Home secretary says her department is still not functioning properly
Good morning. The Home Office is under fire from government critics almost constantly at the moment, but this morning it is publicising what, by the department’s standards, counts as rare good news; it says arrests for illegal working have reached their highest level since records began.
Here is the PA Media write-up.
Immigration enforcement visits have reached their highest level since comparable data began in 2011, data shows.
Some 21,858 visits were recorded in the 12 months to September this year, according to Home Office figures.
I’ve already said the Home Office is not yet fit for purpose …
The most recent report [written by Tory MP Nick Timothy] was very familiar to me in the sense of what I’ve seen just in the few weeks I’ve been in this job. It’s obviously a department that has a range of problems, whether that’s procuring contracts, whether that is holding on to senior staff, it obviously deals with emergency and crises issues on a regular basis, and I think over a long period of time has been found not to be able to rise to the scale of the challenge of those crises.
The Israeli military on Wednesday morning reaffirmed its commitment to the US-brokered cease-fire in Gaza, which had been jeopardized after a deadly Hamas attack on its soldiers the previous day prompted retaliatory strikes.
Public schools in Broward County are listening to what parents want in order to boost enrollment.
Alfonso Duran for BI
In Broward County, Florida, the start of this school year brought more than the usual first-day jitters — it came with a sense of urgency.
About 10,000 fewer students entered its public schools this year, a 4.7% drop from last year, putting 34 of its schools on a watchlist for risk of closure or consolidation.
Broward County isn’t alone; public schools nationwide are reckoning with shrinking student bodies as publicly funded vouchers for charter and private schools expand, birthrates fall, the cost of living rises, and immigration crackdowns deter some families. The Trump administration’s push to redirect funding away from public schools has intensified the pressure. Faced with dwindling enrollment, which is directly tied to their funding, public schools must either reinvent themselves or risk shuttering classrooms. Business Insider visited five schools in the county that are doing the former — and seem to be succeeding.
“It costs a lot of money for a family to live in South Florida,” Howard Hepburn, Broward County’s superintendent, told Business Insider, which is pushing some families to move to areas with lower costs of living. “So incrementally, the district has been trying to address it, but it’s compounded itself, and we have to make some tough decisions.”
Students at Millennium 6-12 Collegiate Academy use augmented reality in their lessons.
Alfonso Duran for BI
The county’s solution, a plan called “Redefining Our Schools,” is now entering its second phase. The plan includes shutting down or repurposing some schools and incorporating community feedback to stay competitive with private schools.
“We’re constantly in an iterative process of enhancing academic programs at schools,” Hepburn said.
The county is also offering school choice reassignments, allowing families to attend schools outside their residential boundaries. Everglades Elementary School has approved over 100 reassignments, said Eliot Tillinger, the school’s principal. Tillinger said the school’s debate team — which often isn’t offered until high school — is a likely draw.
“It could be people who know the reputation of the school, know the programs that we offer, and they just want to be part of what they believe is the best opportunity for their children’s education,” Tillinger said. “And that’s a phenomenal, phenomenal thing.”
Why families are leaving public schools and what might make them return
Andreina Gandica pulled her fifth-grade son from Coral Cove Academy of the Arts, a public school in Broward County, because she was worried about the switch to a larger public middle school in sixth grade. She sent her son to a K-12 charter school instead.
It turns out, she wasn’t the only parent worried about this. Stephanie Saban, Coral Cove’s principal, said that a high percentage of families used to leave the public school system after fifth grade because parents weren’t satisfied with the transition to middle school. She’s now overseeing Coral Cove’s transition into a K-8 school.
Stephanie Saban, Coral Cove’s principal, said the conversion to a K-8 school has boosted enrollment.
Alfonso Duran for BI
“We knew that we had something very special here, but we were not able to just draw the kids in based solely on that because of the competing charter schools,” Saban told Business Insider. “Many families in my community wanted the K-8 continuity.”
Teachers had to adapt, too. Some quit because they weren’t prepared to work with older students.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not,” Dina Becker, Coral Cove’s art teacher, told Business Insider, adding that she ended up being happy with the transition. “I’ve always said I’ve never wanted to teach middle school, but then to save our school, we had to do something.”
So far, the transition’s first year is going well: 513 students were enrolled in the academy as of the 10th day of the current academic year, compared to 443 at the same point last year.
And Gandica has since reenrolled her son at Coral Cove.
“We never left because of a negative experience; it was simply a preventive decision related to future enrollment,” Gandica said. “Once the new grade structure was announced, coming back felt like the most natural choice for us.”
