It was a day of celebration as Riverside Elementary in Coral Springs unveiled a much-anticipated renovation to the varsity library, exhibiting it was lastly getting some return from the decade-old $800 million bond referendum.
The media heart now had new paint, flooring and furnishings. Colourful tables and cushioned chairs changed the outdated wood furnishings that had been there for the reason that faculty opened in 1987. The renovation was a part of an general $2 million funding within the faculty that additionally included restroom renovations, air-con and roofing upgrades and a brand new fireplace alarm system.
“Media facilities are sometimes the center of a college and function a hub for studying,” Faculty Board Chairwoman Debbi Hixon mentioned on the Dec. 12 ribbon-cutting. “Inside these partitions, unbelievable, distinctive, instructional experiences will be capable to happen.”
However Hixon and others attending the Riverside occasion informed the South Florida Solar Sentinel that as excited as they have been concerning the renovation, it highlighted an issue. A modest renovation that was deliberate to value $1 million and be full in 2020 value twice that and compelled college students and fogeys to attend for years.
“There have been loads of questions from dad and mom,” mentioned Lisa Ivanik-Geller, the longtime media specialist at Riverside. “It’s been a few years since they mentioned it was going to occur. But it surely lastly did.”
It’s a narrative that’s removed from distinctive to Riverside. Broward faculty officers poorly managed the $800 million bond referendum that voters permitted in November 2014 to supply much-needed upgrades to colleges, forcing many college students to study in leaky, moldy and uncomfortable situations for years, in response to audits, investigations and a statewide grand jury report.
Whereas the bond program has produced some good libraries, culinary labs, weight rooms, artwork and music rooms and classroom additions, these have typically been overshadowed by years of lengthy delays in addressing the fundamentals, similar to roofs, air conditioners and perennial flooding.
Broward colleges are actually planning to finish this system subsequent yr, whereas nonetheless ending any work that was promised.
“I believe it’s fairly clear this system didn’t work the best way it was purported to,” mentioned Faculty Board member Sarah Leonardi, who was first elected in 2020. “Clearly, it has executed a extreme quantity of injury to public belief, and I believe it’s going to take a very long time to restore.”
The district’s bond-related work is called the SMART program for its concentrate on security, music and artwork, athletics, renovations and know-how. It was purported to be accomplished by 2021 at a value of $1 billion (together with some non-bond funding). As an alternative, this system has now reached the 10-year mark with lower than half the work full and a price ticket of $1.7 billion, a 70% improve.
Even when the work is lastly full, the district can have nonetheless have billions of capital wants, officers mentioned.
“We overpromised and underdelivered, we poorly deliberate the way to do the work and we poorly executed the poorly deliberate work,” Faculty Board member Allen Zeman, who was elected in 2022, informed the Solar Sentinel. “All three of these made it find yourself with the unlucky truth the SMART bond was something however sensible.”
The SMART program was the main target of a statewide grand jury report, accomplished in 2021 and launched in 2022, that concluded faculty directors had mismanaged this system and misled the general public for years.
The identical grand jury indicted three faculty district directors, together with then-Superintendent Robert Runcie, who was charged with perjury. He was accused of mendacity not concerning the substance of the bond however whether or not he was prepped a couple of know-how contract that was partially bond funded. He has pleaded not responsible, and his case is ready for trial in June. He couldn’t be reached for remark, regardless of makes an attempt by cellphone.
Points with the bond program additionally led the grand jury to advocate that Gov. Ron DeSantis take away Runcie’s allies on the Faculty Board. DeSantis eliminated 4 board members and changed them in August 2022.
The state Division of Schooling pressured Runcie’s successor, Vickie Cartwright, to fireplace three directors named negatively within the report. The Faculty Board later fired Cartwright, partly attributable to what some board members felt was an absence of urgency to repair points recognized by the grand jury. (Cartwright’s firing later was rescinded, and she or he agreed to a mutual separation from the district.)
