Broward Schools

Broward voters gave a resounding thumbs up to the creation of an inspector general for the county's corruption-checkered public schools system.

Candidates running for seats in Districts 1, 2, 3, 5, and 9 took part in web forums held this week by the League of Women Voters of Broward County. You can watch those videos here.

Howard Hepburn was voted in to lead the school district through one of the most challenging periods it has faced in recent years after Licata said he would step down for health reasons after just 10 months on the job.

Video counseling at school was never an option before the pandemic, but an analysis by AP has found the service is now so prevalent it exists in 16 of the 20 largest school districts, including several in Florida.

The Broward County School Board has signed off on a three-year contract with Dr. Peter Licata, two weeks later than expected. The agreement will give him a slightly lower salary and less job security than he had hoped for. Still, Licata has called it a "dream job."

The Broward School Board has approved a $21.6 million settlement for the 2021 partial roof collapse at an Oakland Park middle school.

The latest fallout from the grand jury report into the Broward school district that was commissioned after the Parkland shooting comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis replaced four board members. Now Tim Hay, director of the Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools, has demanded the superintendent remove three longtime employees named in the grand jury report, saying they had “guided failed decisions on school safety."

Gov. Ron DeSantis has removed four Broward County School Board members from office, citing the findings of a statewide grand jury launched in the aftermath of the 2018 Parkland shooting. DeSantis has now appointed a majority of the school board members in one of the state's most Democratic-leaning counties.

The long-awaited report said the board members displayed “deceit, malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty and incompetence” in their handling of a campus safety program. One of them, Donna Korn, is running for re-election in Tuesday's primary.

A week after the Biden administration awarded Broward Schools $421,000 for defying a state ban on mask mandates, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has threatened to take that money away.

Seven years after approving an $800 million school renovation program, mold remains a major problem, inspection reports show, even in schools where work has been completed. Many others are still waiting for promised repairs, with only about two dozen of 200 major projects complete.

School board members in Broward and Alachua counties will have their salaries withheld as long as the districts have student mask mandates in place.