The Broward County School board voted Tuesday to end a multimillion-dollar rental contract in an effort to cut back district costs and, notably, prevent charter schools from moving into unused district space.
Going into the current school year, the district faces a $77 million shortfall. The $2.6 million agreement with the nonprofit Helping Advance and Nurture the Development of Youth (HANDY) was approved in June.
The district had planned to house about 75 staff members in part of HANDY's office, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.
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Instead, the idea of ending the contract is to find room for the staff in vacant district spaces, like campuses, to prevent Schools of Hope from acquiring the available room.
The state Schools of Hope program allows private charter school companies to co-locate in the buildings of low-performing public schools. Recently, the rules were changed to allow the charter schools to move into campuses that have "underused, vacant or surplus" space.
In October, the Miami-based charter operator Mater Academy made a request to house 18,000 charter students on 27 district campuses.
School board member Maura Bulman presented the move to cut the contract.
"We are in a significant budget deficit situation," Bulman said at the special meeting. "... We have space that we need to fill or we will be vulnerable to having the Schools of Hope come in. And so we are not in a position right now to be in this lease."
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While members were on the same page about cutting costs and making the most of their real estate, they were also apprehensive over the legality of pulling out of the contract halfway through the year.
" We did fund this in our budget," school board Chair Debbie Hixon said, "so to back out of that at this point, I think would be my concern."
Ultimately, the district has sound legal ground to walk forward on, an official clarified at the meeting.
" We do have a longstanding relationship with HANDY," Hixon said. " They do a lot with us as a district. So I just want know how the district would frame this in a way that doesn't hurt the partnership that we have had with Handy for a long time."
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