NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned Wednesday after a brief, tumultuous tenure that saw the head of the prestigious New York university face heavy scrutiny for her handling of protests and campus divisions over the Israel-Hamas war.

The Ivy League school in upper Manhattan was roiled this year by student demonstrations, culminating in scenes of police officers carrying zip ties and riot shields storming a building that had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters. Similar protests swept college campuses nationwide, with many leading to violent clashes with police and thousands of arrests.

The announcement also comes just days after the school confirmed that three deans had resigned after officials said they exchanged disparaging texts during a campus discussion about Jewish life and antisemitism.

Shafik was also among the university leaders called for questioning before Congress earlier this year. She was heavily criticized by Republicans who accused her of not doing enough to combat concerns about antisemitism on Columbia’s campus.

Shafik, who began the role in July last year, announced her resignation in an emailed letter to the university community just weeks before the start of classes on Sept. 3. The university on Monday began restricting campus access to people with Columbia IDs and registered guests, saying it wanted to curb “potential disruptions” as the new semester nears.

In her letter, Shafik heralded “progress in a number of important areas” but lamented that during her tenure it was “difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in the community,” she wrote. “Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

Columbia’s Board of Trustees meanwhile announced that Katrina Armstrong, the CEO of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as interim president.

“Challenging times present both the opportunity and the responsibility for serious leadership to emerge from every group and individual within a community,” said Armstrong, who is also the executive vice president for the university’s Health and Biomedical Sciences. “As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters first set up tent encampments on Columbia’s campus during Shafik’s congressional testimony in mid-April, where she denounced antisemitism but faced criticism for how she’d responded to faculty and students accused of bias.

The school sent in police to clear the tents the following day, only for the students to return and inspire a wave of similar protests at campuses across the country, with students calling for schools to cut financial ties with Israel and the companies supporting the war.

As the protest rolled on for weeks, the school was thrust into the national spotlight. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson showed up to denounce the encampment, while Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to support it.

Eventually, talks between the school and the protesters came to a standstill, and as the school set a deadline for the activists to clear out, a group instead took over Hamilton Hall.

Even after the protests were cleared, Columbia decided to cancel its university-wide commencement ceremony, instead opting for a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies.

The campus was mostly quiet this summer, but a conservative news outlet in June published images of what it said were text messages exchanged by administrators while attending the May 31 panel discussion “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present and Future.”

The officials were removed from their posts, with Shafik saying in a July 8 letter to the school community that the messages were unprofessional and “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes.”

Shafik’s critics were quick to cheer the end of her tenure, which is one of the shortest in school history.

Johnson, the house speaker, said her resignation was “long overdue” and should serve as a cautionary example to other university administrators that “tolerating or protecting antisemites is unacceptable and will have consequences.”

The student group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in a post on the social media platform X that Shafik “finally got the memo” after months of protests. The campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote it will “not be placated by her removal as the university’s repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues.”

Other prominent Ivy League leaders have stepped down in recent months, in large part due to their response to the volatile protests on campus.

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December after less than two years on the job amid pressure from donors and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say under repeated questioning that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.

And in January, Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned amid plagiarism accusations and similar criticism over her testimony before Congress.

Shafik said she will return to the United Kingdom to lead an effort by the foreign secretary’s office to review the government’s approach to international development.

“I am very pleased and appreciative that this will afford me the opportunity to return to work on fighting global poverty and promoting sustainable development, areas of lifelong interest to me,” she wrote.

Shafik was the first woman to take on the role, joining several women newly appointed to take the reins at Ivy League institutions.

The Egyptian-born economist previously led the London School of Economics, but had made her mark largely outside academia with roles at the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England.

At the time of Shafik’s appointment, Columbia Board of Trustees chair Jonathan Lavine had described her as a leader with an “unshakable confidence in the vital role institutions of higher education can and must play in solving the world’s most complex problems.”

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Associated Press reporter Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this story.

The Florida Atlantic University poll shows Trump leading Harris 50% to 47% among likely voters in the state. Just 2% said they were undecided and 1% said they’d vote for another candidate.

The 3-point Trump advantage is half the lead he had in June, the last time FAU polled in the state. Trump had a 6-point advantage among likely voters, 49% to 43%, when President Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate two months ago.

The results of the Florida survey released Wednesday, which are similar to what’s been showing up in other national and state specific polls, demonstrate how much the trajectory of the presidential race has been upended since July 21, when Biden ended his campaign for reelection.

