Broward School Board member Torey Alston is being accused by a fellow board member of violating state ethics laws by pushing for a vote that would give charter schools a windfall of more than $100 million before later disclosing his wife does business with some charter schools.
The allegation was filed with the State Ethics Commission this week by Allen Zeman, a Democrat who has become increasingly critical of Alston, a Republican appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Ethics Commission doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of investigations until they are completed, but Zeman provided a copy of the complaint Friday to the South Florida Sun Sentinel in response to a public records request to the Broward School District.
Alston’s wife, Candice Alston, owns Interim Healthcare of Pompano Beach, a medical staffing company that does business with charter schools. Alston was an initial owner but removed himself from the company after being appointed to the School Board in August 2022.
When Alston met with the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board recently, he was vague about the nature of the conflict, and which schools she works for.
“She has done some work with a few different (charter school) providers. Not here, just in general,” Alston said in the meeting.
In October, a series of lawsuits were filed by different charter schools to try to recoup money from a 2018 voter referendum to pay for teacher salary increases, safety and security and mental health. The School Board at the time decided to give charter schools a few million to hire safe school officers but not a proportional share of the revenues collected based on student enrollment.
But several courts later ruled in favor of charter schools collecting a proportional share in other districts that held referendums, giving the charter schools leverage to sue Broward as well. The district was trying to negotiate a settlement when the state Board of Education got involved, determining the district was out of compliance and must resolve the issue quickly or the state may withhold funds.
On March 20, Alston asked the School Board to approve a motion “to take any and all actions necessary to ensure the school district’s immediate compliance” with the state’s demands on charter schools. A modified version of the motion passed unanimously. Alston did not state any potential conflicts in that meeting. Zeman said in his complaint that Alston also advocated for the settlement in at least five closed-door meetings.
But when the School Board agreed to an initial settlement on April 16, Alston recused himself and said he would fill out a conflict of interest form. He didn’t say the specific reason.
“While there is no direct conflict, and out of an additional abundance of caution, including my communication with counsel in closed session, I will abstain and not vote on the item coming before the board,” Alston said prior to the April 16 vote. “I will file the appropriate document and step off the dais at this time.”
He recused himself again on May 21, when several contracts for individual charter schools came up, as well as a vote on June 18 when the School Board agreed to approve a $108 million settlement with charter schools. The settlements aren’t all finalized and the total bill is likely to be around $120 million, Zeman told the Sun Sentinel.
At all three meetings, Alston filed conflict of interest forms that said it was related to “the special gain or loss of my wife, who is now the full owner and day-to-day administrator of a company; I was the initial investor in the business.”
“Torey Alston, as a member of the Broward County School Board, advocated multiple times in public and closed-door meetings for Broward County Schools to pay Broward charter schools roughly $120 million,” Zeman wrote in the complaint.
“At the same time, a company that he owned in 2022, and continues to be owned by an immediate family member, received revenue from at least one Broward County charter school,” Zeman wrote. “Thus, Torey Alston advocated for revenue to flow to charter schools when at least one of the charter schools was distributing funds to a company from which he derives financial gain.”
The complaint said Alston’s eventual recusal “does not excuse his repeated advocacy, over a six- month period, for payment and forms the basis for an ethics violation, using his public office for private gain.”
In a statement to the Sun Sentinel, Alston dismissed the complaint as political, tying it to a heated race he’s in. Zeman’s former assistant, Rebecca Thompson, is running to try to unseat Alston.
Alston noted that Zeman was the subject of an investigation after slapping the buttocks of an employee during a break in a School Board meeting in December 2022. The employee said he didn’t want to file a complaint, but the district’s Special Investigate Unit sent it to the state Ethics Commission. The commission dismissed the complaint, saying it didn’t fall within its purview.
The new complaint “was filed by my male colleague who used his right hand to hit a male district employee on the buttocks embarrassing him in front of other staff and witnessed by another board member,” Alston said in a statement. “I’m not surprised my ethically challenged colleague is attempting to rescue his former employee’s sinking campaign that isn’t focused on issues and our children.
“He’s a part of a coordinated effort to block a young, qualified Black man to remain on the school board,” Alston said. “The optics of this race is black and white and the voters will see his political games. I will be collegial but he’s politically over the edge.”
Zeman told the Sun Sentinel politics was not a factor in his complaint.
“Whenever I see someone doing something that’s against the law, I always report it to the appropriate authorities, and in this case, it’s the Florida Commission on Ethics,” he said.
If the state Ethics Commission finds probable cause of a violation, it can impose a range of sanctions, from reprimands to fines to referrals to law enforcement.
Alston is at least the fourth Broward School Board member to face state ethics complaints in the past two years. In addition to Zeman, Brenda Fam was investigated related to allegations of touching the buttocks of an 18-year old student, and Debbi Hixon was investigated related to a job she had with FTX, a cryptocurrency company that went bankrupt and whose founder went to prison. Those cases were all dismissed with no sanctions for the board members.
Earlier this year, Alston filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s inspector general alleging board members Hixon, Sarah Leonardi and Jeff Holness may have improperly colluded with the Broward Teachers Union to give raises. That department declined to open an investigation.
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