Broward schools paid $26 million for employees to work extra jobs last school year, a practice that enabled some administrators to boost their salaries by $20,000 and some substitute teachers to get paid more than veteran teachers.
School administrators don’t officially qualify for overtime, but 125 assistant principals — or 28% of those in the district — received at least $1,000 extra in 2018-19 to work second assignments, usually as administrators at their same schools, the South Florida Sun Sentinel found.
Of those, 13 made at least $10,000 in extra pay. Five principals also received at least $1,000 more. Two assistant principals were paid to teach English language learners at night school but actually worked as administrators, not teachers, according to their professional association.
The Sun Sentinel found those payments as part of a review of secondary assignments, which are usually routine extra jobs employees are paid to do on top of their regular duties. Although the practice allows the district to save money, it is criticized for shortchanging regular teachers, exploiting non-union employees and rewarding administrators unfairly.
“This has to be looked at and has to be done as soon as possible, because there needs to be a valid reason why these people are earning this,” said Jim Silvernale, who represents district maintenance workers through the Federation of Public Employees. “I have grave concerns that the school district is not being transparent.”
The records reveal that 13 teachers whose primary jobs were listed as substitute or part-time hourly teachers made over $50,000 a year teaching adult education students.
A statement from the office of schools Communications Chief Kathy Koch said the district’s use of secondary jobs can be beneficial and cost-effective. The statement said it’s common for employees to have second jobs where they drive a bus for student activities or attend or conduct summer training.
“It can be a savings to a school to utilize existing staff, as opposed to hiring/using outside individuals or entities to do the work,” the statement said. “In addition, without using secondary positions, schools may have to evaluate certain services to determine if they can continue to be provided.”
As for how employees are selected for secondary jobs, the statement said, “It depends on the situation and the employee’s contractual status. It also depends on which employees are available, have the desire to do the work and the required skills.”
“The approval of secondary jobs is made at the workplace level and must include having the funds available to compensate the employees,” the statement said.
The office did not respond to questions about specific employees or assignments.
Records provided to the Sun Sentinel in response to a public records request don’t, in most cases, identify what jobs administrators were doing for extra pay. The Sun Sentinel reached out to the 10 assistant principals who received the most extra pay and none could be reached.
A statement from Koch’s office said those administrators were “performing additional work outside of the established work calendar.” A representative for the administrators said they were doing such assignments as overseeing academic programs that happened at night, on weekends or during the summer.
The district’s $26 million cost, which excludes employees whose only job was working as a substitute teacher, falls in line with neighboring districts. The larger Miami-Dade district spent $45 million in 2018-19, while the smaller Palm Beach County spent $19 million.
However, Palm Beach County didn’t pay administrators to work second jobs, only teachers and lower-paid employees, according to school district records. Miami-Dade County paid about 200 principals and assistant principals at least $1,000 for second jobs, and many were paid for extra administrative duties at their same schools, similar to Broward.
The Sun Sentinel asked about 40 questions about employees’ secondary jobs in emails to Koch’s office from late September to December, and School Board members were copied on many of them. Board member Robin Bartleman, after seeing the questions, asked Superintendent Robert Runcie to provide her answers.
“It is my understanding that staff is working on this topic for a workshop and will provide the information when we have it,” Runcie responded on Oct. 5. Bartleman said she had yet to receive an update as of Friday.
The pay practice is most common at adult education schools, which focus on teaching English language learners and those seeking GEDs, as well as the district’s career colleges, which offer vocational programs for high school and college students in addition to adult education classes.
At Sheridan Technical College in Hollywood, the district paid all five assistant principals to fill second jobs as administrators at night. The school doesn’t have a regular night administrator, said Lisa Maxwell, who represents the employees through the Broward Principals and Assistants Association. Assistant principals Mary Barba and Barrett Goldman both received over $20,000 above their nearly $100,000 salaries. Three others got extra pay ranging from $3,760 to $18,134.
“The tech colleges are in session for more than 2,000 hours per year, almost double the hours that a K-12 school is in session,” Maxwell said in an email.