“This is consistent with the pattern that we’ve been seeing since Vice President Harris came into the race, that she’s consolidated a lot of the traditional Democratic groups and they’ve turned this into a very competitive race,” Kevin Wagner, a Florida Atlantic University political scientist, said in a phone interview.

Wagner is also co-director of FAU’s PolCom Lab, a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science, which conducted the poll.

Another FAU political scientist, Dukhong Kim said in a statement that the results show that “Harris restores the traditional base of the Democratic Party, which includes women, minorities, younger voters, and Democratic Party identifiers.”  Trump, he said, maintains his own established base.”

The return of the Democratic base makes the contest  more competitive, Wagner said, even though the state has been trending more Republican.

When a larger sample of “all voters” as opposed to “likely voters” is considered, there’s also a 3-point difference. Among all Florida voters, the poll found Trump 49% and Harris 46%, with 2% preferring another candidate and 3% undecided.

Kennedy

The overall parameters of the Florida contest change slightly when factoring in the third-party candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,  the anti-vaccine activist and son of the assassinated U.S. senator.

When he’s in the mix, Trump has 47% of likely voters, Harris has 45% and Kennedy has 5%.

“It’s a tighter race with RFK Jr.,” Wagner said. “RFK Jr. at least for now seems to be hurting former President Trump.”

The FAU results are in line with a Suffolk University/USA TODAY/WSVN-Ch. 7 poll of likely Florida voters released Tuesday. Trump had 47%, Harris had 42% and Kennedy had 5%. The Suffolk survey was conducted via phone from Aug. 7 to Aug. 11.

In FAU’s previous Florida poll in June, a three-way race found Trump had 45% of likely voters to 40% for Biden and 8% for Kennedy.

Gender, age

There’s a sizable gender gap among likely voters, with women much more likely to prefer Harris and men much more likely to prefer Trump.

Women: Harris had support of 53% of women, 10 percentage points higher than Trump’s support among women.

Men: Trump had the support of 56% of men, 16 percentage points higher than Harris’ support among men.

Younger: Among voters under age 50, Harris led Trump 50% to 44%.

Older: Among voters 50 and older, Trump led Harris 53% to 44%.

Partisan divide

More than nine in 10 Democrats and Republicans supported their party’s nominee, with 94% of Democrats for Harris and 93% of Republicans for Trump.

Independents were closely divided, but slightly favored Harris, 48% to 43%.

Another illustration of the depth of the partisan divide was shown in voters’ responses to the selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as the Democratic nominee for vice president.

Among all voters, the choice had approval of 44% and disapproval of 33%, with the rest neither approving nor disapproving.

But the breakdowns by party showed deep division. Among Democrats, 70% strongly approved of the choice and 1% strongly disapproved. Among Republicans 43% strongly disapproved and 8% strongly approved.

Independents were more evenly split, with 21% strongly approving and 16% strongly disapproving.

Wagner said the Walz results “illustrate how much of what we see and perceive today is just through a partisan lens. So many people have formed an opinion on someone who was largely unknown about a week ago.”

Senate race

The poll found a close race between U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and his likely challenger, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

(Mucarsel-Powell, who has the support of virtually the entire Democratic Party establishment, is almost certain to emerge as the winner of the Aug. 20 party primary.)

In a matchup between the two, Scott has 47% of likely voters to 43% for Mucarsel-Powell. Another 6% said they were undecided and 3% said they supported another candidate.

The June FAU poll had Scott at 45% to Mucarsel-Powell’s 43%.

The latest Senate numbers showed predictable patterns: Mucarsel-Powell had more support among younger voters and Scott had more support among older voters. The Democrat had more support among women and Scott had more support among men.

Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly (88% for each party) supported their party’s candidate. Among independents there was a tie at 41%.

“Scott is winning, but it’s within range that a surge of Democratic voters could make that a nail biter,” Wagner said.

Ultimately, Wagner said, the results in the presidential and Senate races will depend on which side turns out its voters.

“Because of the way that the state has trended, if both bases come out, then Republicans are likely going to be good, and I think that’s what you see in our numbers. It’s tighter, but it is still a Republican-leaning state. That would be good for Senator Scott and former President Trump.”

Florida poll finds abortion, marijuana amendments falling short of passage

Florida in play?

Political analysts have seen Trump as the overwhelming favorite to win Florida’s 30 electoral votes, more than 10% of the 270 needed to win the presidency. In 2020, Trump won Florida by 3.3 percentage points.

The poll, which is a snapshot taken early in the Harris candidacy, doesn’t mean Florida is in play.

