not to.”

Uthemeier stated that, given the lack of oversight of who was creating accounts on the platform, he decided to proceed with legal action.

“Roblox broke the trust of parents, and my office will make sure they answer for it,” Uthmeier said.



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Eileen Higgins says backlash to Donald Trump’s ‘trickle-down hatred’ helped her Miami Mayor win

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Miami Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins credits her historic win this week to a confluence of factors, from various affordability issues to City Hall dysfunction.

She also believes President Donald Trump inadvertently gave her a boost.

In an appearance on “Morning Joe” two days after winning the Miami Mayor’s race by nearly 20 points over a Trump-endorsed opponent, Higgins said fear of the President’s hard-line anti-immigration policies “influenced a lot of people’s vote.”

“There’s this politics of trickle-down hatred, where our immigrant population is not only insulted but also really afraid of the federal government,” she said, using a play on the Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” phrase.

Higgins said she has heard worries from residents across the city that they, their relatives or friends will be swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which received a massive budget increase this year to ramp up detainment and deportation efforts.

“People are afraid,” she said. “I’ve never experienced that in any of my elections before. People want government to work for them. They were never afraid of government, and that’s changed.”

Higgins, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner, said that she and most Americans want a secure border, to know who is entering and exiting the country, and to block criminals from crossing into the country.

That was the policy Trump and his supporters in government sold to the people, she said, but it’s not what the administration has delivered. And with a huge immigrant population across South Florida — the most populous part of a state with an estimated 400,000 holders of temporary protected status at risk — it’s going to severely impact local and state budgets, she said.

“Are we really going to deport 300,000 people and ruin the economy of South Florida? To me, this anti-immigrant fervor, it’s gone too far. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel. I’m Catholic, so I think it’s a sin. And it’s bad for the economy,” she said. “They’re going after everybody, rich and poor, and it’s really changing how people think about who they want to speak up for and stick up for them in local government.”

Higgins made clear that she believed the two primary drivers in the city’s election this year were the increasingly unaffordable cost of housing and Miami’s “long history of corruption” — a reference, perhaps, to the legal travails of outgoing Commissioner Joe Carollo, numerous police scandals or inquiries into alleged malfeasance by outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez, ex-Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla and former City Attorney Victoria Méndez that, to date, have resulted in no official findings of wrongdoing.

As she did on the campaign trail, Higgins touted her work toward “building thousands of units of affordable housing.” She said housing affordability — inclusive of home prices, rent and property insurance — was her “top issue” leading up to Election Day.

But businesses are feeling the crunch too, she added.

“Our housing affordability crisis has existed for some time,” she said.

“You also have what’s going on with this tariff issue, which is raising prices at the grocery store, at the drug store and for small businesses. We forget about that. You can go into a hair salon (where) the price of extensions (has) gone up by $20. And do they cut their profits or do they charge their customers in Little Havana $20 more? Neither of those people can afford that. So, affordability is all over the map.”

Eileen Higgins defeated former City Manager Emilio González Tuesday to become Miami’s first woman Mayor and the first registered Democrat to win the job in nearly 30 years. She won with 59.5% of the vote.

Last year, Vice President Kamala Harris won Miami by less than a percentage point. Three years earlier, Suarez, a Republican, won re-election with 79% of the vote.



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Heritage teams up with Salvation Army for holiday ‘Angel Tree’

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Heritage has helped more than 2,500 ‘Angels’ since 2017.

Florida-based Heritage Insurance is teaming up with the Salvation Army to provide charitable relief during the holiday season.

Heritage, located in the Tampa area, is once again joining the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program. Angel Tree provides Christmas gifts for needy children and senior adults around the country on a national level. The Salvation Army also helps hundreds of those kids and seniors in Florida’s Gulf Coast area specifically.

Once a child or senior has been registered and accepted as an “angel” with the Salvation Army, the charity helps fulfil their wish list by enlisting donors in the community who purchase gifts such as new clothing and toys. Those gifts are then distributed to the families while placing the items under the Christmas trees.

Heritage employees have helped climb that Angel Tree this year. The company announced their workers are supporting 320 Angels. The employees of Heritage Insurance and its sister company Narragansett Bay Insurance Co. have stepped up to make contributions to the Salvation Army in support of the program.

Those employees will help deliver the gifts during the Christmas season both in the Gulf Coast area of Florida and nationwide. For Heritage, this isn’t the first time those workers have participated in the program and the charitable drive has been part of the company for much of the past decade.

Heritage employees have helped a total of 2,560 “Angels.” That figure involves Heritage contributions to the Salvation Army going back to 2017.

“Supporting the Salvation Army and its Angel Tree Program are just one way that our team gives back to the community,” said Heritage CEO Ernie Garateix. “I’m proud of the generosity that our employees display when participating in this Christmas program over the last 10 years. Kindness and sacrificial giving are the very spirit of Christmas.”

There is a screening process by the Salvation Army to decide who becomes eligible in the Angel program. The Salvation Army provides applications that ask for various identification and financial disclosures before someone is included in the Angel Tree program.



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