Parents in Broward County said the unique offerings at their neighborhood schools drew them in.
Alfonso Duran for BI
At Apollo Middle School, Principal Louis Kushner is also battling competition from private schools. He described Apollo’s robotics program as the school’s “hub,” saying it helps attract families and boost enrollment. But it’s not enough to stop student attrition. He said a family recently asked him to write a recommendation for their child to attend a private school, and he plans to have a conversation with them to understand why.
He’s now working to strengthen the robotics program at the feeder high school to show parents that there is continuity for their kids after they leave Apollo.
“We have to get the parents to be in the building to see and feel what’s happening,” Kushner said.
Coral Cove and Apollo are examples of how public schools are trying to compete with charter and private schools. It’s an uphill battle. The Trump administration has moved to expand school vouchers, directing the education secretary to explore shifting federal funds to “K-12 educational choice initiatives” and prioritizing support for schools promoting “patriotic education” over “woke” ideology.
The administration’s immigration policies are also leading some families to leave the public school system, Hepburn said. Immigration has historically offset declining birth rates, “but with federal policies restricting immigration in the country, it’s likely that it will not be enough to sustain enrollment going forward,” said Tara Moon, a policy analyst at Georgetown University think-tank FutureEd.
“We’re almost at a reckoning point for the public education system since we’re seeing so many families choose to leave,” Moon said.
There are bright spots: Broward’s Apollo Middle School, Everglades Elementary School, and Millennium 6-12 Collegiate Academy have maintained steady enrollment or experienced growth over the past year. Broward’s population has also been growing — it’s up 13% since 2010 — and rose 0.79% in the past year. Some families say that the unique programs, like robotics and debate, drew them to the schools. Gastride Harrigan, the principal at Millennium, told Business Insider that parents are drawn to the school’s structure, which enables students to receive an associate degree alongside their high school diploma when they graduate.
Gastride Harrigan and Kay Thomas said Millennium’s STEAM program helps students shape their career plans.
Alfonso Duran for BI
“We noticed that 80% of our high school students were our middle school students, so that tells us we’re doing something right,” Harrigan said. “But the selling point for most parents is the free associate’s degree.”
Brian, a Millennium 9th-grade student, is part of the school’s STEAM program. He said the science and technology programs are helpful because he wants to pursue a career in pediatrics.
“It really correlates to what I want to do when I grow up,” Brian said.
Kay Thomas, the coordinator of the STEAM program, said it’s designed to give students experience in their fields of interest and help them discover less familiar careers.
“It’s providing also the hands-on experience and the exposure to the unknown, to not just sitting down and being instructed, but how can you really integrate this and have the kids engaged in what they’re doing and learning what other options are out there,” Thomas said.
A call to action for public schools
Public school student bodies are expected to continue shrinking.
Faidra Monachou, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Management, coauthored a report that estimates public school districts nationwide could lose up to 6.5 million students over the next quarter-century.
Overall, 49.5 million students were enrolled in public schools in the fall of 2023, compared to 4.7 million students enrolled in private schools in the fall of 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.
States dole out funding to schools based on their number of students, and those with already limited resources could be hit the hardest by further enrollment declines.
Northeast High School offers free industry certifications for its students.
Alfonso Duran for BI
Hepburn said that Broward County has lost over $300 million in public school funding over the past decade due to declining enrollment, including an $85 million budget deficit this year. While closing schools is difficult for the community, he said, “it costs a lot of money to operate under-enrolled schools, and we’re spending more resources on operating and maintaining the school than we are on educating the students.”
Public schools gaining enrollment aren’t immune from funding stressors, either. At Apollo Middle School, Kushner said the robotics program, which helps attract new families, is largely made possible by grants from the National Science Foundation. The Trump administration has canceled a range of NSF grants that it said did not comply with its priorities, and Kushner worries that the funding could end.
For Florida in particular, there’s an additional challenge that could strain its public school system: property tax cuts. Lawmakers are considering cutting property taxes — which account for nearly half the state’s public school budget — to help offset the strain of higher living costs. The Florida Policy Institute said in a September report that eliminating property taxes on primary residences could cost school districts $7.7 billion.
Sadaf Knight, CEO of the Florida Policy Institute, said the move would “leave local governments and school districts scrambling to balance their ledgers, whether it’s through cutting vital programs and services or by introducing or raising new fees to replace the lost revenue.”
