The Broward School Board plans to take emergency action to manage its school construction projects after an audit found the district botched a competitive bidding effort to find an outside manager.
During a meeting Tuesday, board members criticized the actions of school district staff, stating that they had defied the School Board’s direction and placed the district’s construction program in jeopardy.
The School Board voted to reject the bids of all three management companies that had been vying to oversee the program: AECOM, Jacobs Engineering and EXP U.S. Services.
AECOM currently oversees the work, but its contract expires on Jan. 17, and no renewals are allowed under normal circumstances, district lawyers have said. But they said Superintendent Howard Hepburn can declare an emergency, which would allow the district to enter into a short-term contract with AECOM without the need for competitive bids. Hepburn is expected to bring an emergency contract to the board in early January.
Representatives of Jacobs and EXP spoke at Tuesday’s meeting and urged the board not to reject all bids. They asked the School Board to reconvene a committee that ranks and scores vendors, evaluates the vendors and make selections.
“Three firms chose to participate. They submitted in good faith. They invested considerable time, considerable resources into preparing proposals,” said John Dougherty, program director at Jacobs.
But board members said the issues were too serious to move forward with the solicitation. A report from Chief Auditor Dave Rhodes found the district imposed strict financial requirements that may have discouraged many firms from competing. The district dropped those requirements after bids came in and decided to negotiate contracts with all three vendors who submitted without ensuring they were qualified, the report said.
The audit said some of the district’s actions violated district policies and may have violated state laws.
Angry board members demanded Hepburn hold senior staff members accountable.
“I think the overall effect of subverting the authority of the School Board, perverting its integrity and the operation of the school district, is outrageous and a willful failure to follow board directives that is possibly sending us into a state of emergency,” Board member Nora Rupert said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Earlier in the meeting, the School Board approved Hepburn’s requests to discipline a number of teachers, assistants and other non-management employees for various offenses. Rupert told Hepburn he has “to show the rest of the district that there is discipline across all areas of this school district, from the top to the bottom.”
Board members voiced particular concerns about the roles staff members in the operations, facilities, procurement and legal departments played.
But the only staff members the School Board can take direct action against are Hepburn, Rhodes and General Counsel Marylin Batista, who announced in October that she’d be stepping down in January.
Hepburn told the board he’s still reviewing the report but is planning “accountability measures for any staff that I need to hold accountable as a result.”
The district’s construction program has been highly scrutinized for years, with complaints that students and employees have sat for years in moldy, decaying buildings waiting for upgrades. A statewide grand jury found the management issues so egregious in 2021 that it recommended Gov. Ron DeSantis remove School Board members who had supported the then-superintendent. DeSantis removed and replaced four in 2022.
Some now on the board expressed fears during Tuesday’s meeting that the same fate could happen to them if they fail to provide better oversight.
“This is a five-alarm fire. This is as serious as it gets,” Board member Allen Zeman said. “There’s not a bigger issue before us. Four School Board members were removed because they weren’t paying attention, ostensibly to construction management.”
Board member Jeff Holness argued district staff had created “an existential threat” to the School Board.
“It puts me at risk. It puts all these board members at risk, and I think that’s what’s concerning me,” Holness said. “This board will take some blame while having been left completely in the dark.”
School Board members had voiced in April about securing a contract for a new program manager before the Jan. 17 deadline, but district staff people told them there was adequate time. The School Board told district officials they wanted to review and approve the solicitation before it went out to bid, but it was never brought to them, the audit found.
Board members also voiced concern that district management, without their knowledge, had changed the type of contract the district was seeking. AECOM has a contract to serve as a program manager overseeing nearly all projects in the district’s construction program. But this year, Chief Operating Officer Wanda Paul sought multiple companies to oversee different projects.
Board member Rebecca Thompson asked Paul why she never informed the board she was seeking a different type of contract.
“Well, quite honestly, I never thought that it mattered that much,” Paul responded. “I thought that we were continuing on with the business of trying to close our projects, so I was more focused on accomplishing that piece of it than the nomenclature.”
Some board members also were angry that Paul sought to get some financial requirements waived after bids had already come in, despite questions from Assistant General Counsel Tom Cooney about whether that was appropriate. Cooney told auditors that he didn’t see how the solicitation could proceed if none of the companies met the financial requirements stated by the district, according to the report.
But at the request of Paul, and with approval of Batista, Cooney agreed to seek a second opinion from an outside firm, he told the School Board. The outside firm concluded the financial requirements could be legally waived.
“Mr. Cooney, why wasn’t your opinion good enough?” Holness asked. “Why was (Paul’s) input relevant on legal matters?”
“Dr. Holness, I wouldn’t say that our opinion wasn’t good enough, but we were asked for an extra outside opinion,” Cooney responded. “The question was whether it was a waivable technicality, and I was not comfortable with making that determination that it was a waivable technicality. It wasn’t a clear-cut decision.”
Holness said Cooney should have informed School Board members about the issue. The district’s general counsel’s office reports to the School Board, but Holness said he believed Cooney may have been representing the interests of Hepburn’s staff instead of the board.
“We don’t have a de facto mini school board among staff,” Holness said at the meeting. “We are the board, we make policies. We make decisions, and the direct reports that we have need to directly report to us and I, I am upset that I didn’t get this information.”
Batista told the board that the district’s expectations for decades have been that the legal staff serves both the School Board and the superintendent’s staff, adding that’s allowed under state law, as long as the interests are aligned.
“If there is a different understanding of what the board would like moving forward, then I think that’s a conversation we would welcome to have, and I’m sure whoever follows me will be happy to do that,” Batista said.
Board members have agreed to review the roles and duties of district lawyers as well as policies on competitive solicitations.