Broward Public Schools will pay debt with charter schools. But state will still monitor
The Broward County School Board approved a payment plan to settle a debt estimated at about $80 million with local charter schools on Tuesday. But that wasn’t enough to get state officials’ watchful eyes away from them on Wednesday.
After meeting in private for about an hour on Tuesday, the School Board publicly endorsed a three-year payment plan that will start this summer.
The school district will pay one third of the debt plus interest on July 10, 2024, then one half of the remaining balance plus interest on July 10, 2025, and the full balance remaining with interest on July 10, 2026. All charter schools in the county will benefit.
The local board OK’ed the schedule a day before they needed to show the State Board of Education proof of their progress on Wednesday.
The state board was pleased with the agreement, but is not letting the issue go just yet. Following the advice from the state’s counsel, the board plans to ask the school district for another update in July.
“I would recommend tabling this item until the July meeting,” said Andrew King, the Florida Department of Education’s general counsel, after sharing the details of the payment plan. “We’ll give Broward County time to determine what the final amount is and to make that first payment.”
Where did the debt with Broward charter schools come from?
The debacle stems from funds that the Broward school district collected through a voter-approved referendum.
In 2018, Broward County voters agreed to raise their property taxes over the next four years to increase compensation for teachers and other employees, improve school safety and other initiatives.
At the time, instead of sharing the total $453.6 million generated with all of the charter schools in Broward, the school district decided to only split the funds with charter schools with an enrollment of at least 900 students.
The district only shared about $4.6 million among 21 charter schools from that referendum, according to a school district spokesperson.
Last fall, some of the charter schools sued the district over the money, arguing a 2019 state law mandated the district to share the money with all charter schools, which are schools financed by taxpayers but managed by private entities.
In late March, the State Board of Education caught wind of the case and met to discuss it. King, the state’s lawyer, said at the time that the Broward school district failed to correctly distribute money collected and now owed about $80 million; the board agreed.
On Wednesday, King said the school district was still calculating the exact amount.
‘Excellent news’ but monitoring will continue
The state board determined in March that it could sanction the district if the district failed to correct its actions by its next meeting this week, which the local board ended up doing.
“That’s obviously excellent news,” said Ben Gibson, the state board’s chair, on Wednesday.
“I am very happy that the charter schools and the school district have come to a tentative agreement,” Board Chair Ben Gibson said. “It certainly is what we had hoped for, and it certainly beats litigating this issue for years without our students in all of our schools getting the money they are entitled to.”
Still, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. assured the department will be closely monitoring the district to ensure it complies with the agreement.