“It’s possible if the race continues the trajectory it’s on. However, it’s still a bit early to make the determination, and we’ll have to see how the race progresses. If in the next few weeks there are more surveys that show Florida is tight, then it’s possible,” Wagner said.

Still, he said, the poll results are “a warning sign for the Trump campaign.”

Harris, now the Democratic nominee, has enjoyed a bonanza of publicity, and drawn enormous crowds at rallies in critical battleground states. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, hasn’t yet implemented a strategy to counter the changed political environment.

Trump has spent lots of time at his Mar-a-Lago club and home in Palm Beach and hasn’t been doing many big, in-person rallies recently in battleground states. He held a rally in overwhelmingly Republican Montana on Friday, and is scheduled to speak about the economy Wednesday in North Carolina and headline a rally in battleground Pennsylvania on Saturday.

“It’s been a positive couple of weeks for the Democratic ticket. That could be a high water mark or this could be a trend. It’s hard to know in the moment,” Wagner said. “What really happened here is Harris has consolidated and brought a wavering Democratic coalition back, which gets you to where we’ve been for a while, which is an evenly divided country.”

Democrats had 558,272 more registered voters than the Republicans immediately after the 2012 election, when then-President Barack Obama won the state on his way to winning a second term and then-U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla, won reelection.

The official state tally of registered voters shows that as of July 22, there were 994,847 more registered Republicans than Democrats in Florida. (Examining totals from each of the state’s county supervisor of elections, the Fresh Take Florida news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications estimated that the Republican advantage hit 1 million on Sunday.)

Even if Harris doesn’t win the state, a better than expected performance, propelled by voter enthusiasm for the new Democratic ticket, could help her party by getting more voters to the polls who might then vote for more Democratic candidates for lower level offices.

Fine print

The poll of 1,055 Florida registered voters was conducted Aug. 10 and 11 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab.

The survey used an online panel and automated phone calls to reach other voters. It has a margin of error equivalent to plus or minus 3 percentage points.

However, the margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats, or men and women, would be higher because the sample sizes are smaller.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.

The department, long known as the Special Investigative Unit, is also changing its name to the Broward County Schools Police to reflect a new mission that’s more about protecting schools than investigating employees.

“That really sends a message to the public and to our schools that we do have a police department that supplements and supports our schools,” Superintendent Howard Hepburn told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The police department, which is probably best known for investigating employee misconduct cases, is handing over that function to the district’s human resources department.

The six detectives who now do investigations, as well as a sergeant who supervises them, will remain with the district, but they’ll now report to a new professional standards and labor relations division overseen by longtime administrator Ernie Lozano. The department also has three civilian employees who will be involved in investigations, Lozano said.

Eventually, the professional standards department may replace some police positions with civilian positions, if the district determines most investigations aren’t criminal in nature, Lozano said.

The police department, which will now have 24 employees instead of 31, will focus on overseeing armed guardians who protect schools, providing school resource officers to a few schools, coordinating security for school and district events, responding to threats reported to schools and assisting with behavioral threat assessments for students who may be at risk of harming themselves or others, said Jaime Alberti, chief of safety and security for the district.

“There’s a misconception that SIU is strictly an investigative arm, that it does nothing but investigations, and that’s not accurate,” Alberti said.

The new smaller police department is a stark contrast to a proposal in January that would have increased the size of the department tenfold, to 377 members, with a chief, 362 officers, six captains and eight civilian positions.

That proposal, which the School Board unanimously rejected, would have created a police department similar to those in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade School districts, which use their own personnel for school resource officers. In Broward, the Sheriff’s Office and city police departments supply school resource officers for most schools. The school district’s guardian program also provides armed protection for schools without a police officer or for those who need additional armed security.

Although the full-scale police force idea was scrapped, district officials decided the current department needed to undergo changes, including the way employee investigations are handled.

Employee discipline in the past has been inconsistent, officials said. In some cases, a principal or their supervisor would investigate an employee, with the assistance of the district’s human resources department. When the investigation had the potential to be criminal, the matter was usually turned over to the Special Investigative Unit.

But the lines became blurred, with SIU frequently investigating matters that weren’t criminal, such as whether an administrator made racist and inflammatory remarks and whether a former chief communications officer organized a rally for an embattled superintendent during work time.

And with multiple departments investigating different employees and determining whether there was just cause, the discipline was often inconsistent.

During a recent School Board meeting, the majority of board members decided not to fire an employee accused of violating a state law banning transgender girls from playing girls’ sports, in part because the district had been more lenient with employees accused of more serious offenses.