Now many within the faculty district need the stench of the SMART program gone. They’ve set an official finish date for this system of Oct. 31, 2025, although they acknowledge the work received’t all be completed by then. The unfinished tasks will simply transfer over to the district’s common capital price range.
Zeman, who requested the Faculty Board in Could 2023 to set the completion date, informed the Solar Sentinel lately that imposing a deadline is getting higher outcomes.
“We’ve had some systemic enhancements,” he mentioned. “It used to take 12 months on common to get a change order permitted. Now it’s being executed in 10 working days.”
Howard Hepburn, who began as superintendent in April, mentioned his workers is working exhausting to get bond tasks completed.
He has made what many see as a very aggressive prediction that each one however 25 of the 172 tasks now underneath development will likely be full by Oct. 31. The remaining 25 are scheduled to be completed in 2026.
“We’re an administration of excessive expectations,” Hepburn informed the Solar Sentinel. “We all know the impression of what we do day-after-day, the way it impacts our college students and impacts our studying environments. We’re attempting to shut out 10 to 12 tasks per thirty days, minimal.”
That’s a completion charge the varsity district has but to come back anyplace near attaining. A Solar Sentinel evaluation of Bond Oversight Stories from the previous two years present that the district has closed out a mean of three.5 colleges per thirty days. The most up-to-date report reveals that for the months of July by way of September, the district completed 5 new tasks, a mean of 1.7 per thirty days.
“Primarily based on that evaluation, it doesn’t look good. They’ve received to essentially step up,” Stephen Hillberg, an engineer who chairs the Bond Oversight Committee, informed the Solar Sentinel.
Kimberly Burke-Mohorne, who chairs the Amenities Activity Drive, one other district oversight committee, responded “completely not,” when requested whether or not it was practical for the district to complete 147 tasks in lower than a yr.
Faculty Board member Nora Rupert, whose northeast district contains many tasks which might be nonetheless ready to be completed, mentioned, “Clearly it’s not going to get executed by October.” Whereas she voted final yr to help the Oct. 31, 2025, deadline, she known as the choice to maneuver unfinished tasks from the SMART bond price range to the common capital price range a “shell recreation.”
Rupert is the one present Faculty Board member who was on the board when the bond handed in 2014. Nevertheless, the grand jury didn’t advocate she be eliminated, saying she had “diligently tried to carry the superintendent and the remainder of the district accountable.”
Hixon, who was first elected in 2020, mentioned the choice to finish this system subsequent yr is an efficient one. The $800 million bond cash ran out two years in the past, so the district is already utilizing different funds to pay for these tasks. The district will not pay for a program supervisor, a operate now dealt with by the consulting agency AECOM. She mentioned it’s time to maneuver on from the SMART program.
“We received’t be caught in the entire bond place when that’s not the place the funds are coming from anymore,” she mentioned. “We’ve nonetheless dedicated to ending the tasks.”
The college district’s bond fatigue is a far cry from a decade in the past when Runcie campaigned to place the bond referendum on the November 2014 poll and to promote it to the general public.
The district had a protracted historical past of issues in its services division outlined by earlier grand juries, and two Faculty Board members had been arrested on ethics and corruption points in 2009 and 2010. One pleaded responsible to federal bribery fees, whereas one other was convicted of a state cost of misconduct in workplace.
In a information convention in 2014, Runcie mentioned the issues have been previously.
“It is a completely different Faculty Board,” Runcie mentioned on the time. “Over the previous 2 ½ years, this faculty district and administration have labored exhausting to point out our dedication to spend taxpayer {dollars} responsibly and proceed to construct and restore public belief and confidence in us.”
What was not broadly recognized at the moment was that the district made numerous key blunders that yr that it struggled to beat.
As an alternative of focusing the bond program on the oldest colleges with essentially the most dire wants, the district unfold this system out countywide to enhance its probability of passing, the grand jury report mentioned.
