Some board members weigh in after DeSantis appointee hints at removing Broward superintendent
After the state’s Board of Education chair insinuated Thursday that he wants Broward Schools Superintendent Vickie Cartwright suspended or fired, three of the nine Broward School Board members said Friday Cartwright has been doing a good job and they don’t plan on dismissing her.
Three of the other board members — Vice Chair Lori Alhadeff, Daniel Foganholi, Manuel Serrano — didn’t respond Friday to multiple emails, texts and phone calls from the Herald seeking comment about the remarks of Florida Board of Education Chair Tom Grady, appointed to the board by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Board member Kevin Tynan wrote in an email Friday to the Herald that he was unavailable for an interview. Board member Nora Rupert, in another email, said she was vacationing in a remote part of Canada and had “no comment for now.”
Torey Alston, the newly elected School Board chair, issued a statement Friday afternoon: “As chair of the school board, I always welcome feedback from all of our stakeholders, our parents, community groups, and education leaders. Student achievement remains our number one priority. I have been very consistent and clear that we have a governance and fiduciary responsibility to the children and families of Broward County Schools. We must hold the superintendent, general counsel and chief auditor accountable as they manage the day to day affairs of the district. The community should be assured the board is competent, independent minded, and brings a diversity of experiences who all know Broward County.”
Alston did not comment further when asked about Cartwright’s performance. The board hired Cartwright as superintendent in February, the first woman to hold the post in the district’s 107-year history. She had been the interim superintendent since August 2021.
During a Florida Board of Education meeting Thursday, Grady asked whether the board, which oversees school districts in Florida, could suspend Cartwright. After being told that only school boards could hire or fire a superintendent, the former state representative from Naples suggested the Broward School Board should consider such a move.
“Well, hopefully that process will play itself out. I wish that there was something that this board could do,” Grady said at the Florida Department of Education board meeting. “Perhaps we can in the future.”
READ MORE: DeSantis-appointed board chair asks if state can suspend Broward Schools superintendent
Grady accused Cartwright of defying a July 30, 2021, order by DeSantis before the start of school last year, which said parents should decide whether students wore masks or not, not school districts. At the time, the delta variant of COVID-19 was leading to more than 20,000 new COVID cases a day being reported in Florida, the highest level of new daily cases in the pandemic.
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DeSantis’ order came after the Broward School Board voted unanimously on July 28, 2021, to mandate facial coverings for students. Cartwright complied with the board’s 9-0 vote.
Grady also questioned whether she has responded quickly enough after the grand jury report was released on Aug. 19. The statewide grand jury investigation found major cost overruns and delays in an $800 million Broward school-safety program approved by voters in 2014.
DeSantis sought the grand jury to investigate school safety after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland in Broward, which led to the deaths of 17 students and faculty members.
Cartwright presented a report, revised Sept. 13, to the Department of Education and the School Board outlining the steps she has taken during and after the completion of the grand jury report, including replacing the district’s chief of school safety, chief communications officer, chief academic officer and chief building official, among other steps.
Grady didn’t respond to multiple requests from the Herald for comment Thursday or Friday; it’s unclear what future actions, if any, he’s mulling or if he has reached out to any of the Broward School Board members.
Asked for comment from Cartwright on Friday, John Sullivan, a district spokesman, said, “The Superintendent’s focus is on the operations of BCPS schools.”
‘Screams politics’
The Cartwright issue comes only a few weeks after DeSantis suspended four Broward School Board members. DeSantis named four men — Alston, Serrano, Tynan and Ryan Reiter, all with ties to him or to the Republican Party — to replace the four women he suspended: Board Chair Laurie Rich Levinson, Board Vice Chair Patricia Good and longtime board members Donna Korn and Ann Murray.
In April, DeSantis had appointed a fifth board member, Foganholi, to replace Rosalind Osgood, who stepped down from the board to run for a State Senate seat. She was elected to the Florida Senate in March.
Thus, of the nine members now on the Broward School Board, five have been appointed by DeSantis in the state’s most heavily Democratic county, where more than twice as many voters were registered as Democrats (597,190) than Republicans (262,390), according to Aug. 17 data from the Florida Division of Elections.
School board members generally are elected, not appointed.
Dana Thompson Dorsey, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of South Florida, said the comments by Grady, coupled with DeSantis removing the board members, are concerning given that school boards are local, non-partisan governmental bodies funded by countywide property taxes.
