Miami school board silent on taxpayer dollars funding left-wing environmental group
MIAMI – The Miami-Dade County School Board has remained silent on multiple requests over several weeks from Florida’s Voice regarding the district’s taxpayer dollars helping support a “radical” environmental group through a local public media affiliate.
As Florida’s Voice documented earlier this year, Friends of the Everglades sponsored an event that featured calls for population control by the group Center for Biological Diversity.
A pair of questions asked by Florida’s Voice have gone unanswered by the nine-member board. Mari Tere-Rojas is the school board chairman while Monica Colucci is its vice chairman.
- Do you support allocating taxpayer money for this cause?
- What is your response to the station you give your money to financially backing a group linked to calls for population control?
Attempts at communication by Florida’s Voice to the board have only been reciprocated by chief of staff Marlene Hernandez. No other direct communication has been established.
Miami-Dade Public Schools holds the broadcasting license for WLRN, which is a local PBS and NPR station in the region. A report from the Miami-Herald indicates the school district gave approximately $4.4 million to WLRN.
According to documents analyzed by Florida’s Voice, Friends of the Everglades has received a total of over $1 million in 2022. A majority of the money has come from corporations, trusts and foundations, including WLRN.
Conservative influencer John Cardillo criticized the school board for subsidizing NPR’s support of Friends of the Everglades.
“NPR Should Not Be Subsidized by Taxpayers,” Cardillo said. “The Miami-Dade school board is using taxpayer money to fund NPR and radical left-wing environmental groups friendly to NPR.”
With this funding going from Miami taxpayers to the school district to WLRN, and from WLRN to Friends of the Everglades, tax dollars are essentially helping fund the Center for Biological Diversity’s avocation for population control.
In a response to Florida’s Voice, WLRN CEO John Labonia claimed Florida’s Voice CEO Brendon Leslie’s report was “full of errors” and that tax dollars do not directly go towards Friends of WLRN.
