FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Melanie Berkin, a Broward County Public Schools veteran and activist, wore her black T-shirt with a “SCHOOL SOCIAL WORKER” sign in bright font.
Berkin has been fighting to increase public school teachers’ pay, but with student enrollment declining, she was fighting for hundreds of jobs on Tuesday.
“The district is trying to propose that they cut these mental health positions, and then they want the ones that are left to cover for the positions that they’re cutting,” Berkin said, while at the Broward County School Board K.C. Wright Building in Fort Lauderdale.
School Board members met on Tuesday for a workshop to discuss Superintendent Howard Hepburn’s proposed job cuts and decided to postpone their vote.
The proposal cuts 856 positions, including 300 occupied positions, 159 vacant positions, and 53 support positions, to save $40 million in response to the $80 million budget shortfall caused by declines in student enrollment.
Anna Fusco, the president of the Broward Teachers Union, said that the proposal’s claim that it would only cut staff is false.
“A speech pathologist is an educator,” Fusco said. “They teach kids with speech. Our social workers are family counselors, our school counselors, our ESE counselors, those are teachers that teach kids with mental health, behavioral ... trauma.”
Carol Harvey, a speech pathologist, said she wants School Board members to consider the value of what they do for BCPS students.
“We work with our hearts,” Harvey said. “We work with passion, and we help the community, we help the world.”
School Board member Adam Cervera said the proposal is “top heavy” so he was planning to vote against it anyway.
“If you’re going to go into a private sector company and you’re going to reorganize, right? You start from the top. You go from the CEO down,” Cervera said. “You don’t go to the stores and fire all the cashiers and the managers, right? That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
School Board members asked Hepburn to make changes to the proposal. The board is set to meet for a workshop at 8 a.m. on April 28.
Watch the workshop
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