It resulted in newer colleges like Cypress Bay in Weston and Falcon Cove Center in Weston getting new buildings to alleviate crowding, whereas quite a few older colleges received much less seen enhancements, like roofs and air conditioners.
As an alternative of absolutely utilizing knowledgeable agency to survey colleges to evaluate wants, the district determined to economize by utilizing its personal workers, a lot of whom lacked the talents or coaching to evaluate the situation of colleges, the statewide grand jury discovered.
The wants evaluation additionally grossly underestimated the price of roofs, placing them at $6 to $8 per sq. foot, about half of what the district had paid seven years prior.
“It’s tough for us to overstate the ridiculousness of this quantity,” the grand jury report said.
“That wants evaluation simply received everybody off on the improper foot,” Bob Nave, senior vp for Florida TaxWatch, a authorities accountability group, mentioned in a current interview.
TaxWatch supplied quarterly suggestions to the Bond Oversight Committee from 2015 till it dropped out earlier this yr, citing an absence of funding.
The 2018 tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive in Parkland introduced intense scrutiny on the district, together with the bond program. Media reviews, together with one revealed in The Hill primarily based on the analysis of a highschool journalist, revealed that the district was far behind on promised security tasks, together with single factors of entry to regulate customer entry to colleges and fireplace alarm methods.
Shortly after taking workplace in 2019, DeSantis commissioned a grand jury to take a look at issues of safety in addition to how districts managed voter-approved bonds. Broward shortly turned the first focus.
“This isn’t regular. BCPS is just not the primary native faculty district to undertake a development challenge of this scale. In truth, all three faculty districts in South Florida are presently concerned in comparable tasks,” however with out comparable points, the grand jury report said.
Because the grand jury report was launched in 2022, the district has had three everlasting and two non permanent superintendents. There was progress, district officers and observers mentioned. The district has made adjustments to its inspections division that enabled evaluations to be accomplished sooner. The Faculty Board now permits the superintendent to approve smaller change orders as an alternative of them having to get on a board agenda.

Some delays produced higher outcomes, faculty officers say. Northeast Excessive in Oakland Park was solely set to get a renovation, however after group strain, the Faculty Board permitted a brand new classroom constructing. Stranahan Excessive in Fort Lauderdale is getting a cafeteria that wasn’t deliberate. C. Robert Markham Elementary in Deerfield Seaside is being rebuilt as an alternative of simply renovated.
Rickards Center in Oakland Park can also be being rebuilt however that’s attributable to a main roof collapse associated to a structural failure when the varsity was constructed within the late Nineteen Sixties.
Zeman mentioned the upgrades have resulted within the public getting 18% extra in scope than what they permitted. Nevertheless, the associated fee improve has been about 70%.
Faculty Board members are actually pondering the concept of asking voters for an additional bond sooner or later. They mentioned they’re correcting errors from the previous. They’ve enlisted a agency to conduct the thorough assessments of faculty situations that ought to have been executed in 2014. They’ve additionally entered into contracts with firms to evaluate roofs and structural situations.
Zeman mentioned he desires to “beg forgiveness” from the general public and ask them to provide the district one other probability, estimating there are nonetheless $5 billion to $6 billion in capital wants within the district. He mentioned the district’s current A grade is already serving to to revive confidence.
“I believe the general public will likely be satisfied of the overwhelming must construct nice colleges, and we are able to level to systemic enhancements we’ve made,” Zeman informed the Solar Sentinel.
He mentioned the district ought to have the wanted information to go to voters as quickly as 2026, though he doesn’t know if different decision-makers will likely be prepared that quickly.
Hixon mentioned the district nonetheless has loads of work to do to make sure earlier than it might contemplate one other bond referendum. She famous the district is in a multiyear effort to shut or repurpose colleges, which may have an effect on what sort of renovations are wanted.
“I believe we must end out all of the (2014 bond) tasks that have been purported to be executed and present with completely different management, there’s a dedication to doing it proper,” she mentioned. “I might say it might be a couple of years earlier than we may do this.”