By Florida Daily Investigations
FORT LAUDERDALE — One week after a blistering internal audit exposed serious flaws in Broward County Public Schools’ latest construction procurement, district leadership returned to the School Board Tuesday asking for a do-over— a move critics say comes only after Superintendent Howard Hepburn and Chief Operations Officer Wanda Paul drove the process into a dead end of their own making.
Superintendent Hepburn announced plans to ask the Board to reject all bids submitted under RFQ 26-059, the very solicitation his administration rushed forward despite repeated warnings from Board members and internal legal counsel.
The decision effectively concedes what the audit made clear: the procurement process was fundamentally broken from the start.
But rejecting the bids does not erase the damage. Instead, it leaves the Board facing the same crisis members warned about months ago — no clear path forward, looming deadlines, and the real possibility of declaring an “emergency” to extend AECOM’s contract because leadership failed to plan.
A Manufactured Crisis — Then a Reset
The audit, authored by Chief Auditor Dave Rhodes, concluded that RFQ 26-059 was plagued by planning deficiencies, procedural deviations, and a rushed timeline that may have violated Florida’s competitive selection laws.
Yet at Tuesday’s meeting, the administration framed rejection of the bids as a responsible corrective step — without acknowledging that Hepburn and Wanda Paul were the architects of the urgency now being cited as justification.
District spokesman John Sullivan said the Superintendent is “continuing to review” the audit and will determine “appropriate next steps,” adding that personnel matters will be addressed later.
That response did little to reassure Board members or observers who note that the same leadership that caused the problem is now asking for more time and discretion to fix it.
Warnings Ignored — On the Record
The current crisis did not come out of nowhere.
As early as April, Board members publicly warned Superintendent Hepburn and COO Wanda Paul that the district was on a dangerous timeline. Board Chair Sarah Leonardi cautioned that the Board could find itself in January 2026 with no options if procurement went sideways.
Her concern was direct and explicit.
Wanda Paul dismissed the warning.
“I think that we have sufficient time even if there is a protest,” Paul told the Board in April, assuring members that staff had learned from past failures and would do things differently.
The audit now proves that assurance was flatly wrong.
Not only was there insufficient time — the administration failed to follow basic procurement steps, ignored the Board’s instruction to review the RFQ before issuance, and then leaned on “urgency” to justify bypassing evaluation safeguards.
Hepburn’s Non-Involvement Claim Rings Hollow
Superintendent Hepburn has attempted to distance himself from the most controversial decisions, telling auditors he “was not involved” in directing the Qualifications Selection Evaluation Committee (QSEC) to waive scoring and ranking.
But the audit — and the timeline — tell a different story.
Hepburn:
• Allowed RFQ 26-059 to be issued without Board review, despite explicit direction to bring it back,
• Presided over a procurement that collapsed under predictable legal and procedural flaws,
• Failed to intervene when QSEC was stripped of its statutory role, and
• Now asks the Board to clean up the mess by rejecting bids and considering emergency actions.
Leadership, critics argue, cannot be avoided simply by claiming non-involvement after the consequences arrive.
Wanda Paul’s Role: Pressure, Assurances, and a Broken Process
If Hepburn enabled the failure, the audit makes clear that COO Wanda Paul drove it.
Auditors documented that:
• Paul pushed staff and legal counsel to keep all three vendors in play even after none met financial requirements,
• Paul was identified by the Assistant General Counsel as the administrator who wanted to proceed regardless,
• Paul oversaw a solicitation riddled with contradictions — two firms vs. “no less than two,” CMA-OR vs. program management, financial criteria no one could justify,
• And Paul assured the Board repeatedly that timelines were under control — assurances now proven false.
When QSEC met on October 15, members were not given vendor materials, were presented with pre-written motions, and were steered into waiving evaluation altogether.
One motion referenced the “School Board Administration’s desire” to negotiate with all three firms — a desire auditors traced directly back to Wanda Paul.
Now the ‘Emergency’ They Were Warned About
Ironically, the emergency scenario district lawyers warned against earlier this year — and that Paul downplayed — has now arrived.
AECOM’s contract expires January 17, 2026. District attorneys had previously told the Board that extensions beyond that date were generally prohibited and legally risky.
Now, with RFQ 26-059 likely dead, Board member Allen Zeman says the district may have no choice but to declare an emergency and extend AECOM anyway — precisely the outcome Board members feared and leadership assured them would not happen.
“This is exactly where we said we didn’t want to be,” one Board observer noted privately after Tuesday’s meeting.
Jacobs, Piggybacking, and the Unanswered Question
The audit — and subsequent reporting — also revived lingering concerns about Jacobs Engineering.
Earlier this year, Wanda Paul attempted to piggyback a Duval County contract with Jacobs — an effort the Board rejected. Jacobs later reemerged as one of only three proposers under RFQ 26-059.
The audit does not allege favoritism, but it raises uncomfortable questions: Why was a flawed process repeatedly bent to keep all vendors alive, rather than restarted when requirements failed? And why were competitive safeguards discarded instead of enforced?
Those questions remain unanswered.
Conclusion: Accountability Deferred, Consequences Immediate
Tuesday’s School Board meeting made one thing clear: the administration now admits the process failed.
What it has not admitted — at least not publicly — is who failed the process.
Superintendent Hepburn and COO Wanda Paul ignored warnings, bypassed oversight, dismissed concerns, and pressed forward until the system collapsed. Now, they ask the Board for flexibility, emergency authority, and patience.
The Board must decide whether rejecting RFQ 26-059 is enough — or whether real accountability is required before history repeats itself yet again.
Because if the past decade has shown anything, it’s this:
In Broward County, construction crises don’t happen by accident — they happen when leadership refuses to listen.
