Broward College Board of Trustees Approves 2021-2022 Budget Focused on Resiliency

$190.5 M toward ‘Building Resiliency: Investing in Our Students, Our People, Our Future.'

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (June 24, 2021) -- The Broward College Board of Trustees, at its June 22 meeting, approved its budget for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. The Building Resiliency: Investing in Our Students, Our People, Our Future budget prioritizes investments toward enhancing the student experience and post-completion outcomes. This budget also improves the resiliency of the institution through employee retention and development, and greater efficiency of its core functions. 

The new budget builds on the institution's work since 2018 through the priority-based funding model. Importantly, it capitalizes on the heightened culture of care, service, and support that have become characteristic of the College’s work during the pandemic.

"Through Building Resiliency: Investing in Our Students, Our People, Our Future, we are ensuring that no matter what changes around us, we can still fulfill our mission to transform lives,” said Broward College President Gregory Adam Haile, J.D. "This resiliency also means providing our students with the support, services, and programs that will give them the capacity to withstand any challenges they face while in school or upon completion."

Investing in Our Students: The new spending plan includes a $5.3 million investment for student resiliency. This includes a student experience redesign project that focuses on how we attract and retain students, building additional capacity to support minority males to increase their retention and ensure their success, expanding student outreach to improve enrollment, virtual job shadowing, career readiness, and micro-credentialing badging.

Investing in Our People and Our Future: Broward College is committed to improving operational efficiencies from grant development and management solutions to student analytics. The College will support its people by adding for the first time parental leave, a tuition waiver for dependents of deceased employees to attend Broward College, expand tuition reimbursement to include temporary and grant-funded positions, and career paths for employees at the College where the job market is competitive. To reinforce its commitment to academic excellence, the College will hire 15 new faculty, and for the first time implement ‘fixed term’ assignments for 100 part-time faculty. The assignments will guarantee these faculty more stability with a maximum part-time teaching schedule, while creating a pool of highly qualified faculty who serve as tutors, mentors, and other roles in service to students.

In addition, the College will invest in more robust diversity, equity, and inclusion training, improved compensation equity, and retention by setting aside $4.7 million for a $2,000 one-time payment to recognize full-time employees who were instrumental in overcoming obstacles during the pandemic and have not received a salary increase since 2018.

As part of the $190.5 million makeup of the Building Resiliency: Investing in Our Students, Our People, Our Future budget, the College will continue investments in some of the work it began in 2020-2021 through The Greater Impact Budget. Among them, investment in improving the advisor to student ratio, embedded tutors in the classroom, addressing food insecurities through comfort closets/food pantries, peer mentoring, and Seahawk Summer Academy.

“This budget is all about an investment in our students, and the faculty and staff who work to ensure their success,” said Gloria Fernandez, chair of the Broward College District Board of Trustees. “We embarked on a balanced approach, taking into consideration the demanding times and challenges around us, to create a more responsive and resilient institution to meet our students’ needs.”

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