Have you ever wondered how the schools are funded? How much comes from where?

Florida schools receive $28.9 billion in funding last year. $2.5 billion was in federal dollars. The Tampa Tribune continues, "Sunshine State schools received $2.5 billion from the federal government, $11.6 billion from state sources and $14.8 billion from local sources.

In fact, 8.6% of Florida schools' funding comes from the federal government, which is just above the national average of 8.3%.

Florida received more federal dollars than any other states, excluding California, Texas, and New York, which are all more populous than Florida.

For more information about school spending and funding, check out the Census report that came out earlier this week.

Have you heard?

President Bill Clinton is scheduled to be the keynote speaker as more than 300 students from around Florida gather August 8-9 in Orlando to form the inaugural class of the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps. The new student leadership program will launch in August to inspire and train the next generation of Florida’s leaders.

“This generation of young people has more power to change the world than any other in history,” President Clinton said. “As President, I was proud to create AmeriCorps, which has given more than 500,000 young people the opportunity to serve, and I applaud the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps for empowering future leaders committed to making a difference in their communities, their state of Florida, and their country.”

“The people in Florida need to take action. Our state has become a national embarrassment on children’s issues, and today we’re at or near the bottom in most indicators of performance,” said Bud Chiles, president of The Lawton Chiles Foundation. “We’re energizing our youth to go out there and fight for a change in the status quo. If we have any hope of becoming a national leader, our students need to be inspired and mobilized.”

See the full release here.

There's a new report out today by the US Census Bureau which finds that Florida ranks 35th nationally in terms of per pupil spending.

Florida spends $8,514 per pupil in elementary-secondary education. The national aver is $9,666 per pupil, a difference of $1,152.

In 2007. 2.6 children were enrolled in school in the state of Florida.

It's important to note, however, that despite the $8,514 spent per child, Florida still has the lowest per capita spending on education, based on the state's total population. Florida only invests 3.1% of it's resources into education spending. For more, check out Worst To First's indicators.

Click here to read the whole report.

Did you know today is Explore Adoption Day?

For more on adoption in Florida, you should check out the following stories:

Gov. Crist pens an op-ed in the Sun Sentinel, "For the Second Year, Florida Sets Record for Adopting Foster Kids." More than 3700 foster kids were adopted last year.

Jim Ash of the Capital News Service responds that even more kids - in foster care and otherwise- could have been adopted if the state would lift the 1977 ban on gay adoption.

The St. Petersburg Times also posts an editorial in the same vane, writing, "Florida should celebrate its adoption successes, but it cannot pretend its current system is sufficient or fair."

In case you missed, it, today's article entitled "Health Care Stakes High in Florida" appearing in the News-Press is a must read, comparing the state of healthcare in Florida to the national average.

We all know that healthcare is getting more and more expensive, with fewer families having access to adequate medical care. But, it's difficult to understand just how bad the situation is nationally and here in Florida.

According to the article, which relies on various sources for the research including the Kaiser Family Foundation and Families USA:

• "There are 3.7 million Floridians without health insurance.
• "Fifty-three percent of Floridians ages 19-64 who are living in poverty do not have health insurance, compared with 45 percent nationally.
• "Increasing cost: The cost of employer-provided family coverage has increased 72 percent in Florida since 2000. That’s more than 31⁄2 times the percentage growth in median earnings in Florida during the same period.
• "Average cost of premiums paid by the employee for employer-provided family coverage in Florida, 2007: $3,821.
• "Average cost of premiums paid by the employee for employer-provided family coverage in Florida, 2000: $1,969.
• "Overall health care expenditures: Florida ranks 19th among states and the District of Columbia in per-capita spending on health care services. The state spends more of its health care dollars than average on doctors, drugs, medical equipment and home health care; it spends less on hospital care, nursing homes and dental services."

For more research on the state of healthcare in Florida, particularly how it affects children, check out Worst To First's research section.

Finally, we have elected a President who truly “gets” the importance of early education. For years, research has taught us the importance of the first years of life – and how critical investments in these early years can pay off exponentially in the long run. Now, we have a President of the United States who understand this!

Every time I heard President Obama make a speech on the campaign trail, I cheered at the television when he talked about the importance of early learning. This week, those words were put into action with the introduction of the Early Learning Challenge Fund in Congress.

