COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. resigned on Monday after disclosing “an inappropriate relationship” with a woman seeking public resources for her private business.

Carter, 66, said in a statement that he had resigned voluntarily after informing the university’s board of trustees of his error. He did not elaborate on the nature of the relationship and said he was leaving with his wife, Lynda.

“For personal reasons, I have made the difficult decision to resign from my role as president of The Ohio State University,” he said. “I disclosed to the board of trustees that I made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership.”

Ohio State is the nation’s sixth-largest university, with more than 60,000 students, over 600,000 living alumni and a highly ranked football team and medical center. Carter oversaw a fiscal year 2026 budget totaling $11.5 billion in revenues and $10.9 billion in expenditures.

The university brought Carter on board in 2023 from the University of Nebraska system. He is also a former superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy and holds the national record for carrier-arrested landings with over 2,000 mishap-free touchdowns.

He filled a vacancy at Ohio State left by the mid-contract resignation of President Kristina Johnson, which went largely unexplained. The engineer and former undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Energy had been chancellor of New York’s public university system before she joined the Buckeyes as president in 2020.

The teacher messaged back: “Do what you think is better for you and your family.” And so she kept her daughter out of school for a week.

Since then, the kindergartner has missed another five days of school because her mother, who doesn’t have legal immigration status, worried getting her to and from campus might lead to an interaction with police and then detention. She has a two-year-old, too.

“I don’t want to be separated from my daughters… I don’t know what would become of me,” said Yessi, 28, who spoke in Spanish and asked to be identified only by her first name so as not to draw the attention of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Children from immigrant families across Central Florida are now in the same spot as Yessi’s daughter, often missing school because their parents feel home is a safer option given the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Other students have simply left, as families have been detained, deported or decided to move away.

Statewide, school enrollment is expected to be down by about 46,000 students this year. State demographers, in a January report, blamed the “chilling effects” of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies as a leading cause for the plunge.

There are no specific estimates for how many immigrant students have left Florida’s public schools, and the wider availability of state-paid vouchers to cover private school tuition and lower birth rates also have contributed to the overall enrollment decline.  But the number of students statewide taking English for Speakers of Other Languages classes has dropped by more than 17,000 this year, according to the report by Florida’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, in perhaps a more precise measure of immigrant exits.

In Orange County, school district officials acknowledged the loss of immigrant students has contributed to a steep enrollment decline and plans to shutter seven schools this summer. As an example, they said about 1,200 Venezuelan youngsters have left their public schools this academic year.

Missing weeks of school

For immigrant children who remain enrolled, the risk of academic failure is increasing as absences pile up, undermining the dream of an American education that was often a key reason their parents came to the United States.

One mother from Venezuela, who spoke in Spanish and asked that her name not be used, said her daughter has missed about two weeks of school so far this year because the family feared ICE enforcement was taking place near the campus of Renaissance Charter School at Goldenrod in east Orange.

The daughter, an eighth grader at the school who is usually a straight-A student, received one D on her last report card.

“All you have to do is study and get good grades to get scholarships,” the mother recalled telling her daughter. “And she told me ‘For what, Mom? If these people want us out.’”

The mother, who is seeking asylum in the U.S., said she has altered her family’s daily routines to limit the risk of encountering immigration agents — even paying another parent who is a citizen $100 a week to drive her daughter to and from school.

She also pulled her daughter out of extracurriculars, such as sports and music rehearsals, because getting her home would mean driving, and the accompanying risk of being stopped by law enforcement and detained.

“How do the kids feel? Frustrated, terrorized,” the mother said.

Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst and consultant with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said immigrants’ fears related to school make sense based on the Trump administration’s and Florida’s actions.

In Florida, all law enforcement agencies in the state are now required to enforce federal immigration laws, and it’s made driving even more risky for immigrants without legal status, some of whom cannot get licenses in Florida and many states.

The Trump administration revoked a Biden-era policy prohibiting immigration enforcement operations in protected areas, including school campuses, making some immigrants fearful they could be detained when they drop off or pick up their children.

ICE’s actions in Chicago and Minnesota were broadcast widely, and those “aggressive enforcement practices” likely tie into student absences and departures, Kennedy said.

“The rhetoric speaks for itself … The climate speaks for itself. It’s causing obvious fear,” he added.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida’s public schools have struggled with high student absenteeism and sought ways to encourage youngsters to make school a priority again, knowing lots of absences correlate with poor grades and lower standardized test scores.

Now, immigration enforcement is working against those efforts.

Even if students are in class, their families’ fear can still impact their studies, as some struggle to focus on school work when they don’t know for certain if their parents will be there when they get home.