For example, a guidance counselor accused of fraud got a three-day suspension, a teacher assistant accused of child abuse got a one-day suspension and a safety specialist got 10 days over accusations of indecent conduct with staff. The School Board voted 5-4 to give the employee in the transgender athlete case a 10-day suspension.

Hepburn told the Sun Sentinel the new professional standards department should enable less subjectivity and more consistency in discipline.

“I didn’t want principals having to make these tough objective decisions when they have to worry about running the school, engaging with the teachers, and engaging with their communities, engaging with their students and their parents,” he said. “So we want to create a separate department who can do that work, concentrate on it and come up with objective measures and objective criteria that can lead to objective decisions.”

The district’s police department also faced major criticism in October, when a detective arrested a longtime volunteer during a heated board member for what he said was battery on a law enforcement officer. A district-hired consultant determined the arrest wasn’t warranted, and the State Attorney’s Office declined to file charges.

Hepburn told School Board members in a recent memo that the district has taken steps to improve since that incident, including de-escalation training for all sworn officers and implementing new procedures in the board room.

“I believe the actions taken have addressed the concerns raised, and the necessary procedural enhancements have been put in place to prevent future occurrences,” Hepburn said in the memo.

The City Commission unanimously agreed Monday night to accept the district’s offer to reimburse the city $113,560 for each police officer for the coming year, with an increase to $119,240 the next year. The School Board is expected to approve the contract Aug. 21.

“We appreciate the City of Pembroke Pines for its ongoing partnership and financial commitment to securing our schools,” School District spokesman John Sullivan said Tuesday.

City leaders disliked the district’s offer, saying the reimbursement rate only covered part of the city’s costs of $165,251, which includes salary, benefits and equipment costs.

The school district argued its price is standard for all cities that provide school resource officers and was negotiated by the Broward League of Cities and the Broward County Chiefs of Police Association. The city said those negotiations were without its participation. After the city balked at the offer, the district said it would provide non-sworn security known as armed guardians in city schools.

Initially, Mayor Angelo Castillo and city staff agreed to that. But the City Commission faced major pushback from local parents and residents.

The district already provides guardians for a number of elementary schools in the county, but Pembroke Pines would have been the only city to not supply law enforcement officers for middle or high schools.

Another proposal would have kept Pembroke Pines in two district-run high schools, Charles Flanagan and West Broward, but not in middle or elementary schools.

But parents attended meetings last week and Monday to say they love Pembroke Pines police officers and want them in all elementary, middle and high schools.

“The SRO’s are no guarantee something bad will never happen,” Ilenia Sanchez-Bryson told the City Commission on Monday night. “But it does ensure that the most skilled and trained individual is there if ever there’s a need for swift action in a dire situation, so that if the worst thing imaginable were to happen, we would not be left wondering why we didn’t do everything we could to protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

Vice Mayor Thomas Good told the audience attending Monday’s meeting that the commission took their concerns seriously.

“You spoke. We heard, and we are delivering to you exactly what you have been anticipating and expecting all along,” he said.

Castillo agreed to the contract but still voiced concern that the city was subsidizing school police services, which he sees as a responsibility of the school district.

“It’s unfortunate we’re not going to get the complete cost,” he said Monday night. “We understand we have to put the safety of the children first. That’s something we’ve always done, but the dynamic of this contract arrangement is reeking in bad public policy.”

Sasse, a former Republican U.S. Senator from Nebraska, gave several one-time Senate staff members and other GOP officials lucrative remote positions at UF, according to records obtained by the Independent Florida Alligator.

Among the Senate staffers who joined him at UF are his former chief of staff, Raymond Sass; his former communications director, James Wegmann; his former press secretary, Taylor Silva; and three other former staffers. Both Sass and Wegmann worked remotely from the Washington D.C. area.

Sass’ salary, at $396,000, was more than double his Senate salary. Wegmann’s new position at UF earned him $432,000, while his predecessor in the position had made $270,000.

The hirings contributed to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses, part of a tripling of his office’s spending compared to what his predecessor, Kent Fuchs, spent during his last year in office, the Alligator reported. Sasse’s office employed more than 30 staff members, while Fuchs had fewer than 10.

Sasse also hired former Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, who worked remotely from Nashville, in a newly-created position that paid a starting salary of $367,500 and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s former scheduler, Alice James Burns, who also worked remotely and was paid $205,000.

