A proposal to eliminate about 350 filled jobs is drawing scrutiny from some Broward County School Board members and community members, who argue the plan is light on cuts to high-paid administrators.
Some board members also say Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s plan, released on Wednesday, doesn’t go far enough to meet the board’s directive of cutting 1,000 jobs over the next year as a way to deal with funding cuts caused by declining enrollment.
Ernie Lozano, the district’s chief human resources officer, said the largest percentage of cuts are to district administrators. But none of the district’s highest-paid chief executives would be cut, and one, a currently unfilled chief facilities officer, would be upgraded to a higher-paying job.
The plan includes cutting some teachers, elementary school counselors, exceptional student education counselors, social workers, clerical support assistants maintenance workers and many other non-management jobs, according to a district analysis.
“There are a lot of higher-level positions that were just completely untouched on this,” Board member Adam Cervera told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “And it looks like to me they’re skipping the top and going to the lower levels and picking off the rank and file.”
The School Board is scheduled to discuss the plan at a workshop scheduled for Tuesday, and it could order changes to the plan. In addition to Cervera, Board members Allen Zeman, Nora Rupert and Debbi Hixon voiced some concerns about the proposal.
“From my perspective, the directive of the School Board was to cut the high-level administrators, and I just don’t see it reflected in this,” Rupert told the Sun Sentinel.
Chairwoman Sarah Leonardi and Vice Chair Jeff Holness said they look forward to discussing the matter with the board and superintendent on Tuesday. Board members Lori Alhadeff, Rebecca Thompson and Maura Bulman couldn’t be reached.
Hepburn’s proposal eliminates 856 filled and unfilled jobs. The district also is reviewing a plan that would likely reduce about 200 unarmed security positions, mostly through attrition, bringing the total job cuts to above 1,000, according to a district report prepared for the workshop.
School district officials have said in past meetings that 1,000 job cuts would equal about $75 million. But Hepburn’s plan includes 344 jobs that were on the books but weren’t even funded this year. The total savings of his plan is estimated to be about $40 million.
“It should be no surprise that the 2026 School Board gave clear direction to the Superintendent to reduce the number of administrative and central office positions,” Zeman told the Sun Sentinel. “These reductions are necessary after 25 years of kicking this can down the road. And the unfortunate cost of kicking this can down the road within fixed budgets is that we’ve not been able to adequately fund our teachers and other school-based educators.”
Zeman said that “anything less than 1,000 cuts to funded positions may appear to the board to be kicking the can.”
Hixon said she didn’t have a concern about using unfilled positions toward the 1,000 jobs. She said Hepburn had made clear he planned to do that. But Hixon said she was disappointed that the plan doesn’t eliminate many high-paid positions.
“I’m sure it’s very hard as a chief to try to eliminate anything, and you think everything is important,” Hixon said. “I think there will be some changes to what is presented right now.”
Lozano, the chief human resources officer, discussed the proposal at a Thursday night meeting of North Area Advisory, a north Broward parent group. He said the plan does cut many upper administrator jobs, including directors and executive directors.
An analysis prepared by the district states that 16% of upper-level jobs were cut, compared to 13% of lower-level jobs.
“Dr. Hepburn directed to us” to make the largest cuts at the top, Lozano told attendees.
But while 40 filled and 22 unfilled district-level administrative jobs are recommended to be cut, Hepburn’s organization chart also shows that nine new positions are proposed to be added. In some cases, employees may not be laid off but will instead be demoted to a lower-level position, Lozano told the Sun Sentinel at Thursday’s meeting.
For example, the plan proposes to eliminate the executive director of professional practices and labor relations, a job that oversees employee investigations as well as negotiations with employee groups. But the proposal also adds a new director of labor relations position.
Ernie Lozano, chief human resources officer for Broward Schools, answers questions Thursday at a meeting of the district’s North Area Advisory Committee. (Sun Sentinel / Scott Travis)
“I eliminated the executive director position to save the district some money and then created the director of labor relations, because we still do a lot of work with our collective bargaining groups and need someone at the level to be able to effectively negotiate with our district people,” Lozano said. “So now that position can focus more on labor relations, and professional practices can focus on professional practices, whereas that one individual was carrying both.”
Cervera said it wasn’t the board’s intent to create new jobs.
“We thought that the positions were going to be eliminated, not rebranded under a different category and given a clever new name,” he said. “At the end of the day, the goal of this is to save us money.”
Lozano said the majority of positions are being eliminated, without new ones being created.
At Thursday’s North Advisory meeting, several attendees voiced concern about how the cuts were made.
Cynthia Dominique, who chairs the countywide District Advisory Council, said the organization chart includes executive directors, directors and managers who only oversee a small number of people.
“Why so many levels of bureaucracy?” she asked. “There are significantly more cuts that you all can make.”
Some questioned why the plan included cutting 119 teachers, counselors, social workers and exceptional student educational specialists who aren’t assigned to a specific school.
Lozano said that he expects most will get placed in new jobs by June 30, but Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said at the meeting that employees were told on Wednesday that they are losing their jobs.
“These are the teachers who get farmed out to schools, to teach in small groups, to work with the most vulnerable,” she said. “When a teacher gets an illness and is out for three months, they go and cover a class.”
She said district administrators led School Board members “to believe we’re cutting district people that don’t touch students.”
Cervera said he’s angry that the plan includes teachers.
“We should not, cannot and must not cut and eliminate teachers. Period, Full stop,” he said. “And apparently, that’s what happened here.”
On Friday, the Broward Teachers Union filed a grievance, alleging Hepburn failed to provide a required 10-day notice to the union about “the reasons for layoffs, number of positions to be affected, and the names of employees to be laid off by site.”
As for the remedy sought, the grievance states, “Dr. Hepburn will immediately cease the layoff implementation until the proper notification is given, and any other remedy deemed appropriate by an arbitrator should this grievance proceed to arbitration.”
The district disputes the union’s claims.
“The District adhered to all collective bargaining and employment agreements in notifying unions regarding impacted employees,” district spokesman John Sullivan told the Sun Sentinel.
Board member Holness didn’t say what specific job cuts he would approve, but he said they are necessary due to “longstanding misalignment in staffing levels” as well as declining student enrollment.
“Without decisive steps, we risk facing significant financial instability. While these decisions may be difficult, I am confident that, as a Board and as a district, we must take the necessary actions to place the district on a more stable financial path,” Holness told the Sun Sentinel. “At this stage, no action is not an option, as the short- and long-term consequences for inaction are too grave.”