A voter-approved tax increase that was pitched as a way to help teachers afford to live in Broward County was expanded to provide supplements of more than $10,000 to some of the highest-paid employees in the Broward school district.

A district spokesman said the School Board approved these large supplements as a way to remain competitive with other districts. But several School Board members said they don’t remember approving them for high-paid senior leaders and only learned about them from inquiries from the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

School Board Chairwoman Sarah Leonardi said she first learned about the supplements during a Dec. 19 negotiations session she held with the recently hired general counsel. She now plans to ask the School Board during a special meeting on Tuesday to revoke the supplements for the highest-paid employees. Most other board members told the Sun Sentinel they would support that.

Leonardi said she also plans to ask the School Board to launch an investigation “to figure out why this happened.”

The agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting doesn’t say how much it costs to provide supplements to the highest-paid employees or how many are affected.

School district officials said from the start that teachers would not be the only ones to receive extra pay from the August 2022 “Secure the Next Generation” referendum. As examples of additional recipients, they cited teachers’ assistants, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other low-paid employees.

By 2024, the pool had expanded to include senior administrators, some of whom make more than $200,000 a year and have collected annual supplements exceeding $10,000, district officials acknowledged.

The School Board “extended supplements to eligible non-bargaining administrative classifications to maintain competitiveness and retain key leadership talent,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the Sun Sentinel. Superintendent Howard Hepburn was eligible for a supplement but he declined it, Sullivan said. At 5.5% of his base salary, that would have been nearly $20,000 a year.

Sullivan said that unlike some large districts, Broward school administrators “are not members of special state retirement classes that provide enhanced benefits, placing the District at a competitive disadvantage. These supplements provide market parity and help prevent the loss of experienced leadership, which would result in increased costs, operational disruption and lost opportunities for students and families.”

The Sun Sentinel learned about these supplements when they were discussed during the negotiation session between Leonardi and Kathy Dupuy-Bruno, the district’s newly hired general counsel. Dupuy-Bruno was told that in addition to her salary, negotiated at $260,000, she would receive a 5.5% referendum supplement, which equals $14,300.

Leonardi told the Sun Sentinel she was informed by the district’s human resources chief, Ernie Lozano, in a private caucus during negotiations that “everyone gets it, and I was taken aback by that.” Lozano also confirmed during public negotiations that all employees were eligible. Leonardi noted in the session that School Board members do not receive referendum money.

“This is not how I intended the referendum money to be spent. This should not have happened,” Leonardi told the Sun Sentinel. “The board needs to do our part and fix it so that people making $200,000 aren’t getting paid an extra $10,000 a year.”

School Board members Lori Alhadeff, Maura Bulman, Adam Cervera, Debbi Hixon, Nora Rupert, Rebecca Thompson and Allen Zeman all told the Sun Sentinel they support reconsidering these payments. Board member Jeff Holness couldn’t be reached for comment.

“I think the intent and spirit behind these supplements was for this money to be used for the teachers and school staff members who are embedded in our public schools, not high-paid cabinet members,” said Cervera, who was not on the board when the supplements were expanded in 2024. Bulman and Thompson also were not on the board yet.

Board member Nora Rupert was on the board but said she was never told that the referendum had been expanded to the highest-paid employees.

“The referendum’s intent was to increase compensation for our boots-on-the-ground, school-based, student-centered staff, along with safety and mental health positions and programs,” Rupert said. “I look forward to having a public conversation with my colleagues on Tuesday about righting this travesty of the public’s trust.”

The revelation of these supplements comes as the School Board considers whether to ask voters this year to keep funding the referendum, which must be renewed for another four years, or the money goes away.

“What worries me is that it has the potential effect of souring the public on the whole concept,” given that higher-paid employees were added, said Dan Reynolds, president of the Broward County AFL-CIO. His union includes the Federation of Public Employees, which represents bus drivers, custodial and maintenance workers, school cafeteria staff, clerical staff and security monitors.

Reynolds said the school employees he represents “had the support of the voting public.” He said he never remembers any discussion about top administrators qualifying for the money.

“I read every agenda, and I didn’t see that. They must have done it in a way that was not apparent,” he said.

Voting on funds

An initial round of referendum money dates to 2018. That year, the School Board was trying to find a way to boost teacher pay while also paying for more security and mental health staff members in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Voters approved the tax of $50 per $100,000 of assessed property. The first year, pay supplements only went to teachers and other non-administrative staff.

Under state law, the referendum only lasts for four years unless it’s renewed, so in 2022, the school district went back out to the voters, this time asking the tax be doubled to $100 per $100,000 of assessed property. This was approved in August 2022.

The money from the new referendum became available in July 2023, and the School Board voted the next month on how it would be distributed. Teachers were allocated the largest share of the money, receiving supplements of between $500 and $12,000, depending on their time in the district.

Principals, assistant principals and most other non-instructional staff were approved for supplements equal to 5.5% of their annual salaries. This included some members of the Educational Support & Management Association of Broward, or ESMAB, which represents many district administrators and staff who don’t work in schools.

The district had initially proposed giving some ESMAB employees 3% supplements, but the School Board agreed at a meeting on Aug. 29, 2023, to raise it to 5.5% to be consistent with other employee groups.

