A Broward schools administrator accused by the county’s top watchdog of mismanaging the purchase of laptops and misleading the School Board has been fired.
The firing of Jennifer Andreu came despite pleas for leniency from many of her supporters, who told School Board members on Tuesday she had done nothing to warrant the action. Andreu denies wrongdoing.
Andreu was the school district’s executive director of operations from 2023 to early 2026, a period when Broward’s Office of Inspector General scrutinized three efforts to select vendors for laptop purchases and deployment. She was moved to a job overseeing economic development and compliance earlier this year.
The School Board voted 6-3 on Tuesday to fire her, with board members Adam Cervera, Jeff Holness and Nora Rupert dissenting.
The inspector general’s investigation, released on Sept. 30, determined that, while Andreu and some other employees “did not engage in misconduct or gross mismanagement, they mismanaged the procurement process and, in the course of doing so, misled the School Board.”
Superintendent Howard Hepburn said during his superintendent’s report, prior to the board discussion of Andreu, that the inspector general identified major problems that need to be addressed.
“The concerns identified in this report are unacceptable, and we are taking action. Public trust is earned through our actions, not simply our words,” Hepburn told the School Board on Tuesday. “Any employee found to have knowingly misled the School Board, violated district policies, or broken the law will face swift and appropriate disciplinary action up to and including termination.”
The district also is reviewing the role of another employee named negatively in the report, Matthew Bradford, executive director of technology operations, General Counsel Kathy Dupuy-Bruno told the School Board.
Hepburn has not yet made a recommendation on Bradford, who was also accused of misleading the School Board. Bradford denies wrongdoing. All other employees criticized in the investigation, including one accused of trying to steer business to a vendor, no longer work for the district.
Andreu told the South Florida Sun Sentinel after the meeting that she is reviewing her options to “continue defending my reputation,” including appealing the termination to the state’s Division of Administrative Hearings.
“I’m deeply disappointed by the board’s decision,” Andreu said. “I did nothing to warrant termination and stand by my nearly 30 years of public service and integrity.”
Andreu, who is also a City Council member in Plantation, received support from many Broward elected officials at Tuesday’s meeting. They argued that Andreu has a stellar record, and that the district had conducted a rushed review to try to fire her.
“The most ethical person I’ve ever met is Jennifer,” Plantation Mayor Nick Sortal told the board. “She’s ethical and a rule follower to a T. So, it just smells funny to me.”
Melissa Dunn, a Lauderhill city commissioner, told the board, “I have known Jennifer and experienced her to be a woman of integrity, a woman of ethics, a woman of faith and a woman who does what she says she’s going to do. I urge you today to pause and allow due process to happen.”
While it sometimes takes months for the school district to discipline some employees, the move to fire Andreu happened in less than two weeks, according to a document attached to the agenda.
On Oct. 1, the day after the inspector general investigation came out, Andreu received a due process notice, and a meeting to discuss the allegations was held on Oct. 6, the agenda item shows. She received notice of the recommendation to fire her on Oct. 8.
The agenda item said the termination was a result of “violations of School Board policies and procedures,” although the specific violations were not listed. During Tuesday’s meeting, Dupuy-Bruno listed what some of the alleged violations may be.
“Florida law and district policies require employees to meet professional and ethical standards, and potential violations include providing inaccurate or misleading information, failing to exercise appropriate professional judgment, failing to properly oversee assigned responsibilities, violating applicable ethical or professional standards, engaging in misconduct in office or willful neglect of duty as defined by the law,” Dupuy-Bruno told the School Board.
However, Andreu provided documents to the School Board that she says refute the allegations against her. She listed three specific examples related to laptop vendor selection.
In the first instance, she said the inspector general suggested she was involved in a November 2023 decision to reject all bids for laptops. But she said that move was made by a former technology chief without her involvement.
The inspector general determined this decision to reject bids was made because the district favored HP over Lenovo, which would have been the top-ranked choice.
Andreu said she’d only been with the district six weeks when that decision was made.
“It is incomprehensible to me how decisions and deficiencies associated with a procurement that began before my employment could now be attributed to me or characterized as a failure of my leadership,” she said in an Oct. 8 email to School Board members.
The inspector general’s investigation also alleged that Andreu misled the board when she asked the School Board in July 2024 to reject all bids in a second attempt to secure laptops. Then-Board member Daniel Foganholi accused the district of trying to steer business to a preferred vendor. Andreu emailed current board members a letter from then-Board member Torey Alston, who, like Foganholi, voted against rejecting all bids.
“I did not feel misled by Jennifer. I did not always agree with District recommendations presented to the Board during my tenure, including in this instance, but disagreement is fundamentally different from deception,” Alston wrote in a letter shared by Andreu. “I never believed she was intentionally withholding information from me or attempting to interfere with my ability to exercise independent judgment as a board member.”
The inspector general also wrote that a procurement agent improperly shared a vendor’s pricing information with the technology department on May 17, 2024, and the prices got in the hands of another vendor. Andreu was copied on the email that contained the prices.
“I did not review that embedded pricing information,” Andreu wrote to board members. “Being copied on an email does not establish that I opened every attachment, reviewed every embedded communication, or possessed actual knowledge of its contents.”
Board member Rebecca Thompson said that she has heard allegations “about how we protect our friends or how we protect agents in this system.” Thompson said Andreu can appeal, and it would be a bad idea for the board to vote no on the termination.
“To do anything other than the superintendent’s recommendation is not doing the right thing in our role,” Thompson said. “It’s overstepping. It gives fuel to the accusation people have made about how we act and how friendships and personnel influence our decisions.”