Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Florida K–12 District Partners with Facility Management Systems Provider

  • By Matt Jones
  • 05/15/24

Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., recently announced a partnership with facilities management platform Facilitron to incorporate its solutions across the district, according to a news release. Facilitron offers its services to 10,000 K–12 and higher-ed schools across 31 states to provide efficient and cost-effective ways of sharing their buildings and grounds. BCPS is the country’s sixth-largest school district, with 356 campuses and more than 250,000 students, the news release reports.

Facilitron functions like an Airbnb for public spaces. Public schools, universities, and private facility owners can rent out facilities like meeting rooms, theaters, athletic fields, and gyms as event spaces for individuals and community groups. The move has been one way that many public-school districts of all sizes are taking advantage of to relieve budget constraints.

“Historically, pen and paper management of these rental programs has been tedious and inconsistent, with the increased costs associated with facility upkeep, security and staffing taking away from the funding that the schools desperately need for their own programs,” said Jeff Benjamin, Facilitron CEO. “We’re utilizing our technology to transform the way public and private space operators manage and monetize their buildings, and we’re helping foster meaningful change, driving revenue which can go directly back to the classrooms.”

BCPS incorporates hundreds of gyms, cafeterias, fields, and parking lots; as well as 70 auditoriums and 16,000 classrooms, the news release reports. In addition to scheduling and administrative functions, Facilitron can also help event coordinators connect to building systems like HVAC and lighting control in their desired spaces.

“Using valuable data to make its decisions, BCPS is transforming the way it runs its facility rental programs and quickly becoming a model for our country’s safest schools,” said Benjamin. “We’re proud to be working with forward-thinking districts like BCPS across the country, and we’re excited to continue to grow and develop our platform capabilities to help schools and communities successfully share resources.”

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • University of Kansas Breaks Ground on Entrepreneurship Hub

    The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new KU Entrepreneurship Hub, according to university news. The Hub is part of the university’s School of Business and will include spaces for experiential learning and programming.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Surging Demand for Student Housing Fuels Major Campus Investment Opportunities

    University leaders throughout the U.S. are accelerating plans to modernize and expand student housing as enrollment stabilizes and demand for on-campus living rebounds. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that total postsecondary enrollment is projected to grow through the end of the decade, with undergraduate enrollment alone expected to increase by more than 8 percent by 2030.

  • abstract illustration of school gym

    How the Gymnasium Can Serve as a Model for Learning Space Design

    Multipurpose gyms work because flexibility was built into the brief from the start, not retrofitted later. The same logic applies to academic spaces.