Three board members — Leonardi, Rupert and Hixon — dissented, arguing these higher-paid employees would still get more money with a 3% supplement than lower-paid ones would get at 5.5%.

Hixon told the Sun Sentinel in a recent interview that she never wanted non-school-based staff to get the supplements, saying that wasn’t the intent of the referendum.

“Personally, I think it should only go to school-based personnel, including principals and assistant principals, but if they’re not directly impacting students, then I’m not OK with that,” Hixon said.

The supplements approved at the 2023 meeting excluded the district’s highest-paid employees, such as executive directors, chiefs and associate and deputy superintendents, whose salaries range from about $150,000 to more than $220,000.

Pete Tingom, executive director of ESMAB, urged the School Board at the 2023 meeting to fund the 5.5% supplements, saying these employees had been excluded from the 2018 referendum, but he didn’t advocate for the highest-paid administrators to receive it.

“In the document which you have before you, it has excluded the upper pay bands of approximately 45 employees because you, as a board, have approved these large salaries for leadership positions,” Tingom told the School Board at the meeting. “The people under them who actually get the phone calls to actually go out and do the work, they’re the ones which have been shorted for the past four years.”

The salary schedules for ESMAB employees first came back to the School Board nearly a year later, on May 21, 2024. The board voted to approve one-time 2.26% bonuses in lieu of salary increases. This money did not come from referendum dollars.

But a footnote in the attached salary schedule gave a clue that more employees may be getting referendum money. The document no longer specifically outlined which employees were included and excluded from referendum funds, only saying “eligible employees” whose start date was on or before July 1, 2023, would receive a 5.5% supplement.

At a meeting on July 30, 2024, the School Board agreed to maintain the 5.5% referendum supplements for the next three years. But there was no mention in either the executive summary or the salary schedule that the group of eligible employees now included the highest-paid administrators. It was also not mentioned during the board discussion. It’s unclear at what point the employees started receiving the referendum dollars.

Tingom said he doesn’t specifically recall what prompted the district to include the high-paid employees.

He said during a Dec. 30 interview that he was not aware that the School Board planned to hold a special meeting to reconsider the supplements. “I prefer not to comment on that at this point until I know more about it,” he said.

The decision to expand the supplements also affected high-ranking employees who are not members of ESMAB. The superintendent, general counsel and chief auditor qualify for the supplements due to provisions in their contracts entitling them to the same increases as other administrative staff, officials said.

“Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn elected not to receive referendum supplements,” Sullivan said.

General Counsel Marylin Batista, who makes a base salary of $265,000 a year, has been eligible for a 5.5% supplement, which is about $14,575, while Chief Auditor Dave Rhodes, who makes about $200,000, has been eligible for about $11,000.

Rhodes told the Sun Sentinel he didn’t ask for the supplement in his contract but is receiving it in his paychecks. Batista couldn’t be reached for comment by the Sun Sentinel. Both have previously announced they are leaving the district, with Batista resigning on Jan. 9 and Rhodes retiring on March 2.

If the board votes to end supplements for the highest-paid employees, Dupuy-Bruno, the newly hired general counsel, would no longer qualify for the extra money, Leonardi told the Sun Sentinel. Her contract is scheduled to be voted on Tuesday. Dupuy-Bruno couldn’t be reached for comment.

Supporting ‘strong districtwide performance’

Sullivan, the district spokesman, said the 2022 referendum allowed the district to expand the supplements to all employees.

“The ballot language did not limit eligibility by job title, salary range, bargaining unit or organizational level of management; rather, it broadly authorized compensation increases for ‘teachers and staff,’” he said. “Consistent with that voter-approved authority, the School Board implemented compensation supplements through public board action, with the overwhelming majority of referendum funds supporting school-based employees and frontline staff.”

Sullivan said these supplements “are critical in helping employees afford to live in the communities they serve and have strengthened BCPS’s ability to recruit and retain high-quality educators, safety personnel and operational staff. This stability has directly supported strong districtwide performance, including BCPS earning back-to-back ‘A’ ratings from the State of Florida and eliminating D and F schools.”

But several School Board members say district staff never made the case that higher-paid employees should receive the money, nor did they make the change clear in the agenda items. Leonardi said she hopes that was just an oversight by staff.

“I’m trying to assume best intentions,” she said. “I hope that it was not done on purpose. If it was, that is like a fireable offense.”

School Board members have voiced frustration in recent weeks that district staff have failed to provide key information to the board.

The School Board voted in November to cancel a $2.6 million office rental lease and accused district staff of giving them erroneous information. In December, an audit for the selection process for a new construction program manager found that district staff failed to comply with the School Board’s request to review the solicitation before it went out to bid. Auditors found numerous problems with the solicitation, some of which they say may have violated state law. Now, the district is taking emergency action to oversee the work.

School Board member Allen Zeman told the Sun Sentinel he again feels misled by district staff.

“Learning that our highly compensated senior staff were paid referendum bonuses this year is shocking,” he said. “It is very unlikely that the Board would have approved of this if we were told the truth, but we were not.

“And sadly, I am disappointed but not surprised. This pattern of uncorrected falsehoods, half-truths and lies must end,” Zeman said. “And we all know who really suffers from this pattern of deceit: the students and parents, as well as the teachers and staff who long to work for people who lead with honesty and integrity.”