A report obtained by the Alligator says Sasse spent over $20,000 flying his employees to UF between April 29 and July 29. The only hire who lives in Florida received a $15,000 stipend to relocate to Gainesville.

UF hasn’t responded to requests from the Alligator for a complete log of Sasse’s travel expenses. His travel expenses rose to $633,000 over his first full fiscal year, more than Fuchs spent on travel in eight years.

He also spent $7.2 million on consulting contracts, nearly two-thirds of which went to consulting giant McKinsey and Company, where he used to work as an advisor on an hourly contract. This amounts to more than 40 times what Fuchs spent on consulting in eight years.

Sasse abruptly resigned at the end of July, citing his wife’s failing health. The Alligator says the university did not respond to questions about what would happen to the hires now that Sasse is gone. Fuchs has returned as interim president until the UF Board of Trustees can hire a permanent replacement for Sasse.

Sasse’s hiring by the Board in 2022 resulted in the UF Faculty Senate passing a no confidence resolution in Sasse’s presidential search process due to transparency issues. Legislation passed by Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature earlier in 2022 made records relating to public university presidential searches exempt from Florida’s open public meetings and public records requirements.

His appointment by the board of trustees also generated controversy among parts of the student body, especially the LGBTQ+ community, for political positions Sasse had taken while in the Senate.

Lines were still long at many high schools but they moved quickly, according to parents and school officials, the result of more metal detector stations, revamped procedures and adjusted settings.

On Monday, the first day of school, students faced enormous, slow-moving lines. Many missed their first-period classes because of delays getting through the metal detectors, which were beeping constantly. The devices had been piloted at two schools over the summer, but Monday was the first large-scale rollout.

“What a difference a day makes,” Superintendent Howard Hepburn told reporters Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, Hepburn visited Cypress Bay High in Weston, which at 4,700 students is the largest high school in the state. A photo shared Monday showed a gigantic crowd of students waiting to get into the school, resembling a packed outdoor stadium venue.

The district shared a photo from nearly the same vantage point Tuesday morning, revealing a near empty area outside of campus at 7:30 a.m., 10 minutes before school started.

“I witnessed students coming in, definitely more efficient based on some adjustments we made as staff, based on some communication we sent out to our students to better prepare before they actually get to the system, and that paid dividends,” Hepburn said. “At Cypress Bay, all of their students got into the school prior to the bell ringing.”

It was the same at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High In Parkland, where Board Chairwoman Lori Alhadeff visited.

“Today was a much smoother day than the first day of school, and that is largely due to the improvements we made to our metal detector program,” she said.  “The enhancements we have implemented are already making a noticeable difference in the efficiency and safety of our school entry process.”

Students were reminded to keep their backpacks in front of them for easy access to items that need to come out, such as laptops, tablets and large three-ring binders.

Improvements at the schools included extra metal detectors, security staff stationed outside to keep the lines moving and recalibrated settings to avoid small innocuous items, such as an eyelash curler, setting off the devices, officials said.

“It still goes off with what we are trying to check for weapons, knives and firearms,” Hepburn said. “Some students did have to go to a secondary checkpoint to get searched, but we did not find any weapons. We did not find any knives or firearms. So it was a safe day for our students.”

A check of other schools by South Florida Sun Sentinel staff found no major issues. Lines were long but moving at Northeast High in Oakland Park and Fort Lauderdale High, while not noticeable at Deerfield Beach High from off campus.

Some parents voiced relief on social media Tuesday.

“Cooper City High was so much better today. My daughter left the house 10 minutes earlier, but said she got right through today with minimal wait,” parent Christy Boyce posted on the “Concerned Citizens of Broward County” Facebook group.

At Coral Glades High in Coral Springs, “my daughter said they didn’t open the student car lot gate until 7:04 but the metal detector lines were organized this time and moved faster. She was through by 7:20,” Ilene Frankel Littman wrote on the Facebook group.

“Things are running smoothly,” Schools Superintendent Michael Burke said. “All the hard work this summer that our team did is paying off with the great opening of the new school year.”

There were some concerns about school buses not arriving, as well as a power outage, as Burke visited five schools on Monday: Grove Park Elementary School in Palm Beach Gardens, Hagen Road Elementary School in Boynton Beach, Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Plumosa School of the Arts in Delray Beach and Palm Springs Middle School in Palm Springs.

At Plumosa School, Burke asked second-grader Jaxon Barnes what he thought of Burke’s first-day-of-school outfit. Jaxon replied that the superintendent’s new suit and shoes were “pretty spiffy.”

Plumosa recently made the jump from being a C-rated school to an A-rated one.

