The Broward County school district - the seventh largest in the nation - has spent millions of dollars in questionable personnel practices. It's happening in a system where nearly one in five employees are related thanks to one of the weakest nepotism policies in the state.
In addition, substantial overtime was paid to employees and high-ranking administrators were retiring with six-digit golden handshakes because of policies that paid off an unlimited amount of unused vacation and sick leave.
The series ran May 22, 1994. A preview ran May 13 when district officials made policy changes - primarily because they knew we were about to publish a series about the problems.
We used the school district's nine-track tapes of all personnel information available to the public. This being Florida - blessed with one of the best open records law in the country - that translated into virtually everything the school district collected about employees except their most recent evaluations and medical history. Then we built our own database and did numerous sorts. That included who were the highest paid employees, who had the most vacation and sick leave saved up and a dozen other categories. The most interesting and productive sort matched everyone who had the same home telephone number, giving us a list of employees (most of whom had the same last name) who were probably related. That gave us the lead on our nepotism story, even though we knew that it did not catch most sibling and parental relationships.
We've also used computers for other education stories, including an analysis that found teachers who were teaching subjects they were not certified to teach. The data was obtained from the local school board.
Scott Anderson can be reached at (305) 356-4590, or send email to flscotta@sunsent.com.