“This is disruptive to the school environment,” said Sophia Rodriguez, a professor of educational policy and sociology at New York University, who is conducting a national study on teachers’ perspective of the immigration crackdown. “I’ve had educators tell me that kids are terrified. They’re coming to school crying.”

As engagement in school decreases, educational access and social mobility will be impacted, too, Rodriguez said.

Another Venezuelan mother awaiting a decision on her asylum case spoke about her nine-year-old daughter’s school struggles after a recent appointment at an ICE office in Orlando.

The woman, who also spoke in Spanish and asked not to be named, said it is hard for her child to focus in class. She thinks immigration worries led to her daughter’s poor performance on FAST, the state’s standardized exam.

But the woman, who came to the U.S. in 2021, said school is now less important than avoiding detention. She places a tracker in her daughter’s shoe every day and checks social media to see if there’s police near her home or the school.

“If I were to have any suspicions about her being in danger because of raids by the school, she’s not going anymore,” she said.

‘Core part of the American dream’

Maria Salamanca, the vice chair of the Orange County School Board, understands why some immigrant parents are hesitant to send their children to school.

In 1999, when she was in first grade, Salamanca came to the U.S. with her family from Colombia. Throughout her school years, her parents warned her never to talk about their immigration status to anyone.

“I did not feel like any future was guaranteed for me from when I came in 1999 all the way till I became a citizen. I never took any days for granted,” she said.

But Salamanca credits OCPS teachers with guiding her to academic success after she arrived in Orlando as a 7-year-old who knew no English. She landed at the University of California, Berkeley, she has said, because of her public education.

And she is saddened that one of the schools she attended — McCoy Elementary School — is among the seven slated to be closed because enrollment has plummeted.

Her message to other immigrant families is to remember that education is a key reason many came to this country. Immigrant families need to “balance their concerns with the reasons why they’re here,” Salamanca said.

“If you take one core part of that American dream away, which is education, then that’s not what you came here for,” she said.

Yessi, the mother who came from Honduras in 2021, said her daughter’s education is important but not the family’s top concern now.

And if the girls’ father, also a Honduran national, were to be detained, Yessi said she’ll go back to Honduras with her children, even though the younger one is a U.S. citizen, with her oldest leaving another empty spot in public school.

Her partner is the sole breadwinner for the family as he has a work permit, and without him, Yessi said, the family’s dreams would be “on hold.” For now, their lives are dictated by their worries.

All police officers make Yessi anxious, even the one at her daughter’s school, though she knows school resource officers are stationed there to keep children safe. “When I see a cop I get nervous but I just pretend I didn’t see them,” she said.

If she doesn’t send her daughter to school, Yessi makes up excuses. “I tell her that there’s no school or that we have an emergency or that I feel sick, things like that. She’s barely five and she won’t understand,” she said.

Her daughter is usually so excited to go back that she spends the whole day talking to her friends during class, Yessi said. The kindergartner dreams of becoming a police officer, a doctor or maybe a firefighter.

“When I see that my daughter has dreams like that, I feel like I want to fix it but I don’t know what to do,” Yessi said. “Even though I’m scared, sometimes I wanna leave, but sometimes I want to keep fighting,” she added.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s campaign to end “wokeness” in the military is reshaping its relationship with U.S. higher education, breaking off longstanding ties with prestigious universities that have trained generals and admirals while building new bonds with Christian schools and public universities.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forged ahead last week with his realignment, expelling more than a dozen elite colleges from a military fellowship that serves as a pipeline to the upper ranks of leadership. It’s a small but symbolic fracture that has left college leaders bracing for additional cuts that could pull service members from their classrooms.

Hegseth made sweeping statements about canceling all military attendance at schools he denounces as anti-American, yet his cuts have been more targeted. So far he has homed in on graduate degrees and certificates while preserving a much broader program that helps cover tuition for roughly 200,000 active-duty or reserve service members.

That program, known as Tuition Assistance, allows service members to get financial help pursuing studies at nearly any U.S. college. The funding flows to hundreds of campuses, including the highly selective ones Hegseth says have “gorged themselves” on taxpayer money. Yet an Associated Press analysis finds that schools beyond the Ivy League are far more likely to benefit from the Pentagon aid, including big online universities and some for-profit colleges that have been dogged by fraud accusations.

About 350 members of the military used Tuition Assistance to attend Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University and the other schools targeted by Hegseth’s cuts, according to the AP analysis of 2024 data. By contrast, more than 50,000 studied at the American Public University System, a for-profit education company that offers online degrees and has a graduation rate of just 22%.

