With student enrollment declining in Broward County, school district officials said cuts could be coming for employees.
With the 2024-25 school year coming to an end, Broward Schools is facing a major dilemma. Over the past 10 years, student enrollment has been reduced by more than 37,000 students, However, the number of employees has not been reduced by much.
Even more concerning, this upcoming year, state officials believe Broward Schools will face about 8,800 more students.
Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn addressed the matter at a district meeting held Thursday.
“Our school district, as everybody knows, is funded by the number of kids that attend our schools, and so, we’re going to have to start making some tough decisions as we move forward,” he said.
The massive reduction in students means a loss of about $80 million in state funding.
“This is out of whack,” Hepburn said as he showed a slide tracing the decline in student enrollmwent. “Our enrollment has steadily declined, but our employee base has pretty much stayed the same.”
School district officials said this disparity will mean major cuts as they hope to recalibrate.
“We have a hiring freeze for central office right now. We’re going to shift staff and allocations to make sure they make sense,” said Hepburn. “For instance, let’s say assistant principals, middle school. Every middle school geys three assistant principals no matter what size. You have some middle schools that are almost 2,000 kids and have three assistant principals. You have some middle schools that have 400 kids, and guess what they did: three assistant principals. So, those staff and allocation models do not make sense.”
Hepburn said cost-cutting will be a priority this upcoming year, and while he’s not talking layoffs just yet, there will be changes.
“Change is hard for a lot of people, but we have to change up and become more efficient, and yet effective at the same time, but we have to innovate and really right-size ourselves to make sure out district is sustainable,” he said.
The district will have to work quickly to get its financials in order, as it will likely lose state funding. Hepburn said the most drastic of all changes will not come this year but ahead of the 2026-27 school year.