The schools “incur significant additional costs in ALL areas — clerical, instructional, and administrative — to operate,” Maxwell said, adding that it’s less expensive “to pay our regular daytime administrators these additional evening/Saturday coverage positions than it is to hire an additional full-time AP.”
Some assistant principals at other schools were paid for multiple second jobs.
Karl Weaver, an assistant principal at J.P. Taravella High in Coral Springs, was paid $28,626 — the most of any administrator — on top of his $100,000 salary for three extra jobs, including as a teacher and administrator at one night school, records show.
Weaver received $3,504 for a second administrative job at his regular school, J.P. Taravella. He also worked jobs for Community Schools North, which teaches adult education, being paid $21,493 to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages and $3,528 for an administrative job. With a combined income of $129,000, Weaver made more last school year than most principals. The average Broward principal makes about $117,000 a year.
Weaver couldn’t be reached for comment by phone or email. Maxwell said Weaver was working as an administrator, not a teacher, at Community Schools North but the job had to be labeled as a teacher due to conditions of a federal grant.
Daniel Lechtman, an assistant principal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, received $17,971 for five additional jobs. more extra assignments than any other district administrator.
He was paid $10,550 for three extra administrative jobs at Stoneman Douglas and $1,522 for a second administrative job at Falcon Cove Middle, where he was a full-time assistant principal before transferring to Stoneman Douglas midyear. Records say he also was paid $5,898 for teaching English for non-native speakers for Broward Community Schools. But like Weaver, he was filling in as a community school administrator, not working as a teacher, Maxwell said.
Maxwell said Lechtman received a secondary job in the summer of 2018 at Falcon Cove to prepare the school’s class schedule and was assigned the same task in the summer of 2019 for Stoneman Douglas. She said he also was paid extra to oversee an SAT preparation program on Saturdays. His fifth job, funded through a federal grant, was working with an after-school credit recovery program for students affected by the 2018 school shooting.
Lechtman couldn’t be reached by phone or email.
“All of these assignments were outside their normal day, and they were consistent with board policy and the district’s practices,” Maxwell said of both assistant principals.
Some substitute and adjunct teachers also cashed in. District records show 11 made more than $50,000 by teaching adult classes, more than many 15-year-veteran teachers, who make about $47,000 per year. Several said they had to work over 50 hours a week without benefits, despite being considered part time.
The district paid 415 employees last school year to work extra jobs as adult general education teachers, mostly at night. Most jobs were assigned to employees who work during the day as full-time teachers or administrators, but 108 jobs went to those listed in district records as substitute or hourly part-time teachers, who were essentially working as adjunct instructors.
The highest paid was Rafael Zornosa, who received about $68,800 to teach three adult classes at Atlantic Technical College in Coconut Creek. He clocked in 2,572 hours at $26.75 an hour. That’s an average of over 50 hours a week. Although his primary title is substitute teacher, a job that pays $11.27 an hour, all of his income appeared to come from the higher paying second job as an adult general education teacher.
Two part-time teachers who made over $50,000 last year said they had to work a lot more hours than a regular teacher to earn their pay, and they got no benefits. The teachers told the Sun Sentinel that they work 61/2 hours a day at one adult education teaching job and have a second contract to work up to 41/2 hours at a second location. The result is they work 11 hours some days and over 50 hours each week, which is why their pay seems high, they said.
The two teachers said they could get fired for speaking to a reporter and asked not to be identified.
Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said she was surprised to hear that so many non-unionized teachers were teaching night classes. She said she thought those jobs went mainly to full-time teachers who wanted to make extra money.
“It doesn’t sound fair or right, and it sounds like the district is taking advantage of these employees by not paying them for breaks or giving them benefits,” Fusco said. “Why would you be listed as a substitute teacher unless you’re doing the job of a substitute?”
Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, a member of the district’s Audit Committee, said she found it troubling that the district allowed these employees to work such long hours without giving them benefits.
“This sounds neither like a best practice nor the most efficient way to do things,” she said. “We should be investigating why this is happening.”
