{"id":84950,"date":"2022-08-27T12:27:08","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T17:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84950"},"modified":"2022-08-27T12:27:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T17:27:08","slug":"84950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=84950","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

DeSantis removes Broward County school board members after grand jury report<\/a><\/p>\n

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed and replaced four members of the Broward County school board on Friday after a grand jury that was convened to examine the failures that led up to the 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida recommended the action. DeSantis said in a statement that it\u2019s his \u201cduty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance\u201d; pointing to evidence laid out in the grand jury report released last week that found the ousted board members had\u00a0displayed all of those disqualifications<\/a>\u00a0when it came to a program called SMART.<\/p>\n

In the 122-page report released Friday, the panel recommended that DeSantis suspend board members Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson. A former member, Rosalind Osgood, also was targeted, but she has since been elected to the Florida Senate and taken office.<\/p>\n

Levinson, the board\u2019s chairwoman, angrily slammed the report as a \u201cpolitical hatchet job\u201d orchestrated by the governor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is nasty partisan politics. He should be ashamed of himself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u2026 Former Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie resigned last year after he was indicted for allegedly lying to the grand jury. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. The district is the nation\u2019s sixth-largest, with more than 270,000 students at 333 campuses, and an annual budget of $4 billion.<\/p>\n

The school board has nine members, including two, Debra Hixon and Lori Alhadeff, who were elected after Hixon\u2019s husband Chris and Alhadeff\u2019s daughter Alyssa died in the Stoneman Douglas shooting. They ran on platforms promoting better campus security. Alhadeff, in particular, has frequently been at odds with the targeted members, particularly over Runcie\u2019s performance before his resignation.<\/p>\n

Stand with Parkland, the group that represents most of the victims\u2019 families, issued a statement that applauded the report, saying it \u201cproves what we already suspected \u2013 acts of incompetence, negligence and coverup and a School Board (that) is unwilling to face the facts.\u201d President Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina died in the attack, called on DeSantis to remove the four members from the board.<\/p>\n

The grand jury said that Runcie\u2019s and the accused board members\u2019 \u201cuninformed or even misinformed decisions, incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight\u201d has led to massive cost overruns and delays in a school safety and education program approved by county voters in 2014. The report says the $1 billion program that was supposed to be completed in 2021 is now projected to cost $1.5 billion when it is finished in 2025 \u2014 estimates the jury called \u201cwishcasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis doubling of time and almost 50 percent increase in cost did not happen overnight,\u201d the grand jury wrote. \u201cIt was a slow-boiling frog that resulted from years of mismanagement from multiple (district) officials whose mistakes were compounded by the Board, which has\u2026.refused to hold (district) leadership to account.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suspect this will be a broadly popular move around the state, though perhaps less so in Broward County itself. As for the new school board members, two of them have previous experience serving on school boards, and all four appear to have\u00a0solid credentials in the community<\/a>. And with the governor merely following the recommendations of the duly empaneled grand jury, the complaints from ousted school board members like Levinson that this is nothing more than \u201cnasty partisan politics\u201d isn\u2019t likely to resonate with most voters.<\/p>\n

According to the grand jury\u2019s 122-page report, district officials and the ousted board members displayed \u201can almost fanatical desire to control data and use it to manipulate public perception,\u201d and were seemingly more interested in the building the district\u2019s \u201cbrand\u201d while treating students more like statistics.<\/strong> If the voters of Broward County disagree with that conclusion I suppose they can always re-elect the now-former board members at the next opportunity, but for now there\u2019s a new board, and one that\u2019s hopefully more accountable to parents, students, and staff\u2026 not mention one that a grand jury doesn\u2019t accuse of being more interested in student safety than public relations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DeSantis removes Broward County school board members after grand jury report Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed and replaced four members of the Broward County school board on Friday after a grand jury that was convened to examine the failures that led up to the 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84951,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84950\/revisions\/84951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}