Broward County Public Schools has an $80 million headache.
Even with a nearly $6 billion budget, that’s a substantial amount — and the issue started, as it turns out, when voters approved a referendum in 2018 to provide more money for teacher salaries, school security, and mental health programs.
The school district’s teachers got a raise from that referendum. In 2021, the Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled Broward’s public charter school teachers should also have received that same pay raise, but they never did.
The Florida Board of Education grilled district officials Wednesday at their meeting in Winter Park.
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“Is it the position of the school board that you’re in compliance with the 2018 referendum?” asked board chair Ben Gibson.
The answer to that question is complicated, according to Broward School Board chair Lori Alhadeff.
“The district is working diligently to address the concerns related to the revenues corresponding to the 2018 referendum,” Alhadeff told the board.
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The bottom line, according to Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, is that Broward Schools owes the county’s public charter schools about $80 million.
“The best-case scenario here is that a resolution is reached,” Diaz said.
In the 2018 referendum, it only specified that security funds would be shared with the charter schools — is that where the issue is?
“Yeah, and we were doing that,” Superintendent Dr. Peter Licata said Thursday. “Keep in mind that this is five years old, I find myself spending most of my time on previous problems, previous years’ problems, and we gotta fix that but that’s not gonna stop us from moving forward.”
The school board voted unanimously last week to settle the issue with the charters.
“That is the intent of the Broward School Board,” Diaz said.
I said to Licata, I’m assuming the district doesn’t have $80 million in pocket change lying around, under the couch cushions that you can just give to the charter schools, right?
“Well, what we do is we’ll budget in, and make sure it’s, whatever the number is, we’ll have it,” he responded. “So we’ll figure it out, we always do, and we know that we’re going to reach into anything for students last.”
The state Board of Education wants the district to have a plan to share the money with the charter schools by April 17th. Former Republican Senator George LeMieux will mediate the process. The state has no issues with the “Renewal Referendum” passed by voters in 2022. The language was different in that ballot item, and the district has been distributing the money as advertised.
