Valerie Crowder and Diane Rado/The Florida Trident

A small group of Florida school boards have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on lobbying in Washington, D.C. — unusual given that the money could be used to pay teachers, bus drivers, maintenance workers and other employees.Hiring outside firms to lobby in the Florida Legislature is relatively common for public school districts, but federal government lobbying among them is almost unseen.Of the 67 districts in Florida, only nine have hired lobbyists to work for them in D.C. over the last 15 years. And three of those — Lee County schools is one of them — have just started paying lobbyists within the last couple of years.