More than a third of students using the benefit attended for-profit colleges, surpassing the number who attended any type of private, nonprofit college. Public universities take in the most military students under the program, with about 4 in 10 choosing those campuses. The benefit pays out a maximum of $4,500 a year.

Hegseth takes aim at a prestigious military fellowship

That the Pentagon is taking any stance on where service members should enroll is a radical shift from the past and an “incredible overreach,” said Lindsey Tepe, who advises on military learning at the American Council on Education, a group that represents college presidents.

“This is clearly the start of a broader effort to reshape military education, and I do think that this is a bad precedent to set,” Tepe said.

The shake-up has aroused concern about further cuts, with some wondering whether it poses a risk to Tuition Assistance, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps or other military programs that pay for schooling in fields like law, medicine and engineering.

Hegseth made no mention of those programs in a memo detailing his cuts last week. Instead, he targeted the Senior Service College Fellowship, a prestigious program that lets military members pursue advanced studies at universities, think tanks and federal agencies. It’s often granted to mid-career personnel on their way to leadership or highly specialized roles in the military.

The program is small, with fewer than 80 students across the 15 universities being carved out this fall, according to the Pentagon memo. Along with several Ivy League campuses, the Pentagon said it will ban schools including Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The ranks of graduates from those campuses includes a host of current and retired commanders. James McConville, a retired Army general who led the army from 2019 to 2023, did a fellowship at Harvard, according to his military biography. Lt. Gen. William Graham Jr., current chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, did one at MIT.

Military will lose out on Ivy League expertise, some say

By carving out those campuses, some believe the Trump administration is sacrificing technical expertise in the name of ideology. Those campuses tend to employ top experts in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and quantum computing, said William Hubbard, a vice president at Veterans Education Success, a bipartisan nonprofit.

“I’m not sure our enemies would be too upset about this,” said Hubbard, a Marine Corps veteran. “If I were waking up in Beijing and heard this news, I would be pleased.”

Harvard, a favorite target of President Donald Trump, is being hit with deeper sanctions. The Pentagon said it’s barring all graduate-level professional military education at Harvard, along with fellowships and certificates.

In response, Harvard’s school of government this week said it’s allowing active-duty service members to defer their admission for up to four years. It also arranged to get them “expedited consideration” at other colleges, including the University of Chicago and Tufts University.

Hegseth himself earned a master’s degree from Harvard but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment.

Hegseth wants to reroute leaders to Liberty, Hillsdale and others

In his memo last week, Hegseth blasted elite colleges that he says have become “factories of anti-American resentment” and undermine military values. He suggested 15 colleges to replace those being cut from the fellowship. They were chosen for promoting intellectual freedom and having “minimal public expressions in opposition of the Department,” the memo said.

At the top of the list is Liberty University, a Christian school that enrolls 16,000 students at its Virginia campus and another 120,000 in online programs. It already has a strong military presence, enrolling more than 7,000 students using Tuition Assistance, according to the AP analysis. A series of scandals have shaken the campus in recent years, leading to the 2020 departure of its longtime president, Jerry Falwell Jr.

A statement from Liberty said it has not yet coordinated with the Pentagon regarding a potential partnership, but it’s grateful for Hegseth’s leadership. “We love this country and fully support the men and women in uniform who devote their lives in service to our nation,” the statement said.

Also on the list is Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school that’s separately partnering with the White House on a campaign celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary. In a statement, Hillsdale President Larry Arnn said too many other colleges have abandoned the nation’s founding principles.

“If officers want serious education in the principles they swear to defend, Hillsdale is exactly where they should be,” Arnn said.

The list of replacements includes several flagship state universities, including top-tier research institutions like the University of Michigan, which last year rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and the University of North Carolina. Hegseth said routing the fellowship elsewhere will ensure “a more rigorous and relevant education to better prepare them for the complexities of modern warfare.”

Forster reported from New York.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Internal emails reviewed by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times show that Uthmeier began teaching at UF’s Levin College of Law more than a month before his first course was formally approved, submitted incomplete syllabi and never received the full faculty sign-off required under law school protocols.

The correspondence also captures mounting frustration from the professor tasked with overseeing the attorney general’s course review, who warned the dean he was willing to “bend the rules” — but not ignore them altogether.

The apparent corner-cutting illustrates how top brass at Florida’s flagship law school relaxed longstanding safeguards to fast-track the state’s top legal official into its classrooms — even as Republican leaders in Tallahassee demand greater transparency and oversight of university instruction.

