The county’s tax collector withheld $5.5 million that the Broward School District was expecting to receive from a voter-approved referendum, creating another financial setback for the cash-strapped district.
School district officials said the School Board approved the budget for the 2025-26 school year without knowing the county tax office, which began operations in January 2025, planned to impose the fee on dollars collected from a 2022 referendum. The fee is about 2% of the $275 million generated annually from the referendum.
Tax Collector Abbey Ajayi’s office told the school district in an email that the office is allowed by statute to collect this fee, and that the office mailed a letter to the district in February 2025. But district officials said they could find no record of ever receiving that notice.
Now, some School Board members are livid, and Superintendent Howard Hepburn is trying to negotiate options, including offering free office space for the tax collector’s office, according to a letter he sent to Ajayi on Friday.
“This action comes at a particularly critical time. The District is currently managing an ongoing $90 million budget shortfall driven by declining enrollment, and we are already making difficult financial decisions to maintain academic quality and operational stability,” Hepburn wrote to Ajayi. “Because this reduction was not known or anticipated during budget development, the District was unable to account for it in the current fiscal year.”
Neither Ajayi nor several other officials in the Tax Collector’s Office responded to multiple inquiries made by phone and email on Friday.
The school district referendum money is used to pay teacher and staff supplements as well as for safety and security officers and mental health counselors. The unexpected fee could result in referendum-related services being reduced, Hepburn wrote.
“This is unacceptable. Referendum dollars belong to our schools and teachers, and they need to be returned immediately!” Board member Lori Alhadeff said in a text to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Board member Adam Cervera said, “I’m outraged that they are taking money directly from the pockets of the students here. This is going to have a negative effect on the district. I’m pissed off.”
Board member Nora Rupert said she would like to see some kind of review into this matter, not only by the district but possibly an outside organization such as Florida TaxWatch, a group that monitors government spending. She is confused as to how the district could get assessed a $5 million fee without anyone knowing about it beforehand.
“There is no gray area when it comes to public tax dollars and how they are being used for our students, families and employees,” she said.
This is the second referendum-related issue this month to spark outrage. On Jan. 6, School Board members voted to end a controversial practice of giving the highest-paid staff members referendum supplements of up to $14,000, even though the referendum was pitched as a way to help teachers and lower-paid staff. Board members said they never knew high-paid employees received the money, and they asked for the district’s chief auditor to investigate.
The school district has been collecting money from referendums for the past seven years. Voters approved the first referendum in 2018 and agreed to renew it in 2022. It must be approved again by voters in November of this year or the money goes away.
For years, Broward County government collected the referendum fees and distributed it to the district without charge. However, a state constitutional amendment, passed in 2018, required counties without an elected tax collector to create the office.
Broward voters elected Ajayi as the first tax collector in August 2024, and she took office in January 2025. The office has had disputes in recent months with Broward County and local municipalities on how it withholds and distributes tax revenues.
School district officials say they first noticed the 2% fee earlier this month when reviewing a December financial report, district spokesman John Sullivan said.
Todd Chelibashki, a district finance manager, emailed the tax collector’s office on Jan. 5 to question what he saw as a $5.5 million underpayment, according to an email thread the school district provided to the Sun Sentinel in response to a public records request.
Nadia Alcide, chief of staff for Ajayi, responded on Jan. 16 that on Oct. 1, 2025, the office became funded through commissions and fees allowed under Florida statute. She said the change impacted budgets for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Therefore, the office “provided an advanced notice, in writing, to ensure sufficient time to adjust respective budgets,” Alcide wrote.
She wrote the district was notified in February 2025.
Sullivan said he contacted Alcide to find out where the letter was sent and was told it was mailed to an office on Oakland Park Boulevard rather than the main headquarters in downtown Fort Lauderdale. He said technicians conducted an email search and could find no correspondence from the tax collector’s office about the fee.
Sullivan said the district was never alerted by phone. He added that the tax collector’s office hasn’t responded to requests for a copy of the letter sent last year.
The email from Alcide said any unused fees collected by the office will be refunded to local governments at the end of the fiscal year, as required by state statute.
But Hepburn wrote that this issue is creating serious budget challenges, and he requested a meeting with Ajayi.
“We must find a resolution that limits the impact on the students and educators of Broward County,” Hepburn wrote. “Our shared responsibility is to protect the educational environment, safety, and well-being of the children and professionals who depend on these services every day.”