2101 N. Andrews Ave.<\/a>, in Wilton Manors, for its employees. Handy\u00a0bought the 40-year-old building, which was the former headquarters of Moss & Associates construction, for $5.9 million in January 2025.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Handy facility will accommodate most of the BCPS staff currently at Rock Island, allowing for a quick and efficient transition,\u201d district spokeswoman Keyla Concepcion told the Sun Sentinel. \u201cAny remaining staff will be reassigned to other District locations.\u201d<\/p>\n
District employees have not moved in yet, \u201cbut the intent is to do so as soon as possible,\u201d Concepcion said. She wouldn\u2019t say whether the district has spent any money making upgrades to the Handy office space, referring the question to the district\u2019s public records office.<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s agreement with Handy allows the district to house facilities employees, as well as some district contractors, in 15,000 square feet of the 85,000 square feet building. The district will occupy all of the fourth floor and part of the second floor\u00a0of the facility, according to the contract.<\/p>\n
The rent will start at $42,500 per month, or $510,000 the first year, and will increase by 1% for each of the five years, according to the contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at it right now, I would say financially it doesn\u2019t seem like it makes a whole lot of sense based on the position we\u2019re in,\u201d School Board Chairwoman Debbi Hixon said. \u201cBut there were some circumstances I was told that caused that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sun Sentinel asked Hepburn in August why the district chose the Handy site over one of its many underenrolled campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to vacate that building (Rock Island), according to the actual contract that we signed with the entities that purchased it, so that team needs to get out sooner than later,\u201d Hepburn said at the time.<\/p>\n
However, after closing, the district entered into a lease agreement with the Urban League that allowed employees to stay at the Rock Island property until May 2027.<\/p>\n
A district summary attached to the June agenda item said the district would be spending less money at the Handy building than if the employees stayed at Rock Island, because the Handy lease includes utilities and maintenance and custodial services. Those costs at the aging Rock Island facility were estimated at $566,000 a year, the document said. However, the summary didn\u2019t compare costs to locating inside a school.<\/p>\n
Broward School Board member Rebecca Thompson said she now sees the agreement as problematic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is definitely one of those contracts that we should revisit, and if there is space to house 75 employees in one of our schools, which I feel like we should easily be able to accommodate, that\u2019s the direction we should go in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The contract allows the district to get out if there is damage or a breach by the landlord or if funds are not appropriated in the district budget. The School Board adopts its budget each September. The Sun Sentinel asked a district spokeswoman multiple times if there were any other ways the district could get out, and her response was to send a link to the contract.<\/p>\n
Kirk Brown, CEO of Handy, couldn\u2019t be reached for comment Thursday, despite attempts by phone and email.<\/p>\n
The School Board vote to approve the Handy contract in June was unanimous, although Thompson voiced some concerns on the dais.<\/p>\n
She said at the time she believed the district likely had space that could be used either in the K.C. Wright administrative headquarters in downtown Fort Lauderdale or school campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a little concerned why we\u2019re going outside of our building capacity and paying for rental space,\u201d she asked Hepburn at the June meeting.<\/p>\n
Hepburn told the School Board the district was disposing of two other office buildings, and those employees would be moving to K.C. Wright. He said academic staff who were housed at K.C. Wright would be moving to school campuses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of admin space, so that\u2019s why we are utilizing the space that Handy\u00a0has graciously allowed us to lease from them,\u201d Hepburn said at the meeting.<\/p>\n
But in recent weeks, Hepburn and School Board members have been more eager to move office staff into schools, especially after Mater Academy, a Miami-based charter operator, made a request to house 18,000 charter students on 27 district campuses, as part of the schools of hope<\/a> program.<\/p>\nSchool Board members have voiced interest at the past few meetings in either selling K.C. Wright or renting out space in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the next year, I think we should take half of this building, seven floors, and we put those seven floors of staff into our schools, and we lease out each of those levels,\u201d Board member Lori Alhadeff said at Tuesday\u2019s workshop. \u201cWe could bring money back into our district, but also fill our schools. It\u2019s very concerning with the hope schools, and so we need to make sure our schools are filled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hepburn told Alhadeff the district was doing that. \u201cWe\u2019re emptying out this building, purposefully,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n
He said the district would be renting vacant space for revenue, including to lawyers, since the building is steps away from the Broward courthouse.<\/p>\n
Hepburn told the Sun Sentinel after Tuesday\u2019s meeting that it\u2019s possible the plan to move employees into schools may help the district stave off schools of hope.\u00a0More providers are expected to file their requests for space next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s going to help us totally with some of the schools of hope that we expect to start sending us letters next month,\u201d he said. \u201cBut our priority right now is to utilize our facilities and be responsible with taxpayer dollars and fully utilize our facilities as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concepcion said all these efforts are part of the district\u2019s initiative known as \u201cRedefining Our Schools.\u201d The effort was started in early 2024 as a way to deal with the district\u2019s dwindling enrollment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough our Redefining Our Schools initiative, we\u2019re not only improving the educational landscape but also strengthening community partnerships,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re proud to work with non-profit organizations such as the Urban League and Handy in this endeavor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Broward Schools have agreed to pay $2.6 million over the next five years to rent space in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[113,249,251,250,114,115,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-18848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-lauderdale","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-fort-lauderdale","10":"tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","11":"tag-fort-lauderdale-news","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}