Broward School Board seeks legal advice to reclaim $500K in bonuses. What to know
The Broward County School Board is seeking outside legal advice on whether it can require high-paid administrators to repay about $500,000 in voter-approved referendum bonuses.
During a Tuesday, Feb. 10, school board meeting, members debated whether to try to claw back supplements paid to roughly three dozen senior administrators after a July 2024 vote expanded eligibility for the funds.
The payments ranged from $7,761 to $14,612 annually, including to some employees earning more than $200,000 a year, according to the Sun Sentinel.
The “Secure the Next Generation” referendum, first approved by voters in 2018, funded supplements for teachers and certain instructional and support staff, explicitly excluding school-based and district-level administrators, non-instructional staff and other employee groups.
When voters renewed the measure in 2022, the ballot language changed to say funds would go to “... teachers and staff,” but did not establish salary thresholds or define which staff qualified.
Other language changes included the removal of charter school-size thresholds, the inclusion of mental health professionals and a shift toward funding “all traditional public and charter schools.”
According to a Feb. 3 audit conducted by Chief Auditor Dave Rhodes, the lack of defined eligibility criteria created ambiguity, making room for administrative employees at the district level to receive the extra pay.
According to WSVN, the board voted in 2023 to provide fixed annual supplements for teachers of up to $12,000, in addition to supplements equal to 5.5% of annual pay for other employees. Here, the highest-paid salary bands were excluded.
In summer 2024, the school board unanimously approved 5.5% referendum-funded supplements for three employee groups, with a substitute motion extending the payments through the 2026-27 school year. That approval resulted in eligibility expanding to employees in Salary Band Level E and above.
Board member Debbie Hixon said the way the board understood the vote at the time was to extend only the time period, with no discussion about changing percentages or expanding who would qualify.
“So to be clear, that’s why I don’t think anybody was reading the fine print of anything because we weren’t changing percentages as we understood it on the board or who we were giving the money to,” Hixon said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We were just extending the time period to cover the entirety of the referendum.”
Can the district get the money back?
Some current board members said they were unaware that higher-level administrators were being included, although the report said former members told auditors they believed the allocation applied to all employees.
The audit, initiated after the board’s Jan. 6 vote to halt future payments and request a review, found district staff did not formally brief board members about the inclusion of executive employees and above before the vote on July 30, 2024.
It also cited weak document control practices and the absence of a mandatory briefing process for changes in material. While the report concluded staff was not transparent in seeking approval for the expanded eligibility, no individual was assigned blame.
Board member Dr. Allen R. Zeman said he plans to bring a formal request at the board’s March 10 meeting to require any current employee to repay the funds.
“But not recouping the money means you are now going from a 60% referendum that passed in 2022, to an unknown number that no doubt will be less than 60%,” Zeman said. “And I’m not willing to take that risk and I don’t think anyone that got the money wants us to take that risk.”
Zeman said that while the referendum easily passed with voters the last time, he’s worried the situation may hurt the referendum’s chances this year come November.
Chair Sarah Leonardi said the board has already directed the matter to the Broward Office of Inspector General. She also raised concerns about asking the district’s legal department to advise the board on the legality of taking back payments, noting that some department staff received the perks.
Leonardi made a motion to seek outside counsel to determine the legality of recovering payments made to employees in Salary Band Level E and above and whether they could be considered accidental overpayments. The motion was seconded by Zeman.
Zeman argues that repayment is ethically necessary if it is legally permissible.
Board member Adam Cervera called the audit “quite damning to this district,” and said that the teachers were the ones that suffered.
Hixon, who was on the board when it passed the vote, pushed back on the idea that teachers lost money.
“I also want to point out that the money that was distributed to the higher bands that we were not really aware of did not get taken away from teachers,” Hixon said. “No one took any of that money away from teachers, although that extra $500,000 that was there could have been used for mental health or for something else.”
Board member Rebecca Thompson said she would not be in favor of clawing back the bonuses from employees.
“I think it is clear that this board should be required to craft language or craft a policy … to make sure that this never happens again,” Thompson said. “However, it happened because the board approved it. Point blank. I’m not in favor of forcing employees to pay back money that the board approved.”
Superintendent Howard Hepburn said he has already implemented the recommendations outlined in the chief auditor’s report.
Those include establishing clear eligibility rules that specify which positions qualify for referendum-funded supplements, setting salary thresholds, requiring board approval for any future changes and maintaining detailed documentation of all allocation decisions.
The audit also calls for public workshops before major changes are presented to the board and stronger document retention practices to ensure public transparency.