Under law school rules, new adjuncts teaching more than one course per academic year must receive approval from the full faculty. In Uthmeier’s case, that never happened.

The attorney general also bypassed a policy requiring proposed courses to include detailed syllabi listing weekly topics, assigned readings and grading standards before they can be reviewed by the law school’s curriculum committee. That paperwork never fully materialized.

The issues are surfacing amid heightened political scrutiny of what is taught on Florida campuses. A new state law requires all 40 public colleges and universities to publicly post detailed syllabi and instructional materials at least 45 days before the first day of class.

Yet emails show Uthmeier was already five weeks into teaching his inaugural course, “Executive Power,” when he formally submitted his proposal to the faculty-run curriculum committee.

The attorney general’s slapdash onboarding adds mounting scrutiny over his UF position. Some law school faculty have expressed frustrations that they only learned of the attorney general’s compensation after a Herald/Times investigation revealed he was earning $100,000 annually for two courses and a part-time advisory role.

When pressed about Uthmeier’s lack of faculty approval at a recent closed-doors meeting, the law school’s longtime interim dean, Merritt McAlister, said information about Uthmeier’s employment may not have been forwarded to the full faculty body.

As for the attorney general’s curricular reviews, the dean took responsibility for “irregularities” with the process but did not detail the mishaps.

“That was a screw-up on our part,” she told her colleagues.

A UF spokesperson, Steve Orlando, said in a statement that the university and the law school “followed all appropriate processes and procedures, as well as state law” when it hired Uthmeier.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to questions about Uthmeier’s hiring or course reviews. The seven faculty members and administrators who approved his fall course declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries by the Herald/Times.

The internal emails reviewed by the Herald/Times show Uthmeier’s proposal was filed well after fall classes were underway — and was incomplete.

The attorney general’s syllabus, as the curriculum committee’s chair described it at the time, was “quite sparse.” It lacked a full reading list, detailed grading criteria and week-by-week lesson descriptions — all required under faculty policy. Instead, Uthmeier would upload reading assignments online on a weekly basis.

The committee chair, Mark Fenster, repeatedly pressed McAlister and one of her lieutenants for the missing materials. In one missive, he noted the political sensitivity of the moment.

This is the attorney general we’re talking about, Fenster reminded the law school’s chief academic officer, and Tallahassee power brokers “have made an enormous deal about syllabi in the past few years.”

By late September, Fenster was pressing McAlister for Uthmeier’s class readings. “I hate being put in the position of crusty old bureaucrat,” he wrote to the dean. “I’m willing to bend the rules by allowing for a partial submission but not to ignore them entirely.”

As the fall semester progressed, Fenster grew visibly frustrated with the pace and rigor of the review. In early October, he was bristling to McAlister that he was “not entirely comfortable” with how the process was playing out.

Approving a course more than halfway through the term seemed “highly irregular,” Fenster told the dean, and it was “difficult to make sense of the logic and planning behind” Uthmeier’s curriculum. He had assumed the review would be “simple and almost ministerial” and completed in August.

Still, he acknowledged the political reality.

“I understand,” he wrote, “that the actual course content is less significant than the teacher’s identity.”

McAlister ended up delivering the partial list of Uthmeier’s class readings to the curriculum committee on Oct. 1. When the committee considered the attorney general’s course proposal that evening over email, Fenster acknowledged that some members disclosed their “discomfort” with the process to him. He offered to delay a vote if there was “sufficient unease.”

At least three curriculum committee members voiced concerns about Uthmeier’s drip-feed approach to assigning class readings and a lack of clear grading standards. But the committee ultimately approved the attorney general’s proposal as a provisional course.

In the end, Fenster came to regret that decision.

When it came time for the curriculum to evaluate Uthmeier’s spring course, “Separation of Powers and Federalism,” McAlister informed Fenster that it would not be subject to review protocols. After discussing the matter with the attorney general, the dean said the class would be registered as a seminar — which “do not require the fulsome Curriculum Committee process.”

Like his fall course, the seminar’s syllabus does not include Uthmeier’s reading assignments. Per the document, the attorney general is now lecturing students about, among other subjects, “real-life examples of separation of powers and federalism at work.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — In their mostly white school district, Black students routinely heard racial slurs. White classmates hurled insults like “slave,” “monkey” or worse. It often went unpunished.

Parents made those claims in a 2024 complaint asking the U.S. Education Department to investigate racial bullying at the Pennridge School District in Pennsylvania. They thought their complaint had the power to make things better. Instead, it became one of thousands sitting in a federal office with little hope of gaining attention after layoffs by the Trump administration.

Families say they’ve had nowhere else to turn.

