DeSantis appointees sworn into Broward School Board; new chair, vice chair named
The four new Broward School Board members appointed last Friday by Gov. Ron DeSantis were sworn in Tuesday morning and all vowed to bring change to the school district, despite three of their terms ending in just a few months.
Ryan Reiter, 36, stepped into District 1; Torey Alston, 38, into District 2; Manuel “Nandy” A. Serrano, 52, into District 6; and Kevin Tynan, 63, into the countywide at-large seat in District 8. All of them will be replaced by newly elected officials after the Nov. 8 runoff elections, except for Alston, who will stay until former board member Patricia Good’s term ends in 2024.
None of the appointees are on the ballot in the four Broward School Board races in the Nov. 8 runoff election.
Following the swearing-in ceremony, the new board chose Alston as its next chair and Lori Alhadeff, the District 4 representative, as its next vice chair, during a special school board meeting.
DeSantis had appointed Alston, a former chief of staff at the Florida Department of Transportation in Tallahassee, to the Broward County Commission in November to replace Commissioner Dale Holness, who resigned to run for a U.S. House seat. (Holness lost to Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick in the Democratic primary on Aug. 23.)
READ MORE: DeSantis appoints four new Broward School Board members. Here’s what we know about them
Voters overwhelmingly reelected Alhadeff, 47, in the Aug. 23 primary to her second term on the board. Her 14-year-old daughter Alyssa was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High mass shooting in Parkland on Feb. 14, 2018, which led to the deaths of 14 students and three faculty members.
The four new board members replaced the four that DeSantis ousted Friday: Board Chair Laurie Rich Levinson, Board Vice Chair Patricia Good and longtime board members Donna Korn and Ann Murray.
Korn is the only one who’s trying to return; she’s on the Nov. 8 ballot and will face businessman Allen Zeman. Each garnered about 30 percent of the vote in the primary, leading to the Nov. 8 runoff. A candidate had to win 50 percent of the vote plus one to be elected in the primary.
DeSantis said he removed the four board members because a statewide grand jury report, released in mid-August, recommended that he suspend the four plus Rosalind Osgood, a former board member who resigned to run for the Florida Senate. Osgood was elected to the Florida Senate in March; DeSantis’ office has said Osgood is not subject to the governor’s suspension authority.
The grand jury report accused the board members and former Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie of “incompetent management” and “neglect of duty” over the cost overruns of a $1 billion school-safety program.
In 2019, DeSantis asked the Florida Supreme Court to impanel the grand jury and task its 18 members to investigate school safety, including the Broward school district’s response to the Parkland mass shooting. Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former Douglas High student when he opened fire at the school, pleaded guilty and is undergoing a sentencing trial in Broward County circuit court.
Runcie, who was indicted by the grand jury on a perjury charge in April 2021, pleaded not guilty but stepped down as superintendent last August. The board hired Vickie Cartwright as interim superintendent in July 2021 and hired her as the permanent superintendent in February. Runcie now works with Chiefs for Change, a national superintendent advocacy group.
Shakeup of the Broward board
The four new members of the nine-person board, along with a fifth DeSantis appointed at the end of April — Daniel Foganholi, who replaced Osgood — have transformed the board from an all-female and Democratically aligned body four months ago to a majority-male and majority-Republican one. All four of the new board members are men; all four of the ousted board members are women.
Partial proof of the dramatic shift came when Cartwright mistakenly called Chair Alston “madam” during the meeting Tuesday, immediately apologizing.
“Please forgive me. Old habits,” she said, eliciting chuckles from everyone in the packed room.
Foganholi will also be out in November; he didn’t run for another term as the board’s District 5 member because he announced a bid for the City of Coral Springs commission.
READ MORE: DeSantis suspends four Broward County School Board members, appoints replacements
As their first order of business Tuesday morning, the nine new members unanimously elected Alston as board chair, after Foganholi nominated him.
District 3 board member Sarah Leonardi nominated Alhadeff to be board chair, but the motion failed in a 5-to-4 vote. All of the DeSantis appointees struck down the measure.
“As chair, I’ll be fair. I’ll be inclusive. I’ll be balanced. But I’ll also appreciate hearing comments from the public and key stakeholders even when we may disagree. I want this board to be collegial, engage in respectful debate, refrain from personal attacks and leave the partisanship at the door,” Alston said. “Yes, our board looks collectively different from just a few days ago. Yes, there will be additional scrutiny on this board collectively. ... We must look forward, but we must learn from the mistakes of the past.”
School boards, funded by local property taxes, are nonpartisan. Board members are elected, usually not appointed by a governor.
Board members then unanimously elected Alhadeff as vice chair, after Board Member Debra Hixon, representing District 9, nominated her. Tynan had nominated Reiter, his fellow DeSantis appointee, as vice chair, but Reiter declined the nomination.
“I promise to work hard,” Alhadeff said. “I look forward to collaborating with my colleagues to bring back trust, respect and accountability to this board.”
Changes on the horizon
Tynan previously served on the Broward County School Board. He was appointed to the board in 2009 by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, replacing Beverly Gallagher, who was suspended after being arrested on federal corruption charges. (She was convicted.) Crist is now the Democratic candidate running against DeSantis in the November election.
Tynan said the “people have changed but the problems have not” in the school district.
Tynan, a former chairman of the Broward Republican Party and an attorney with the firm Richardson & Tynan, said he’s banking on the budget to effect change.
The Broward school district’s annual budget was about $4.8 billion for the 2021-2022 school year, up from $4.5 billion in the previous year. The school board will hold its final public budget hearing on Sept. 13, when it will vote to adopt the budget. Broward County Public Schools is the nation’s sixth-largest school district with about 256,000 students.
“If it wasn’t budget season, it’d be tougher,” he said.
Reiter, the director of government relations for Kaufman Lynn Construction, said he wants the school board to abandon “the old ways of just rubber-stamping.”
“It’s going to take a lot of work, but I think we can — even if it’s a small, small amount of change. It still makes a bigger impact in the grand scheme of things. We want to set the groundwork for the members who will come on in November.”
Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco urged them to prioritize education over politics.
“I heard all four of you say the number one thing why you’re sitting there was for the students,” she told them during the public comment period. “I’m going to hope that you’re not sitting there for the governor, but for the students.”
Grand jury findings
Moving forward, board members noted how they want to study the grand jury report, evaluate metrics used to measure student success and failure and review safety concerns that persist in schools four years after the Parkland mass shooting.
They also mentioned looking at the $800 million bond program that has nearly doubled in price since voters approved it in 2014 and has severely been delayed.
On Monday, the state’s Department of Education sent a letter to Cartwright outlining some safety issues highlighted by the grand jury.
“I have significant concern about some of the items mentioned,” said Tim Hay, director of the department’s Office of Safe Schools, who penned the missive. He added he would arrange a meeting with Cartwright this week.
John Sullivan, the school district’s chief communications and legislative affairs officer, said the district “intends to fully cooperate with the state.”
“Since joining the District on August 2, 2021, the safety of our students and staff has been the Superintendent’s top priority. As a result, the District has already implemented significant changes to address concerns outlined in the FLDOE letter, specifically to improve school safety and the management of the SMART Bond Program,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
READ MORE: Broward voters approve a new tax hike for schools. Here’s who won for the school board
