Lt. Gov. Jay Collins Says Florida Will Cover School Funding Lost as Immigration Crackdown Shrinks Enrollment

Lt. Gov. Jay Collins says Florida will make up the school funding that districts are losing as immigration enforcement drives down enrollment, and that the state has no regrets about the policies behind the decline. "We'll make sure that the funding is there," Collins told WLRN in an interview published Friday, adding that he will "never apologize for being American first and Floridians first."

The pledge comes as South Florida's two largest school districts, Miami-Dade and Broward, absorb some of the steepest enrollment losses in their history. Because Florida funds public schools largely on a per-student basis, every child who does not show up costs a district state money. Collins did not detail in the WLRN interview how the state would replace the lost dollars or how much it would spend.

What Collins said

Collins acknowledged the link between immigration enforcement and shrinking classrooms. "I understand and I hear what people are saying, that we have less illegal immigrants coming into our schools, certainly," he told WLRN reporter Natalie La Roche Pietri. "Our prioritization has to be on our citizens."

Education leaders in South Florida have said that most of the recent enrollment loss is tied to fewer immigrant families arriving, a result of the federal immigration crackdown that Gov. Ron DeSantis has backed and that Florida has helped carry out. Florida has signed more 287(g) agreements, which commit state and local police to assist federal immigration agents, than any other state, WUSF has reported.

Collins also said he wants higher teacher salaries so that good teachers are encouraged to stay. "A great teacher changes everything," he said. His wife, Layla Collins, sits on the State Board of Education.

Miami-Dade's arrivals collapse

The clearest measure of the shift is in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida's largest district. Former Superintendent Jose Dotres said the district could once count on roughly 14,000 to 22,000 foreign-born students arriving in a single school year. Last year it registered about 3,000, according to WLRN.

The Associated Press reported during the 2025-26 school year that the decline had erased about $70 million from the district's annual budget, forcing administrators to scramble to cover the shortfall.

The district's finances have tightened steadily since. In March, WLRN reported that Miami-Dade enrolled about 313,000 students in 2025-26, roughly 13,200 fewer than the year before, and that its $7.4 billion budget was already $100 million smaller than the previous year's. The district cut another $89 million in the middle of the school year and was operating below the state's required 3 percent reserve. Chief Financial Officer Ron Steiger warned at the time that the district had to "become a leaner organization."

This fall brought another drop. District and state figures reported by WLRN in August showed 18,910 fewer students at the start of the 2026-27 year than at the end of 2025-26, though the district cautioned that early counts are a snapshot. The School Board unanimously adopted a $7.4 billion budget in September while warning that midyear cuts are likely. New Superintendent Rafael Villalobos has not ruled out adjusting the budget once enrollment counts are updated this month. The district has already closed or consolidated nine schools because of declining enrollment, CBS News Miami reported.

Broward and the statewide picture

Broward County Public Schools opened the 2026-27 year with 11,358 fewer students than the year before, a loss Superintendent Howard Hepburn said equates to roughly $100 million in funding. The district, which now has about 61,000 empty seats, is weighing a third round of school closures.

The pattern shows up in statewide forecasts as well. At its January 2026 Education Estimating Conference, the state's Office of Economic and Demographic Research lowered its estimate of publicly funded K-12 students for 2025-26 to about 3.19 million full-time equivalent students, 46,455 below the forecast it adopted in April 2025. The conference report described K-12 enrollment as atypically contracting, pointed to a decline of 17,312 students in English for Speakers of Other Languages programs, and concluded that the most likely explanation was the chilling effect of recently implemented immigration policies. The office said it expected the downward adjustment to persist.

Advocates say the effects reach well beyond families who are deported. Esmeralda Alday of the group ImmSchools told WUSF that some families are afraid to go to school or ride the bus, and have pulled children out, requested virtual options or moved them out of dual-language programs to avoid attention.

Immigration is not the only factor

District leaders and state officials do not entirely agree on what is driving the decline. Statewide, falling public school enrollment has often been attributed to families choosing charter and private schools, a shift accelerated by Florida's universal school voucher expansion. Miami-Dade officials have pushed back on that explanation, arguing that the collapse in new arrivals from abroad is the larger cause.

Other pressures are also at work. Dotres has cited lower birth rates and families leaving South Florida, and Hepburn has pointed to low birth rates, the high cost of living, reduced immigration and competition from school choice. CBS News Miami reported that private school vouchers, cost of living and immigration enforcement were all cited for this fall's drop in Miami-Dade.

What the losses mean for students

Alejandra Vázquez Baur of EdTrust, a co-founder of the National Newcomer Network, told WLRN that new students bring new funding that benefits all students, and that less money means fewer resources such as books, after-school programs and field trips.

Federal law bars public schools from asking about a student's immigration status, and every child has a protected right to a public K-12 education regardless of status, so districts cannot directly track how many undocumented students have left.

Florida's stance has hardened at the college level. The state university system's Board of Governors recently barred public universities from admitting undocumented students. Collins and DeSantis have argued that state tax dollars should go first to citizens and legal residents. Education Commissioner Henry Mack wrote on X that campuses are "not a prize for unlawful presence."

What's next

Districts are now conducting the fall enrollment surveys that determine how much state money they receive this year, and Miami-Dade board members have asked for a revised budget plan once those counts are in. Broward's superintendent is scheduled to present a closure recommendation on Nov. 5, with a School Board vote expected Dec. 15.

Any state backfill would most likely have to come through the Legislature, which writes the Florida Education Finance Program formula and convenes for its 2027 session in the spring. DeSantis is term-limited and leaves office in January, so the next governor and the Legislature will decide whether Collins's promise becomes a line in the budget.