“There was an expectation that something was going to happen,” said Adrienne King, who has two daughters in the district and is president of the NAACP Bucks County chapter. When nothing did, “it’s a very hollow, empty feeling.”

One of the Education Department’s biggest jobs is to police discrimination in America’s schools. But amid mass firings and shifting priorities, that role has waned. In its place, there’s an emerging push for states to step up.

In Pennsylvania, a lawmaker is proposing a new state agency that would investigate schools and uphold students’ civil rights — traditionally the role of the federal government. At the same time, advocates there and in other Democrat-led states are pressing existing state agencies to intervene when students face discrimination based on race, disability or sex.

The idea carries risk. Pushing the work to states could create a patchwork of systems with uneven protections. Some worry it will embolden the Trump administration to retreat further on civil rights.

Lawmakers propose more muscular state agencies

Pennsylvania Sen. Lindsey Williams offered a blunt message last fall when she proposed a new state civil rights office to be modeled after its federal counterpart. “If the federal government won’t stand up for our most vulnerable students, I will,” said Williams, a Democrat.

Her bill, to be introduced this spring, faces long odds in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate. Yet even if it fails there, Williams believes it has potential to become a national model. She’s already heard interest from lawmakers in other states, and similar proposals have been put forward in Maryland and Illinois.

More immediately, advocates in Pennsylvania are calling for heavier investment in an existing but often overlooked agency. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission already has the power to investigate schools and enforce students’ rights, but it’s rarely used for that end. It’s better known for handling employment disputes, with just 5% of its recent cases involving education.

Kristina Moon, a lawyer at the Education Law Center in Pennsylvania, has started encouraging families to take discrimination complaints to the commission instead of the federal government. She sees it as the next best option for families left in limbo amid federal turmoil.

“It’s incredibly important for students and families to be aware of any other option available to them,” said Moon, who represents families in the Pennridge complaint.

The commission is welcoming complaints that have stalled at the federal level. Yet officials are also realistic about their limitations. The agency has about 100 staff — down from more than 200 in the past — and some question its ability to handle a sharp increase in complaints.

The federal Education Department had more than 300 open investigations in Pennsylvania as of January 2025, according to the most recent federal data. Each is a possible candidate to be shifted to the state.

“It would be tough, I’ll be totally honest,” said Desireé Chang, the commission’s education director. “A stark influx would definitely put some weight on our agency. But we would do it because that is what we are charged with doing.”

Civil rights work has slowed under the Trump administration

Before President Donald Trump took office last year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was already struggling under a heavy caseload. Work has slowed further after sweeping layoffs, which closed entire offices in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and elsewhere. Some remaining staff say time-consuming investigations have become rare as they focus on the quickest complaints.

At the same time, Trump officials have used the office to go after schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes, arguing that it discriminates against girls and women.

Trump officials blame the previous administration for leaving a backlog of complaints. Trump officials have brought back some fired employees to help clear cases.

The fallout is being felt across the country. In Maryland, a recently proposed bill would give the state’s Commission on Civil Rights new power to investigate discrimination in schools. The office has long handled discrimination cases in areas like housing and employment, but students don’t have a comparable option to file complaints.

At a hearing last week, officials at the commission supported the bill and said they can no longer rely on the federal government to defend students’ rights.

“Offices have been closed, people have been fired, cases are piling up or not even moving — that’s why we sought to step in that gap and provide Maryland students an option,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel for the commission.

In Massachusetts, advocates are turning attention to an existing office in the state’s education department. The Problem Resolution System investigates complaints from families who say their schools violated state or federal law, but advocates say it’s unclear what kinds of cases the office takes on and why. A coalition of advocates recently asked the office for clarity.

Some legal aid groups are also filling in gaps. The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing a Louisiana school district on behalf of a 10-year-old boy with autism. The suit says the St. Tammany Parish School District illegally cut the boy’s classroom time to just two hours a day starting in 2024, down from a full day. The nonprofit said it’s the kind of case that would have been handled by the federal government in the past.

One of the U.S. Education Department’s most powerful tools is the ability to pull federal funding from schools that violate civil rights laws. Facing that threat, schools usually have agreed to make changes when pressed by the agency.

Proposals at the state level have varying enforcement powers. Some would allow states to mediate disputes between families and schools, and to issue legal orders. By contrast, a newly created Office of Civil Rights in California primarily aims to provide anti-discrimination guidance and training to local schools.

In Pennridge, families are weighing their next steps. King said she has little hope in the federal complaint, and the bullying hasn’t stopped. Her daughters still hear racial slurs at school, and students make insensitive comments about their hair. She wonders how it will all shape her daughters’ lives.