The Palm Beach County School District also went up a letter grade to an A. “We feel like we have a lot of positive momentum going into this school year, and we’re going to keep building on that success,” Burke said. That’s up from the B-rating it had in the 2022-23 school year.

During the 2023-24 school year, courses such as AP Psychology were threatened by the state law, and metal detectors were tested for the first time. But nearly 60 schools also improved one or more letter grade, and 131 schools earned an A or B grade, according to the district.

Unlike in Broward County schools, where the launch of metal detectors at high schools led to, in some cases, students waiting more than an hour outside to get into school and missing class, Burke said Palm Beach County’s schools didn’t experience any significant issues with metal detectors on Monday.

“I’m glad that we took the methodical approach last year, and we kind of rolled this out slowly, you know, week by week, school by school,” Burke said. “That made for a really seamless arrival today at our schools.”

There were a few issues, though. Forrest Hill Community High School lost power for about two hours, according to Florida Power & Light. Some buses experienced delays or didn’t show up at route stops at all, but these issues are generally expected for “about the first week,” Burke said.

On a Facebook post made by the School District of Palm Beach County account on Monday welcoming parents and students back to school, users expressed a mixture of frustration and excitement about the first day.

“Why didn’t the school buses show up?? Bus C059!!! What is going on?!!! Can’t even get through to the bus call center! This is ridiculous,” one user wrote.

Another user said their son’s bus also didn’t arrive, leaving them to take him to school.

“I know it’s the first day but please fix so they come tomorrow,” the user wrote.

In a reply to a comment, the school district account wrote the Here Comes the Bus app, which allows parents to see where their child’s bus is, will not be running for two weeks. Instead, the school district wrote parents should call the Transportation Call Center at 561-357-1110 with any questions.

During Burke’s visit at Spanish River High School, he asked a class full of students, “Are you guys excited to be back?”

Only one student chimed in with a “yes,” which was met with laughter by district officials, including School Board member Frank Barbieri.

Excitement was more palpable among the younger students, particularly Jaxon, who regaled Burke with the details of the lunch he’d brought to school that day: a sandwich, carrots with ranch and Doritos.

“I hope everyone will have a great school year because I know I am,” Jaxon said.

Numerous students set off the detectors with their tablets, water bottles and even eyelash curlers. School was supposed to start at 7:40 a.m. Monday at most high schools, but about 8:30 a.m., with many students still waiting outside, Superintendent Howard Hepburn authorized schools to suspend metal detector use and allow students to enter just by showing their IDs.

Hepburn issued a public apology on Facebook on Monday.

“We apologize to Broward County Public Schools’ high school students and families for the long lines and wait times at the metal detectors this morning,” he wrote. “We sincerely thank our students for their patience.

“Please remember to avoid bringing metal items or remove them from your bag as you approach the detectors to speed up the process,” Hepburn wrote. “We are committed to improving this experience and will be making necessary adjustments. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue communicating with our families and students.”

Hepburn told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Monday afternoon that despite the aborted rollout earlier in the day, the district will be using the metal detectors again on Tuesday. He said the district is adding an extra metal detection station at large schools that experienced the longest lines as well as making other changes.

The devices are supposed to be calibrated so that large metal items such as guns and knives set them off, but keys and cellphones do not. Students are asked to hand larger devices, such as laptops and three-ring binders, to a security official before walking through a metal detector.

Hepburn said some schools had security staff reminding students what items to take out, but others did not.

“Those are some of the protocols we’re going to be implementing to make sure there’s more communications to kids and we’ll add communications to kids on the bus before they get to school,” Hepburn said. “A continuous reminder. This is a total routine shift for our kids.”

Board member Allen Zeman told the Sun Sentinel “one of the kinks” was the sensitivity setting recommended by the vendor this weekend had not been used before and was more sensitive than ones used by other districts.

District spokesman John Sullivan declined to comment on Zeman’s assertion.

“I would say the sensitivity of the machines will go into our security operations, so we will not be answering questions in that regard,” he said.

Many students and parents posted pictures Monday of schools with lines, with hundreds or thousands of students waiting to get in.

“EPIC FAIL!! Why have ‘free breakfast’ when 90% of the students were lucky if they made it inside the building before first period ended! God help them when it rains,” Andrea Soto posted in response to Hepburn’s apology.

“This was not thought out at all,” Jamekia Ricks, whose son attends Northeast High in Oakland Park, wrote on the district’s Facebook account. “Put the metal detectors at every entrance. This may help with line control. Because the BS that is going on this morning is crazy.”

