Write an article about Broward Schools still waiting on crucial federal funding as school board prepares to debate loosening cellphone ban – NBC 6 South Florida .Organize the content with appropriate headings and subheadings (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) and made content unique, Retain any existing tags from
Remember the missing federal funding for school districts? It’s still mostly absent, and that’s creating major budget headaches for our local school districts.
Three weeks ago, we reported that $6 billion for school districts nationwide was being held up in Washington with no clear explanation from the Department of Education. $30 million for Broward, $45 million for Miami-Dade.
Broward County Public Schools superintendent, Dr. Howard Hepburn, told his school board on Tuesday that the Department of Education did release $7 million of that money for the district’s after-school enrichment programs, but there’s still a big hole in the budget.
“Due to the timing of the current federal freeze, we are not able to adjust our budgets accordingly,” Hepburn said in Tuesday’s school board meeting.
The district is still waiting on the DOE to release $23 million, money already approved by Congress, which funds English learner courses and teacher training programs.
“That is tied to about 142 staff members; it is tied to certain resources that we use to support students,” Hepburn said today in an interview. “We can’t afford to carry all of those employees and all of those resources on our general fund, so there’s some tough decisions that have to be made if they don’t unfreeze those funds, we’re hopeful that they unfreeze ‘em in the coming weeks.”
Also coming up on the school board’s agenda: should they roll back last school year’s revolutionary cellphone ban to allow high school students to use them only at lunch?
“We do know that things have changed for the better,” said Broward Teacher’s Union president Anna Fusco at Tuesday’s board meeting. “And our teachers are seeing more positive interactions, student on student, student on them, with the cell phones being put away.”
“So there’s tons of data that support restricting cell phones during the school day actually helps our kids,” Hepburn said.
He supports leaving the cellphone ban the way it is now.
“We saw a lot of positives out of that, student conflict issues went down, more engagement in our classrooms, more engagement during lunch, more engagement during the hallway, students actually talking to each other,” Hepburn said.
The school board will take up the cell phone issue at next week’s meeting. In the meantime, the district will continue to advocate for Washington to fulfill its funding commitments.
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