Many schools are focusing on the factors they can control. Northeast High School champions a program that allows students to select a path in either art, technology, or aviation beginning in elementary school.
Principal Anthony Valachovic told Business Insider that the program was created to boost enrollment, with the added bonus of offering free industry certifications. He said he and his colleagues created the program after asking themselves, “What are colleges looking for and what can kids do hands-on?”
Northeast High School’s students can use flight simulators to gain credit for the aviation pathway.
Alfonso Duran for BI
Students in aviation can gain experience at nearby flight schools, and classrooms feature flight simulators that allow students to practice. Art students can showcase their work at a fair in Palm Beach, exposing them to the entrepreneurship element of the profession.
Christopher Blackman, a sophomore at Northeast High School, aspires to pursue a career in coding. He said he plans to earn college credits and an industry certification to further his experience in the field once he graduates. According to data from Broward County, 15 teachers at the high school offer industry certifications, and 457 students passed the certification exam in 2025.
Randolph Manchester, Blackman’s computer science teacher, said the certifications are “a big draw” for parents: “If they get certifications here with us, they might not have to pay for their children to get it elsewhere.”
Enrollment pressures aren’t going away. Hepburn said that public schools continue to be the first choice for many families, and districts must adapt to ensure that remains the case.
“Public education is not going anywhere,” Hepburn said. “I think we just need to evolve to address our current times. Just like every business has to evolve over the years, it’s now time for public education to evolve to really address the demands of today’s world.”
China confirmed that President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in South Korea on Thursday, setting up a widely anticipated encounter that traders and investors on both sides of the Pacific hope will ease months of trade tensions.
This past spring, venture capitalist Leslie Feinzaig wanted to understand what it’s like to build a startup as a woman today. So she ran a survey.
She asked about the challenges that female founders face, the strategies they use, and their overarching goals. What she didn’t ask was whether they were sexually harassed by investors.
They told her anyway.
In an open-ended question about fundraising, one founder described how, in San Francisco, “every single straight male investor I talked to propositioned me for sex.” Another person recalled the investor who asked her if she’d rather have $1 million or a man, and a third woman said she wears a fake wedding ring during investor meetings to ward off their advances.
The survey, an online form that remained open between February and March, received responses from 180 early-stage female founders in North America. Eight women detailed what they described as harassment, being hit on, or being demeaned by investors while seeking funding. Of those eight, three said they were propositioned for sex.
Meltem Ballan runs an AI infrastructure company seeking funding. She said a potential investor told her she wasn’t as beautiful as she looked in her LinkedIn picture and suggested she put on makeup.
Liz Moskowitz for BI
Feinzaig published some of the remarks in a report by the Female Founders Alliance, a data and insights initiative at Feinzaig’s venture fund, Graham & Walker. They described a cutthroat fundraising environment rife with unwanted advances.
One founder said she now only pursues male investors who invest specifically in her vertical. “I just don’t have the time or the heart to go into another meeting with high hopes,” she wrote in the survey, “only to find out that it was all just a long path to trying to hit on me.”
Feinzaig initially shared the survey link across newsletters, social media, and online forums where female founders gather. She then shared anonymized write-in comments that described alleged harassment with Business Insider. Two of the founders who responded agreed to speak with Business Insider on the record. Business Insider did not independently verify the identities of the other respondents.
“So many women are trying so hard to get businesses off the ground that are incredible, that could have really life-changing, world-changing potential,” founder Lisa Hillyard told Business Insider. Many are dealing with VCs who are “completely disrespecting them in every single part of the process.”
Feinzaig now wishes she’d asked directly about harassment in the survey. She says it didn’t occur to her at the time because she thought the industry had largely rooted out harassment.
“I felt like that was handled,” she said, “and this was not the experience of founders today.”
Lisa Hillyard, cofounder of MILO Human Care, said a potential investor told her if there was anything she wanted to keep between the two of them, he wouldn’t tell his wife. After her meeting, she thought, “Would a VC say that to me if I was a man?”
Marta Iwanek for BI
The stories echo ones the industry has heard before. It’s been eight years since engineer Susan Fowler went public with her story of harassment at Uber. In the months that followed, other female founders spoke openly about feeling preyed upon as they chased careers or capital.
Some named names. Two well-known investors accused of harassment stepped back from their firms. Policy shifted next. Microsoft, Google, Uber, and Facebook said they would no longer force employees to settle sexual harassment claims in private arbitration. In 2022, Congress went further, passing a law that bars forced arbitration in sexual assault and harassment cases.
On paper, the #MeToo reckoning had consequences.
