The Broward School Board has agreed to spend about $270,000 to settle a lawsuit over a canceled office lease that became a symbol of wasteful spending.<\/p>\n
Including rental payments the district had previously made, the lease with the nonprofit group Handy is expected to cost the school district a total of $545,000, even though district staff never actually moved into the building, officials said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got zero days of occupancy for half a million dollars,\u201d Board member Allen Zeman said during a meeting Tuesday, where the settlement was approved.<\/p>\n
Handy, which stands for Helping Advance and Nurture the Development of Youth, filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit<\/a> against the school district in early December, alleging breach of contract and damage to Handy\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n Neither Handy\u2019s lawyer, Thomas Sternberg, nor Handy CEO Kirk Brown could be reached, despite attempts by phone and email.<\/p>\n The School Board agreed in June to rent space in Handy\u2019s newly acquired headquarters in Wilton Manors to house district facilities staff who had been working inside a district building that was being sold.<\/p>\n But the office space proved to be small for the district and had too few parking spaces for the number of employees it was intended to house, emails showed<\/a>. The district spent about $88,000 in technology upgrades, which also delayed employees moving in, officials said.<\/p>\n The South Florida Sun Sentinel published a news article in October<\/a>, calling attention to the district\u2019s five-year, $2.6 million contract for the Handy site, when the district was facing about $100 million in budget cuts and had plenty of vacant space at half-empty schools.<\/p>\n Board members told the Sun Sentinel the arrangement didn\u2019t make sense and they voted to terminate<\/a> the lease on Nov. 4. The School Board used a provision in the lease that allows termination if the district fails to allocate the money on an annual basis. Although the money had already been previously allocated, the board action on Nov. 4 rescinded that allocation.<\/p>\n