A sea of district employees flooded a Broward County school board workshop to plead board members to reconsider 800 job cuts on the line.
The board met on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of the drastic reduction in staff, first proposed last week, as it seeks to deal with a budget shortfall of about $90 million from its shrinking student enrollment.
Emotions ran high among the dozens of people who came to the workshop, filling up the chamber before spilling over into the outside hallway and waiting area to watch from screens. They cheered on public speakers voicing their concerns to the board and groaning when they disagreed.
"We value our positions and we feel that we are a necessity for Broward County Public Schools and our students," Monica Garcia, a mental health counselor who sees students in middle and high school, told WLRN. She was notified last week that her position is on the list of proposed cuts, stirring “a mixed bag of emotions."
“There are students in my office that are constantly struggling with anxiety, stress, self-harming [and] suicidal thoughts,” said Garcia, who has been with the district four years. “We live in a world where mental health has been put on the back burner and it needs to be back on the front. We are the front lines.”
Garcia is “realistic” about what the future holds, so she’s looking for future job opportunities.
The proposed cuts are estimated to save about $35 million. Through the reductions of roles and other measures, like school closures and a hiring freeze, the district’s aim is to save $75 million in net cost.
”For the past 10 years, we've lost about 40,000 students — $350 million,” said Hepburn. “We've lost 10,000 students just this current year. The upcoming year, we're going to lose another 10,000.”
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In two years, the district projects a loss of 20,000 students. “That’s a lot of little ones that we're not receiving in our classrooms anymore," he said. "Things have to be shifted, things have to be revised and realigned to meet the realities.”
The re-organization of roles is mostly focused on administrative staff and roles that are currently vacant, but student-facing roles are on the line, too. The proposal was put together by outside firm MGT.
Board member Jeff Holness said that inaction is not an option in dealing with the accumulating problem of under-enrollment. He and the other members “now own the problems and we own the responsibility to fix them,” he said.
“We should have progressively reduced the number of staff over many years based upon the continual student decline,” Holness said. “That would make sense not only for the school board of Broward County, but for any business: When you're losing customers, you reduce your staffing.”
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Board member Adam Cervera, who often swims against the tide of the board, made his opinion of the proposed org-chart known with a simple, yet firm, action. He raised the draft in front of him for the public to see and ripped the paper in half.
“I don't like it. I don't agree with it and I don't support it,” he said, feeling that the proposal affects too many “ lower-level staff while sparing some top level administrators.”
Hepburn pushed back on that, citing that 16% of reductions are for directors and above, and 15% for organizational leaders.
Other cost-saving efforts are underway simultaneously for an estimated at $80 to 90 million in savings to the overall deficit.
The district is the largest employer in Broward County. Hepburn said he doesn’t take that lightly, especially in this trying time of downsizing.
“It’s the toughest task that our team has ever done in a very, very long time,” he said.
Some jobs that were originally on the cutting board have been spared: 17 family counselors for exceptional student education (ESE), 5 ESE program specialists and 15 district social workers.
Family counselor Cynthia Tapia-Rodriguez, who has worked with the district for 22 years doing substance-use and violence prevention, was among those who came out to express her opposition to the cuts at the workshop.
“I do not have the time to list everything I have done, and honestly, what I have personally given to the district is not what matters most,” Tapia-Rodriguez told board members. “What matters is the lives that have been impacted.”
Board members individually recommended changes to the proposal. Members are expected to vote on the organizational chart on April 28.
