Suncoast Searchlight

Suncoast Searchlight partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

A Suncoast Searchlight analysis finds Sarasota County’s public and charter schools are nearly equally under capacity — operating at 82% and 84% utilization, respectively — challenging the premise of Florida’s new “Schools of Hope” law.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office has reaped hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars to fund the effort through reimbursements from the state’s Immigration Enforcement Board and tens of thousands for its work at Alligator Alcatraz.

How law enforcement struggles to rein in illegal “adult arcades,” told through the saga of Spin Fun Arcade.

As Mater Academy seeks to co-locate inside Oak Park School — Sarasota County’s only K-12 school for students with special needs — the move raises critical questions about how charter schools serve (or fail to serve) children with disabilities.

For more than a year, Sarasota City Hall’s first-floor bathrooms have been out of order — and for months now, every toilet in the historic building has been shut down as crews rip out and replace its crumbling plumbing.

Suncoast Searchlight partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Facing with an uncertain financial landscape for rural hospitals, the hospital board voted to hear competing presentations from Tampa General Hospital, AdventHealth and NorthStar.

All state lawmakers representing Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties voted for the “Schools of Hope” expansion . Now that a Miami-based charter operator has filed early notices to occupy several local schools, most of those lawmakers have declined to answer questions about the law or its local impacts.

A Sarasota theater is turning fear into art. "Voces de Inmigración 2," produced by CreArte Latino Cultural Center, brings to the stage the real stories of immigrants on Florida’s Suncoast — parents fearing family separation, teachers navigating censorship, workers confronting discrimination.

In Marion and Sumter counties, for example, local ordinances passed in 2021 wiped out dozens of storefront gambling dens and curbed related crime.

Sarasota Schools officials said the filings are premature – pointing to the fact that the Department of Education’s rule has not yet gone into effect.