Western High in Davie opened gates at 7 a.m., with hopes of getting students in by 7:40 a.m. It didn’t work.

“Here’s a math problem for your class. 3,700 students must pass through 2 entry points within 40 minutes. How many students will be late for class?” Western parent Keith Walsh wrote in a family group text message, shared with the Sun Sentinel. “Unless they can process each student in 1.3 seconds, students will be late. Some A-rated district. They apparently can’t do math.”

Walsh later wrote, “Tell the students to send pictures to the media to show how school is going. Oh wait, they can’t use cell phones.”

Monday also was the first day for a new policy that bans the use of cellphones from morning bell to dismissal bell. It’s not clear whether the rule applies to students waiting in line long after the morning bell rings.

Not all Western students had long waits. Landyn Spelberg, a Western junior who is the student adviser to the School Board, said he had “a very smooth process this morning. I knew exactly what to take out, walked right into the metal detector and was in in 10 minutes.”

School district staff originally suggested implementing metal detectors through a phased-in approach over two years. But some School Board members said they’d prefer them all be implemented this school year.

“I did say at the beginning I did not think we should do it all at one time,” said Board member Debbi Hixon, who lost her husband Chris in the tragedy at Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland. “We had some board members who said we had to do it all at one time.”

One of those was Chairwoman Lori Alhadeff, whose daughter Alyssa also was killed at Stoneman Douglas.

“I don’t really want to wait. I want to do all of our high schools now, and I think that it’s so abundantly important that we add this proactive layer of safety protection to keep the weapons and guns out of our schools,” Alhadeff said in May. “And to just pick and choose this school or that school is not acceptable.”

Asked Monday if the district’s approach was a mistake, Alhadeff said she expects the process will get smoother each day, and she’s still glad the metal detectors are in place.

“If let’s say, God forbid, something happened and a weapon got into one of our schools, and that was one of the schools we didn’t put the metal detector on, that would be very difficult for me to deal with,” Alhadeff said. “So I know it was a challenge, but we got through it and we’re just going to improve from this day forward.”

Monday also was the first day of school in Palm Beach County schools. That district started piloting metal detectors last year and fewer issues were reported.

Christina Westman dreamed of working with Parkinson’s disease and stroke patients as a music therapist when she started studying at St. Cloud State University.

But her schooling was upended in May when administrators at the Minnesota college announced a plan to eliminate its music department as it slashes 42 degree programs and 50 minors.

It’s part of a wave of program cuts in recent months, as U.S. colleges large and small try to make ends meet. Among their budget challenges: Federal COVID relief money is now gone, operational costs are rising and fewer high school graduates are going straight to college.

The cuts mean more than just savings, or even job losses. Often, they create turmoil for students who chose a campus because of certain degree programs and then wrote checks or signed up for student loans.

“For me, it’s really been anxiety-ridden,” said Westman, 23, as she began the effort that ultimately led her to transfer to Augsburg University in Minneapolis. “It’s just the fear of the unknown.”

At St. Cloud State, most students will be able to finish their degrees before cuts kick in, but Westman’s music therapy major was a new one that hadn’t officially started. She has spent the past three months in a mad dash to find work in a new city and sublet her apartment in St. Cloud after she had already signed a lease. She was moving into her new apartment Friday.

For years, many colleges held off making cuts, said Larry Lee, who was acting president of St. Cloud State but left last month to lead Blackburn College in Illinois.

College enrollment declined during the pandemic, but officials hoped the figures would recover to pre-COVID levels and had used federal relief money to prop up their budgets in the meantime, he said.

“They were holding on, holding on,” Lee said, noting colleges must now face their new reality.

Higher education made up some ground last fall and in the spring semester, largely as community college enrollment began to rebound, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data showed.

But the trend for four-year colleges remains worrisome. Even without growing concerns about the cost of college and the long-term burden of student debt, the pool of young adults is shrinking.

Birth rates fell during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and never recovered. Now those smaller classes are preparing to graduate and head off to college.

“It’s very difficult math to overcome,” said Patrick Lane, vice president at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, a leading authority on student demographics.

Complicating the situation: the federal government’s chaotic overhaul of its financial aid application. Millions of students entered summer break still wondering where they were going to college this fall and how they would pay for it. With jobs still plentiful, although not as much as last year, some experts fear students won’t bother to enroll at all.

“This year going into next fall, it’s going to be bad,” said Katharine Meyer, a fellow in the Governance Studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. “I think a lot of colleges are really concerned they’re not going to make their enrollment targets.”