“I feel as though my girls have normalized a lot of this, but for the sake of survival — middle school is hard,” she said. “You just want to be like everybody else.”

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition has introduced an add-on VR activity to its walk-through display with relics and reproductions tied to the ship that famously sank in 1912.

At the I-Drive attraction, visitors wear a headset to look up, down and around at a re-creation of what passengers would have seen while on board. That can include newfangled-for-the-times tile flooring or a passing iceberg.

“It’s like a 360 view, so everywhere you look, you can see something,” says Ross Mumford, general manager of Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. “You get to really see what we don’t have any film for because this is such a great, accurate depiction of the ship.”

The 12-minute presentation includes glimpses at the gangway doors, first-class lounge, Turkish baths, grand staircase and below deck into the third-class common area. Viewers also go up into the crow’s nest – the lookouts’ point of view – and into the lifeboats.

It’s not just about the ship’s look and architecture. VR users see passengers and crew on board, too.

“One of the hardest things to re-create digitally, sometimes, is people,” says Matthew DeWinkeleer, manager and historian with Vintage Digital Revival, which is producing  “Titanic: Honor and Glory,” a videogame project.

“We have some background people in period dress, appropriate for Titanic, appropriate for the Edwardian age, walking around on deck, sitting playing, playing cards in the smoking room. … We have some people washing the deck, sailors washing the deck that they would do every day.”

“We even have a couple of rats in third class,” DeWinkeleer says.

Theme park: Peppa Pig’s brother outfitted with hearing aid

RMS Titanic Inc. and E/M Group, which operate the Orlando attraction, hired the makers of “Titanic: Honor and Glory” to create the new in-house experience.

The VR experience features a narrator as a guide with information that enhances the real-life walk-through experience.

“It points out some different items that are connected to artifacts that we’ve recovered. So you can see them in context,” Mumford says.

The tools for virtual-reality re-creation already exist, so the difficult part is getting the Titanic details right, DeWinkeleer says.

“We were relying on only primary source material from 1912 from the construction of Titanic, photographs,” he says. “The hardest part is that Titanic, although she’s now one of the world’s most famous ships, she was not well-documented since it was her first voyage. … And then she’s taken all the information down with her.”

Plan B includes studying other ships built in the same yard and wreckage analysis. That includes information from Olympic, the nearly identical sister ship that was built side-by-side with Titanic at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

“We have to put the pieces together to rebuild our Titanic,” DeWinkeleer says.

Artifacts from the ship have helped clarify elements, including color issues, Mumford says. The stained glass of the smoking room had had a red hue based on the Olympic, but was changed to yellow based on the Titanic artifacts.

The VR film tries to emulate the lighting of 1912, too, DeWinkeleer says.

“Back then, light bulbs were a lot warmer in color, but also dimmer at the same time,” he says. “So if you’re exploring inside the ship at nighttime, it’s going to be quite dim.”

Visitors interested in the VR option generally participate before the walk-through portion. A room with seating off the lobby is dedicated to the virtual reality experience. Several areas of the ship are explored on the guided tour.

Former Imagineer Joe Rohde announces book about creativity, cooperation

The VR segment is $8 atop general admission fees ($5 if booked online in advance). General admission is $37.36 ($30.94 for ages 4-12). There is a discounted rate of $33.08 for Florida residents, students, members of the military and visitors age 65 and older.

The longtime I-Drive attraction includes full-scale room recreations of the ship, and galleries feature the first-class area, a cafe and the grand staircase. It holds almost 200 artifacts that were recovered from the wreck site. The finale includes a 2-ton section of the ship’s hull dubbed “The Little Piece.”

For tickets or more information, go to RMSTitanicInc.com.

But while the bill (HB 1279) was approved 84-25 in the Republican-controlled chamber, it hasn’t made any traction in the Senate with less than two weeks remaining in the schedule for the regular session.

Bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, R-Lakeland, said the measure is “Florida first, plain and simple,” and ensures “that more of our Florida’s best and brightest have the opportunity to start right here at home.”

“Families are asking why some of our highest achieving students, students at the very top of their graduating classes, are struggling to gain admission to the very universities their tax dollars support,” Kincart Jonsson added.

The proposal requires preeminent state universities to reserve 95 percent of new fall undergraduate enrollments to students from Florida, an increase to the current 90 percent requirement for all universities.

The University of Florida, Florida State University, University of South Florida, and Florida International University are designated as preeminent state research universities.  The University of Central Florida is expected to be certified by the Board of Governors as a preeminent state research university later this year.