Feinzaig’s survey suggests the old dynamics can surface when founders ask for money.
A power imbalance is baked in: The people who need the money are pitching the people who control the money. For women, who on average raise less money than their male peers, the gap widens. PitchBook reports that about 83% of decision-makers at venture firms with $50 million or more in assets under management are men.
Capital is tight, and investors are steering bigger checks to fewer startups. PitchBook data shows that startups with at least one female founder raised nearly $39 billion in 2024, up 27% year over year, even as their deal count fell 13% to 3,148 (about 475 fewer transactions).
Their share of all deals slipped to just above 25%, the lowest since 2018.
Lately, the vibe in tech has swung back toward chest-thumping bravado. Mark Zuckerberg is doing jiu-jitsu tournaments and telling corporate America it needs more “masculine energy.” Elon Musk can’t stop telling penis jokes. The era of the gawky genius is over; the new “tech bro” archetype is sculpted, media-trained, and married to both the office and the squat rack.
That climate, Feinzaig said, could be “creating some air cover” for bad behavior.
Hers isn’t the only survey that suggests female founders continue to be harassed. In 2023, the nonprofit Women Who Tech conducted an anonymous survey of over 930 tech workers, founders, and investors globally on their experiences in the industry. Half of the female founders who responded said they had been harassed; of those respondents, 50% said they were propositioned for sex, and 60% said they experienced unwanted physical contact.
Here’s the question Feinzaig’s survey raises: If eight women volunteered these accounts unprompted, how many others didn’t?
Ballan continues to fundraise in “one of the hardest environments” to raise funds. “There is obviously gender discrimination,” she said.
Liz Moskowitz for BI
Meltem Ballan is one of the founders who spoke up. Based in Austin, she runs the company Concrete Engine, which builds AI infrastructure.
She said that once, last year, she hung up a video call with a potential investor and cried after he told her she wasn’t as beautiful as she looked in her LinkedIn picture and suggested she put on makeup. The hurt was still fresh when, a few months later, she got a call in the middle of the night from an investor she’d just met at a fundraising event in New York.
Ballan said he asked if she wanted to discuss the “investment opportunity” in his hotel room. She thinks he was inebriated. She hasn’t talked to him since, and she’s continuing to fundraise in “one of the hardest environments,” to raise funds, she said.
Data corroborates the slog. PitchBook reports that startups with all-female founding teams captured just 1.9% of all funding and 6.5% of deals in 2024.
“There is obviously gender discrimination,” Ballan said.
Pitches often unfold in informal settings: lunches, Zooms, private offices, and trips. The setting can feel personal, even if the purpose is strictly professional. Expectations don’t always align.
“We’d like to keep it professional, because we are professional and qualified to run our businesses,” one female founder wrote in Feinzaig’s survey, adding, “It’s not a date.” She said that women can’t “show up in a hoodie and hair in a bun” and still be taken seriously.
Another described “tons of implicit bias” and innuendo, including “sex and dick references” worked into advice on problem-solving. Her new filter is simple: “If a fund has no women partners, I don’t bother pitching it,” she wrote.
Hillyard, who runs MILO Human Care, a “regenerative personal care” company, found herself in a similar situation while fundraising last year. After hitting a wall, Hillyard, who had recently moved from Germany to Canada, thought she had finally found a fit with a male investor who said his fund supports women-led companies.
Following an hourslong investor dinner at an upscale trattoria, he insisted on walking her home. Hillyard felt uneasy, but she said she felt she had to go along.
A few days later, over lunch at a Four Seasons, she said the investor crowed about how European female founders proposition him whenever he’s there. She recalled him saying that if there was ever anything she wanted to keep between the two of them, he wouldn’t tell his wife.
Lisa Hillyard has turned away from seeking VC funding. “So many women are trying so hard to get businesses off the ground that are incredible, that could have really life-changing, world-changing potential,” she said.
Marta Iwanek for BI
“Is that a normal thing for a VC to say to a founder?” she remembers thinking following the interaction. “Would a VC say that to me if I was a man?”
Hillyard and her cofounder ultimately decided not to move forward with his fund. When she called him to say his comments made her deeply uncomfortable, he blocked her on social media. Since then, they’ve turned away from the VC model to fundraise, instead taking money from a community of supporters and cutting an equity deal with a Toronto brand agency.
“I felt disrespected, I felt violated,” Hillyard said about the experience. “You structure a whole business around empowering women and giving them what nobody else wants to give them, and then you hit on them.”