Many colleges like St. Cloud State already had started plowing through their budget reserves. The university’s enrollment rose to around 18,300 students in fall 2020 before steadily falling to about 10,000 students in fall 2023.

St. Cloud State’s student population has now stabilized, Lee said, but spending was far too high for the reduced number of students. The college’s budget shortfall totaled $32 million over the past two years, forcing the sweeping cuts.

Some colleges have taken more extreme steps, closing their doors. That happened at the 1,000-student Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, the 900-student Fontbonne University in Missouri, the 350-student Wells College in New York and the 220-student Goddard College in Vermont.

Cuts, however, appear to be more commonplace. Two of North Carolina’s public universities got the green light last month to eliminate more than a dozen degree programs ranging from ancient Mediterranean studies to physics.

Arkansas State University announced last fall it was phasing out nine programs. Three of the 64 colleges in the State University of New York system have cut programs amid low enrollment and budget woes.

Other schools slashing and phasing out programs include West Virginia University, Drake University in Iowa, the University of Nebraska campus in Kearney, North Dakota State University and, on the other side of the state, Dickinson State University.

Experts say it’s just the beginning. Even schools that aren’t immediately making cuts are reviewing their degree offerings. At Pennsylvania State University, officials are looking for duplicative and under-enrolled academic programs as the number of students shrinks at its branch campuses.

Particularly affected are students in smaller programs and those in the humanities, which now graduate a smaller share of students than 15 years ago.

“It’s a humanitarian disaster for all of the faculty and staff involved, not to mention the students who want to pursue this stuff,” said Bryan Alexander, a Georgetown University senior scholar who has written on higher education. “It’s an open question to what extent colleges and universities can cut their way to sustainability.”

For Terry Vermillion, who just retired after 34 years as a music professor at St. Cloud State, the cuts are hard to watch. The nation’s music programs took a hit during the pandemic, he said, with Zoom band nothing short of “disastrous” for many public school programs.

“We were just unable to really effectively teach music online, so there’s a gap,” he said. “And, you know, we’re just starting to come out of that gap and we’re just starting to rebound a little bit. And then the cuts are coming.”

For St. Cloud State music majors such as Lilly Rhodes, the biggest fear is what will happen as the program is phased out. New students won’t be admitted to the department and her professors will look for new jobs.

“When you suspend the whole music department, it’s awfully difficult to keep ensembles alive,” she said. “There’s no musicians coming in, so when our seniors graduate, they go on, and our ensembles just keep getting smaller and smaller.

“It’s a little difficult to keep going if it’s like this,” she said.

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The parents of slain students Luke Hoyer, 15, Alaina Petty, 14, and Meadow Pollack, 18, each reached $50 million settlements with Nikolas Cruz while wounded student Maddy Wilford agreed to a $40 million settlement, according to recently filed court records.

“The chief rationale for the judgment amounts is simply in the event that the killer ever comes into possession of money, we could execute on the judgments and obtain it, thus preventing him from buying any creature comforts,” their attorney, David Brill, said Thursday.

Cruz, 25, is serving 34 consecutive life sentences at an undisclosed prison after avoiding a death sentence during a 2022 penalty trial. He pleaded guilty in 2021 to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.

In addition to the 14 students slain, three staff members also died in the shooting and 16 other people were wounded along with Wilford.

Florida law already prohibits inmates from keeping any proceeds related to their crimes, including any writings or artwork they might produce in prison. But Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer, when sentencing Cruz, also ordered that any money placed in his prison commissary account be seized to pay restitution to the victims and their families and all court and investigation costs.

A groan, a crunch of concrete, and dust. Demolition begins on the Parkland classroom building where 17 died in a massacre

In total, that would be tens of millions of dollars.

Cruz reached an agreement in June wherein he signed over the rights to his name and likeness to former student Anthony Borges, the most seriously wounded survivor. Cruz cannot give interviews without his permission. Borges also has the right to an annuity Cruz received before the killings that could be worth $400,000.

Brill has challenged that settlement, saying he had a verbal agreement with Borges’ attorney that their clients would split any proceeds that might come from the annuity and donate it to charities of their choice. A court hearing on that dispute is scheduled for next month.

The families of most of the slain and some of the wounded previously settled lawsuits against the Broward County school district and the FBI for errors that allowed the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting to take place.

A lawsuit by families and survivors against fired Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson and the sheriff’s office for his alleged failure to pursue Cruz remains pending. No trial date has been set. Peterson was acquitted last year on criminal charges.