Despite having one of the most diverse populations in the country, a new report says schools in the Sunshine State are becoming more segregated.
Doctor Carol Weissert, director of the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University, says blacks and Hispanics are clustered in schools with few white or Asian students and there aren't many minorities in the white schools.
“Student enrollment trends in Florida over the past decades show growing racial isolation for Hispanic and black students on some measures, with signs of continuous segregation on others,” the study said.
Some 32 percent of Hispanic students and 35 percent of black students in Florida attend “intensely segregated” schools, defined as having a nonwhite student body of 90 percent or greater, according to the study.
Weissert says re-segregation is also about poverty.
Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in schools where most of the students come from low-income families and have fewer resources.