The Broward School District is planning to cut about 1,000 jobs and has given employees its first clue as to which positions may be affected.

The “primary impact” of the district’s cost-cutting effort will be district-level positions, not teachers and school-based positions, a question-and-answer email sent to district employees states.

Employees will be notified if they are being laid off during late spring, states the Feb. 20 email. Their last day would be June 30.

“Impacted employees will be encouraged to apply for available positions within the District for which they are qualified,” the email states. “Any applicable collective bargaining agreements, District policies, and legal requirements will be followed.”

The School Board is also discussing the possibility of furloughs, which could take effect earlier than June 30.

A Feb. 22 memo from Interim General Counsel Kathelyn Jacques-Adams states the district can impose furloughs for most non-union employees but would have to bargain them for unionized employees, such as teachers, classroom assistants, bus drivers, custodians and food service workers.

Hepburn and School Board members are looking to cut about $80 million from the district’s budget due mainly to enrollment declines.

The district has lost nearly 39,000 students over the past decade, but the number of district employees has only dropped from 21,835 to 20,847, according to data prepared by the district’s finance office. The district is projecting another 9,000-student loss for the coming school year. The district has attributed the decines to lower birth rate, affordability issues in Broward, a growth of private school vouchers and immigration issues.

“We have to make a very difficult decision. We have not right-sized our actual staffing footprint,” Superintendent Howard Hepburn told reporters at a Feb. 17 news conference. “So, we have to make some difficult decisions right now.”

Hepburn said the 1,000 positions will be cut first by attrition, “followed by targeted layoffs and also some non-renewals of administrative level personnel within our district.”

The question-and-answer email, sent on Feb. 20, lists which specific positions are not being targeted by this “District Strategic Realignment.”

— Teachers
— School-based staff
— Security personnel
— Facility service workers
— Bus drivers
— Cafeteria workers

Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said she found the suggestion of no school-based cuts to be misleading.

“If you have a projection of 6,000 to 10,000 students leaving, you can’t not affect the schools. It’s impossible,” she said.

“What they’re going to look at first, obviously, is retirements,” she told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “They’re going to look at the schools that have openings, and they just won’t fill them. And they’ll release the probationary teachers.”

District spokesman John Sullivan told the Sun Sentinel that the actions Fusco described may happen, but he said it would be a process similar to past years. He said some positions, such as teachers, have traditionally been funded based on student enrollment, and that will continue. The district’s new downsizing effort is accounting for district-level positions that never got cut despite a decade of declining enrollment.

“The normal teacher loss wouldn’t account for the 1,000 positions,” Sullivan said.

The district email also cited another possible exception to school-based cuts, saying, “A new staffing model may be implemented that would slightly reduce the overall number of staff” at schools.

Hepburn has previously said that the district may revamp a formula for staffing assistant principals, which often results in small schools getting the same number as larger schools.

While the cuts outlined in the memo would take effect for the 2026-27 school year, the district is also looking at cost-saving measures for the remainder of the current school year. School Board member Lori Alhadeff suggested furloughing employees, possibly during Spring Break when schools are closed but district offices are open.

“I think my colleagues really need to start talking about this,” Alhadeff said at the Feb. 17 workshop. “We need to understand what those numbers are. We need to understand what our options are.”

Jacque-Adams wrote in her Feb. 22 memo that the district “cannot unilaterally furlough union employees,” including teachers, due to state laws relating to collective bargaining.

For non-union employees, such as principals, assistant principals, district-level administrators and executive secretaries, furloughs are allowed.

“The most legally defensible strategy is to exercise its authority (state statutes) to ‘relieve employees from duty because of lack of work or for other legitimate reasons,’” she wrote.

The school district “should characterize the action as a (temporary) measure of economic necessity rather than a disciplinary termination or suspension.”

She said the School Board should adopt a formal board resolution documenting the financial necessity, implement uniform furlough terms “across all similarly situated employees,” ensure the action is temporary with a clear end date and provide “adequate notice and basic procedural fairness.”

Sullivan said budget estimates show the district could save about $208,000 a day by furloughing district-level administrators, $370,000 by furloughing principals and assistant principals and $101,000 a day by furloughing district secretaries.