Escambia County Clerk Blocks $1,000 Payment to Booker T. Washington STate Champion Girl's Basketball Team

Escambia County, FL (Newsradio 92.3) -- A dispute between Escambia County commissioners and Clerk and Comptroller Pam Childers boiled over at this morning's commission meeting over a blocked thousand-dollar community support fund payment to Booker T. Washington High School's girls basketball program — the same team that just won the 2026 FHSAA Class 5A State Championship.

Commissioner Lumon May, who said he spent eight years raising funds at Booker T. Washington while his children attended the school, argued the board had already voted to approve the payment and the team had every reason to expect the support would follow.

"We have had these young ladies to anticipate that they had community support, and we snatched it from right under them," May said. "It's not about the $1,000 — many of us have written $1,000 checks, and I have too — but to be inconsistent and to do it for 10 to 12 years is wrong in my opinion."

Commission Chairman Mike Kohler went further, accusing Childers of overreaching her authority and calling the reversal indefensible after more than a decade of approving similar payments.

"I do not understand how you can stand up and for 12 years pay for something and then get religion and not do it," Kohler said. "That is ridiculous, Madam Clerk."

Childers held firm throughout the exchange, saying only that her decision stands and that she will not approve payment out of general funds.

May asked the county attorney to pursue a formal attorney general opinion on whether community support fund payments to school athletic programs are legally permissible — and made clear the outcome would apply equally across all county high schools.

"We're not going to make Washington High School — some young African-American young ladies — the guinea pig of what we're not going to pay when we pay the other ones," May said.

The Booker T. Washington Wildcats finished the 2026 season 24-3, winning the Class 5A state title with a 56-54 victory over Blanche Ely on March 13th in Jacksonville — the program's first state championship in more than two decades.