At the NAACP Centennial Dinner this week, President Obama said that we should “raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs” as he described his challenge to America’s governors: “if you …. Develop an effective model for early learning; if you focus reform on standards and results in early learning programs; if you demonstrate how you will prepare the lowest income children to meet the highest standards of success – you can compete for an Early Learning Challenge Grant that will help prepare all of our children to enter kindergarten ready to learn."

The Early Learning Challenge Fund legislation has been introduced by Congressman George Miller, and it includes $10 billion in federal investments over the next 10 years representing a significant investment in early learning. The bill has just been introduced, so we have a long way to go before it is enacted, but this is a very exciting first step.

Of course, the news for Florida is mixed because as it stands now, this is a challenge grant with priority going to states who have significantly increased their expenditures on early learning in recent years. Unfortunately, Florida is the only state in the nation to decrease funding for pre-K in the past year, which means that Florida’s young children may end up missing out on these precious federal dollars. Sound familiar?

Let’s talk about education - last year, Florida’s Governor had to apply for a waiver to receive federal stimulus dollars for education. Let’s talk about children’s health insurance - every year, Florida leaves money in Washington that could provide health insurance for our children, which is instead going to provide health insurance for children in other states.

We should all be excited about President Obama’s commitment to early learning – let’s just hope his challenge is heard in every state so that Florida’s children do not miss out…again.

For more information about the legislation, check out this fact sheet.

3,560. That's the number of Floridians that have lost healthcare since Monday.

According to a new study by Families USA, 185,360 Floridians will lose healthcare this year. Only California and Texas will have more of their residents lose their healthcare coverage.

The report also points out how much healthcare costs have increased in the last ten years, becoming out of reach for too many. "Between 1999 and 2008, the average annual family premium more than doubled, soaring from $5,791 to $12,680, an increase of 119 percent."

And, Florida cannot afford for more families- and more children- to lose access to healthcare. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, about 19% of children in the state do not have health insurance. Compare that to the national average of 11% of children lacking health insurance.

The report, which is aptly titled "The Clock is Ticking", raises the urgency of national healthcare reform as members of Congress debate what exactly that reform will look like.

30-Second Television Spot Highlights Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps

The Lawton Chiles Foundation and Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps, a project of the Foundation, today released a new public service ad to promote the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps.

Co-chaired by former Senator Bob Graham and Senator Mel Martinez, students from across Florida will meet at a two-day conference at the University of Central Florida in Orlando on the weekend of August 8th-9th.

The announcement will run statewide and features Christine Ortiz, who participated in Gov. Lawton Chiles’ Students Working against Tobacco, a program aimed at tobacco cessation among youth.

Aspiring student leaders and organizers are invited to apply now for the inaugural class of the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps, a student leadership group with the goal of educating, inspiring and providing hands on training in community leadership, empowering students to work for change.

Applications for the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps are due on July 27. For more information and to download the application, visit lawtonchiles.org.

Click here to watch the ad.

The time and production of the ad was donated by the Florida Cable Telecommunications Association.

With parents already thinking about the upcoming school year, it's worth noting that Florida's Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten program will be four years old.

The VPK program was an amendment passed by voters in 2002, but the program wasn't operational until 2005.

Florida's VPK program has one of the best ratings for accessibility- all four year-olds in the state are eligible. However, experts say that Florida fails to meet the funding necessary. In fact, for the upcoming year, the state legislature actually decreased funding by $50 a child.

Steven Barnett, the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University told the Naples News, “This year, there were 140,000 kids served..That’s a tremendous amount of children. If you’re only serving 10,000 kids, the responsibility wouldn’t be so great to get this right. That makes the Florida program one of the most important in the nation for that reason; that’s a responsibility the Legislature might take a little more seriously.”

It's also worth noting: with VPK 4 years old, the first kids will be entering third grade this fall and taking the FCAT.

There are 10 more days left to apply to the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps.

Today, difficult decisions and important conversations go on in Tallahassee or in Washington without the input of students and young people, whose lives are affected most by Florida's education and health care system. And, it's time for that to change and for students to take a more active role in these conversations that determine their futures. That's why we're hosting the Lawton Chiles Leadership Corps the weekend of August 8th and 9th at the University of Central Florida.

If you are a high school student or college student, click here to apply.

Applications are due July 20. For more information, contact us at lclc@worsttofirst.org.