“This is a big deal,” she said in an interview Friday. “It’s highly unusual, and it’s problematic. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the governor being directly involved in school district issues of this sort.
“The governor is nowhere mentioned in the statutes when it comes to school boards, so this sort of screams politics,’’ she continued.
She said this signals to other school districts in the state to avoid disagreeing with DeSantis.
“It’s a warning,” she said. “And it’s going to have a chilling effect moving forward with all other school districts, no doubt.”
DeSantis cites report in removing board members
When he announced the removal of the board members on Aug. 26, DeSantis cited the grand jury report, which recommended the suspension of the four board members. The report said the board’s “incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight” resulted in major cost overruns and delays in the district’s $800 million school-safety program, which voters approved in 2014.
The grand jury report also recommended removing Osgood, who is no longer on the board, and former superintendent Robert Runcie, who left the district in August 2021. The grand jury indicted Runcie in April 2021, charging him with one count of perjury related to his testimony to the jury last year. Runcie has pleaded not guilty and his case is pending.
Previous grand juries over the past 25 years have blasted the Broward School board for corruption, mismanagement and neglect, but none of the other Florida governors, either Republican or Democrat, removed board members unless they were charged with a crime. None of the four board members that DeSantis removed have been charged with a crime.
Like a ‘hostile takeover’
To Thompson Dorsey, the USF professor, what’s happening with the Broward School Board is like a hostile corporate merger.
“Similar to a hostile takeover, you bring down those who are in power in order to take over the company, or in this case, the district,‘’ she said.
“If you get a majority of the School Board, if you also then get control of the overall management of the district itself ... then you have control of an entire school district,” she added.
READ MORE: Was DeSantis’ suspension of four Broward school board members politics or much needed?
Three board members support Cartwright
The Herald reached out to the nine Broward School Board members Friday to ask about Grady’s comments.
Board Member Debra Hixon, who has represented the countywide At-Large Seat 9 since 2020 and was a longtime teacher in the district, wrote in an email: “I will only comment that I think she [Cartwright] is doing a good job and that we need to stay focused on student achievement.”
Hixon’s husband, Chris Hixon, died during the Stoneman Douglas shootings. He was the school’s athletic director and was killed while trying to disarm the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. In mid-October, jurors will decide whether Cruz should be executed for his rampage.
READ MORE: Surprise decision in Parkland school shooting murder trial: Defense rests its case
Board Member Sarah Leonardi, also a former Broward teacher who was elected in 2020 to represent District 3, wrote in an email to the Herald that she “would not consider dismissing Dr. Cartwright right now.”
“I am rather perplexed as to why Mr. Grady would make those comments given a multitude of circumstances, the most important being that Dr. Cartwright was not with the district during the grand jury investigation,” Leonardi said in an interview with the Herald.
“Further, I’m a bit incredulous that we are still talking about mask policies. I’m not sure why Mr. Grady is still dwelling on a matter that was settled nearly a year ago.”
Board Member Reiter, the DeSantis appointee who replaced Murray in the District 1 seat, hinted in a text to the Herald that he’s not planning on letting Cartwright go.
“At this point, with the information we have, I’m satisfied with Dr. Cartwright’s performance. With the help of the new reform board, I believe we can set this district on a positive path forward,” he said.
Reiter, along with Foganholi, Serrano and Tynan are not on the ballot for the Nov. 8 elections and will no longer be on the board after the elections. Alston, the board chair, replaced Good in the District 2 seat, whose term does not expire until 2024.
Subliminal messaging?
For Anna Fusco, the Broward Teachers Union president, it’s irrelevant whether Grady talks to the board members on a one-on-one basis or not.
“I think he already kind of did it. He spoke it out to the world, and everybody’s talking about it. I think they heard it out loud like we all heard it,” she said. “Was that subliminal messaging? Was that a request to read between the lines? And are they willing to do something like that when there really is no grounds? There’s no grounds.”
Fusco said it’s “unrealistic” to think Cartwright could have done more at this point in response to the grand jury report, which was released only four weeks ago, and said that with masks, she was “literally trying to make sure people were safe.”
“I don’t agree with everything the superintendent is doing,” Fusco said. “But I don’t think it warrants coming in and obliterating everyone in our county.
“At the end of the day, everybody that is an employee of rank-and-file, they’re really tired of this type of political game and feeling like they’re the pawns and the uncertainty,” she said.
“Right now everybody is feeling such immense stress and pressure. And that’s not good for the population of the students.”