Democrats argued the proposal will lower revenue as many out-of-state students pay higher tuition rates than Florida students, while also making the system less attractive to the brightest students.

Rep. Gallop Franklin, D-Tallahassee, agreed Florida students should be given priority admissions, but only when they offer exactly the same profile as out-of-state students.

“When you look at states like Massachusetts, you know you have Harvard and (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) all in that area. The reason why the economy is thriving and growing from venture capital companies, biotechnology companies, because it is a brain environment,” Franklin said. “So, what we don’t want to do here in Florida is not have the best and brightest students from across the entire globe having access to go to school here in Florida.”

Kincart Jonsson said the loss of out-of-state fees to preeminent universities is projected at about 0.2 percent of the $17 billion operating budget for those schools. That would be about $34 million a year.

Under the bill, schools that fail to maintain the 95 percent average starting in 2030 would be ineligible for preeminent funding.

The bill also restricts non-U.S. citizen enrollment to no more than 5 percent from any one country at each state university.

Last year, the trustees for the University of Florida and Florida State University were quick to increase costs for out-of-state students by 10 percent after the state university system’s Board of Governors agreed to allow its schools to increase student fees on those who aren’t from Florida.

The Senate version of the bill (SB 1296) was amended on Monday by a Republican lawmaker who said he tried to appease some of the concerns of union leaders and Democrats. It narrowly won approval at its last committee stop, advancing by a 10 to 8 vote with two Republicans voting against it.

The similar House version (HB 995) remains unchanged, however, and has the backing of a group that says on its website “unions are a root cause of every growing national dysfunction in America.”

Both bills would make it harder for teachers unions and faculty unions at public schools and colleges to earn required recertification from the state in part by requiring more votes from teachers as part of the process.

Meera Sitharam, the president of the United Faculty of Florida at the University of Florida, said the bills felt “retaliatory” against teachers, who have largely opposed Republican-led education laws, and could spell doom for their unions.

“It’s really getting close to being fatal,” she said.

The bill exempts police and firefighter unions, whose leaders tend to support Republicans.

Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, the sponsor of the Senate version, said requiring more votes for a union to be recertified keeps unions more accountable, arguing most don’t really have the support of their school system’s teachers.

“These unions are all over the state of Florida, these collective bargaining groups, where the class that they represent doesn’t want to be a member of that class. They don’t. They’re not voting. They don’t care,” Martin said.

Monday, about 100 union workers attended a Senate committee meeting to speak against the measure and ask legislators to change course.

John O’Berski, a teacher and Republican voter from Highlands County, said the bill felt like a “slap in the face” to conservative values.

“It is a solution to a problem that does not exist,” said Mary Rivera, a Marion County teacher who also described herself as a Republican.

Under initial versions of both bills, unions would need to garner 50% plus one vote of the entire bargaining unit — all public school teachers in a district, for example, even if they are not union members — to earn recertification. Previously, teachers unions only needed a majority of those who voted, a mark most far exceeded.

But typically, only about 30% of the entire bargaining unit turns out to vote, far below the threshold the state could set with the new legislation.

“The legislature’s job is to help make life better for people in the state of Florida. Why would they spend so much time doing something that’s going to make it harder for workers? Workers are the engine of the state. Workers are the engine of the economy,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the statewide teacher’s union.

Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, successfully amended the bill Monday so that 60% of a bargaining unit would have to vote in favor with at least a 25% turnout.

“This isn’t a partisan issue. It really isn’t. As someone who was a part of the union during my playing days … I understood the benefits that came with having representation,” said Simon, a former NFL player.

Spar said the amendment was a “step in the right direction” but that the bill still “makes it harder for Florida’s workers to fight for a better life.”

The amended bill moved forward largely along party lines, with Republican Sens. Alexis Calatayud and Ana Maria Rodriguez joining Democrats in opposition.

The House version has the tougher voting requirements.

Rusty Brown, the director of special projects at the Freedom Foundation in Washington, an anti-union group, urged the Senate to approve the bill.

After Brown spoke, Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, asked if the Freedom Foundation had written the bill, and Brown said his group “consulted” with Martin on the bill’s language.

“We’re gonna call this bill what it is. This bill is the union’s nail in the coffin,” Jones said.

Both bills are now ready for floor votes, where lawmakers could decide which version to pass and send onto Gov. Ron DeSantis for approval.

Should the bill pass and get signed into law, Spar said the union will look into potential legal challenges.

In his view, the bill raises questions about Constitutional violations, such as the right to collectively bargain and the right to freedom of association. According to the Senate’s staff analysis, the bill could face several legal challenges, but could survive if the law serves a “compelling state interest in the least intrusive means possible.”

