The Broward School Board is expected to vote Tuesday on a district reorganization plan that would result in hundreds of job cuts.
The recommended plan by Superintendent Howard Hepburn would create 10 new jobs while cutting 809 jobs, 306 of which are currently filled. The plan would save about $40 million. The district is grappling with budget cuts due to years of declining enrollment.
School Board members discussed Hepburn’s first draft of the plan on April 21 and voiced concerns that the plan might cut too many teachers and lower-level employees and too few top administrators. Hepburn disputed that characterization, saying the district cut a larger percentage of high-paying jobs. The total of lower-paying jobs proposed to be cut is larger because the district has far more of those jobs than high-level ones, he said.
His revised organization chart, which the School Board is expected to vote on Tuesday, includes a few changes from his plan last week.
“Not that much has changed,” Hepburn said Sunday on “This Week in South Florida.” “We’ve gotten some direction from the board for some shifts. … But nothing much has changed overall to the organizational chart.”
Among the proposed changes:
— The chief facilities officer and chief operations officer, which are both vacant, would be combined into one higher-paying job called chief operations and facilities officer.
— Two supervisors and two coordinators in leadership development in the academics department would be reduced to one position each.
— Three coordinators of suicide prevention and two supervisors of mental health services would be cut, with people in other jobs taking over those functions.
— An assistant director of artificial intelligence and digital learning job would be cut, while a director of AI would get a new name, director of instructional innovation and digital learning.
The changes do little to allay the concerns of Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco, who complained that the district is cutting too many teacher positions. A chart prepared for Tuesday’s meeting shows 111 filled jobs that are represented by the teachers’ union being cut.
Hepburn has said all of these positions are based in district offices, not schools. Fusco told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that’s misleading. She said many jobs are held by teachers who work directly in schools, even though they aren’t directly based in one.
“He’s saying these are district jobs,” Fusco said. “Every job we have is a district job. It literally says that under contract. You may not be guaranteed the same school. You’re guaranteed a job.”
Fusco said that Hepburn’s latest revised chart does little to adhere the School Board’s request to cut more administrative jobs.
“You don’t see that in this,” she said.
A special School Board meeting to vote on the plan is expected to start at 3 p.m. Tuesday.