DeSantis declares Broward School District ‘disaster,’ and says placing it in receivership might be needed
South Florida Sun Sentinel | By Anthony Man & Scott Travis |
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday excoriated the Broward School District for a “laundry list of failures” and suggested it’s been so impervious to reform that placing it in receivership might be an option to fix it.
“Honestly, it’s been a disaster. Let’s just be honest, it’s been a disaster in many different ways. It is really run more to benefit the entrenched interests, particularly the school unions, rather than the parents and the students,” DeSantis said at a news conference.
DeSantis said the School District is an entity that is impervious to reform efforts, and raised the possibility of drastic action by the state.
“But there’s a handful of spots around the state where, you know, maybe thrusting some of these entities into receivership may be the best way going forward. I think you could work things out pretty quickly, but I tell you it’s tough. It’s been really tough. And when people want to reform, you end up having, running into a brick wall. It’s been very difficult,” DeSantis said.
The governor made his comments in response to a question at a news conference at Broward College in Davie, where he and his appointees appeared to tout what they described as reductions in insurance premiums that would benefit homeowners.
The question ran through a host of controversies and crises involving the School District. DeSantis’ response: “I think you did a good job of the laundry list of failures in the Broward School District.”
And, DeSantis was asked if it was time for the state or some other outside body to take over the School District to fix it.
He said state Education Commissioner Anastasios “Stasi” Kamoutsas would need to determine “what authorities are there under current law for them to go in and do, could they do, or would the Legislature need to do things to be able to authorize” before raising the notion of receivership.
Kamoutsas was picked by DeSantis for the education commissioner job, and hired by the state Board of Education last year, after serving as the governor’s deputy chief of staff.
Broward School Board Chair Sarah Leonardi cited positives in the School District’s performance.
“I’m proud of the hard work of all of the educators in Broward County Public Schools that has earned us back-to-back ‘A’ ratings from the state for the first time in over 10 years. I’m proud that for the first time ever we have no D or F schools. We are excelling at our core mission of educating students and I’m glad that the state has recognized that,” Leonardi said Monday via text.
Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said unionized school employees aren’t the source of problems in the system.
“The members of the Broward Teachers union are proud of the work we do with parents to ensure that every child gets the education they deserve and need,” she said via text. “There are billions being siphoned from Florida’s public schools, including here in Broward, to a voucher program Florida’s own Auditor General’s Office said was ripe for waste, fraud and abuse. Right now, parents, students and community members need leaders to strengthen our public schools, rather than abandon them. Whether you are a parent, a grandparent, a small business owner or a taxpayer, public schools are your schools.”
Broward schools have been plagued by declining enrollment, financial problems and missteps in recent months.
Enrollment has declined by 11,000 students in the last year and the district has at least 50,000 more seats than students.
The School District has been looking to make more than $100 million in cuts, with plans to close seven schools and eliminate about 1,000 positions. It has enacted a hiring freeze and is no longer using substitute teachers, instead directing other employees to cover teacher absences.
At the same time, the district has faced criticism for some recent management missteps, including:
— Entering into a $2.6 million five-year lease with a nonprofit group to house a few dozen facilities employees when the district has plenty of empty space in low-enrolled schools. The School Board voted in November to terminate that lease and has been sued over it.
— District facilities and procurement staff botched a solicitation for a management company to oversee district construction, prompting the School Board to reject all bids. Since the contract with the current management company expires Jan. 17, the School Board is taking emergency actions to select a vendor. Two high-level administrators and a third procurement employee are under investigation related to that.
— Giving its highest-paid employees, except for the superintendent, annual bonuses of up to $14,000 from money that voters approved in a 2022 referendum to boost the pay of teachers and lower-paid staff. School Board members said they were unaware of these payments and voted last week to stop them.
It’s difficult for the state to take over a school district other than removing and replacing school board members. And voters could elect people other than the replacements in subsequent elections. County school board members could end up having the State Board of Education frequently calling them up to explain their actions.
In 2022, DeSantis suspended four Democratic members of the School Board and replaced them with Republicans after a statewide grand jury found incompetence, neglect of duty and misuse of authority. They weren’t criminally charged, but DeSantis said he was removing them, writing in his order that “due to their malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, and incompetence (they could) … no longer demonstrate the qualifications necessary to meet their duties in office.”
Two appointees who sought to retain those seats were unsuccessful, losing in the 2024 elections.
Last year, DeSantis appointed Adam Cervera to fill a vacancy on the board. Cervera, like DeSantis, is a Republican. The other eight School Board members are Democrats.
On Monday, Cervera said he would hold a news conference on Tuesday to address what his media advisory described as “a series of alarming financial and oversight failures within Broward County Public Schools.”
“These problems are not isolated, they reflect a pattern of long-standing financial mismanagement while our District is cutting programs, freezing hiring, and considering closing schools,” Cervera said in a written statement. “Our students, parents, and teachers deserve better than this. Taxpayers deserve better than this. Broward families expect transparency and accountability, not waste.”
Cervera has filed paperwork indicating he plans to run to retain the seat in the August 2026 School Board elections. Three other candidates have filed similar paperwork.
Maduro
Also at Monday’s news conference, DeSantis reiterated his view that the former dictatorial president of Venzuela, Nicolás Maduro, who was removed by a U.S. military action earlier this month and is facing federal charges in New York, could someday face state charges.
DeSantis said there would be reason to charge Maduro with crimes in Florida, suggesting South Florida, which is home to many who fled Venezuela and other repressive regimes, might be keen to convict him.
“In South Florida, no one has a better understanding than some of our communities here about how both Chavez and Maduro destroyed the country of Venezuela, and that’s Marxist rule being imposed in ways that were very predictably disastrous,” DeSantis said.
The governor said the federal government “obviously” gets the first crack at Maduro. “But we also have jurisdiction, now that he’s in the country, of holding him accountable for things he’s done that have impacted the laws in the state of Florida.”
He said Attorney General James Uthmeier “is reviewing that,” adding that he thinks it would be appropriate to charge Maduro in Florida, possibly on drug smuggling charges, possibly for actions that allowed Venezuelan gang members to enter the U.S.
Governor’s race
Shortly before Lt. Gov Jay Collins announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor, DeSantis — who elevated him to that job from the state Senate — called him “a good guy.”
But he declined to say whether he would endorse his No. 2. “If I get involved in the primary, you’ll know it. It’ll be at a time and place of my choosing, and so, we’ll see.”
Homelessness
A 2024 state law bans homeless people from sleeping on sidewalks and parks and other public spaces and allows individuals, business owners and the attorney general to file lawsuits against cities or counties that allow the homeless to violate the law.
Some people don’t think the law is being aggressively implemented. Asked what he’d do about that, DeSantis said Uthmeier “is looking into accountability for some of those officials, and I’m certainly willing to use the authority I have to hold anybody to account who’s not following the law.” He didn’t say how that would play out.
He praised the law as “groundbreaking” and a way to avoid blight that can negatively affect public safety and businesses. “People want order. They want clean and order.”
AI
The governor signaled, as he has previously, a desire to regulate artificial intelligence, and said he would discuss the issue during his State of the State speech in Tallahassee on Tuesday.
“We want to make sure that Floridians are not going to end up roadkill with this AI revolution that’s going on,” he said. “We shouldn’t be trying to green light anything that’s going to displace human beings from being kind of the central actors in America’s republican experiment and that also goes into consumer protection, parent protection, kid protection.”
DeSantis said Florida residents shouldn’t be forced to pay for improving electrical service to satisfy the enormous energy needs of artificial intelligence. “Don’t want to see them building a massive data center and then sending you the bill,” he said.