Angela Barron, a mother of three who has worked as a bus driver for the Marion County school district for nearly 30 years, asked senators to “not turn your back” on public school workers.

“I work hard every day for the Marion school district, and I believe my legislators should work hard for me too. I believe you when you say that you want to support public school workers like me, but this bill is not the way to do it,” she said.

In 2023, the Legislature passed, and DeSantis signed, a bill that ended payroll deductions for school union dues and required bigger membership numbers for unions to remain active, both changes that local unions said made it tougher for them.

The organization that has served lunch on the Plaza of the Americas for more than half a century announced the suspension on its Instagram page on Monday.

The Alligator confirmed with the university that the suspension will remain in effect until further notice, and the reason behind the suspension was that a Krishna box truck had struck a female student in a crosswalk on Feb. 23.

The Alligator reported that she was taken to an area hospital and suffered multiple broken bones.

Read more at alligator.org.

Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida said its school-based pantries have handed out 30% more meals in the last six months than they did a year earlier. A food pantry in Lake County recently put out a “critical shortage” notice, urging residents to donate canned goods and other items because so many more people were showing up needing food.

The organizations attribute the spike in demand to rising costs, saying food is usually the first budget item families try to squeeze when “non-negotiables” –– like rent, mortgage or insurance bills –– also cost more.

Roxanne Williams, an Orlando mother of five, relies on food stamps to help feed her family, but higher grocery prices have made shopping more of a challenge.

“A pack of meat that was $5 is now about $8,” Williams said. “It’s very stressful because now you’re digging into your light money to feed your kids. You’re digging into your gas money. You’re going to pantries and standing in long lines.”

Williams, whose children are ages two to 12, said she is constantly calculating every dollar and every cent to see what’s affordable. She was shopping recently at United Against Poverty’s grocery center, where qualifying members can get food at a discount. She also goes to food banks.

“You have to cut everything. You have to cut going out. You have to cut trying to have fun with your kids,” she said.

Food prices rose by more than 2% in 2024 and nearly 3% in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They rose even more sharply from 2020 to 2023 and are expected to be up another 3% this year.

Second Harvest tries to alleviate some parents’ grocery-price stress by offering food pantries at schools, and more and more parents are accepting the free offerings

The food bank has distributed over 478,000 meals at 90 school campuses from August until January –– a 30% increase from the prior year. It recently opened three new pantries  –– at Chestnut Elementary School, Sunset Elementary School and Tohopekaliga High School –– in Osceola County with the help of a $75,000 donation from the Poinsette Foundation.

There are 58 schools in Central Florida on a waitlist to open similar pantries.

“It’s one less thing that parents have to worry about and one less stop that they have to make if they were maybe going to go to one of our other feeding partners,” said Briana Rebello, the school partnerships manager at Second Harvest.

It certainly feels that way for Diamond Vega, whose nine-year-old son attends Chestnut Elementary. Vega and her son, Julian, come in to shop for the basics like rice and beans, though the fourth grader will also try to sneak in some of the pantry’s sweeter offerings like animal crackers.

Though the items in the pantries may vary by school, Chestnut offers pasta, rice, beans, pancake mix, carrots, and canned ravioli. It also includes some snacks like protein bars, yogurt, cereal, and fruit snacks.

It’s made all the difference for Vega, who said health issues keep her from working and affording the food her family needs.

“I can have a dinner every day at my house with the food pantry, and it’s something that helped me a lot,” she said.

Second Harvest serves as a regional supplier for food banks across Central Florida.

Some smaller pantries say they are now struggling to keep food on their shelves. Higher grocery prices push more people to seek free food –  but also make it harder for others to afford extra items to donate.

At Lake Cares, a food pantry in Mount Dora, about 500 more families a month are now showing up for help, said Kelsey Gonzalez, the group’s executive director.

“We’re getting donations, and it’s going right off the shelves and back out,” she said.

Coming off the high of holiday donations, Gonzalez said the pantry’s shelves are looking “bare.”

The Mount Dora Area Chamber of Commerce put out a plea on Monday urging residents to donate food, such as rice, cereals, pasta, canned proteins and non-perishable items.

The food pantry gives out around 100,000 pounds of food every month. Gonzalez said many of the families seeking assistance are working but not able to afford all the basics.

“They’re really struggling with having to make the tough decision of ‘Do I pay my rent? Do I keep the roof over my head for my family? Or do I put meals on the table?’” she said.

Michael Cuglietta of the Sentinel staff contributed to this story.