In true DeSantis fashion, his Broward School Board burns down the house | Editorial
Florida’s second-largest school district has been, no doubt, a dumpster fire for years.
Broward County Public Schools has been plagued by the mishandling of school security in the lead-up to the Parkland shooting in 2018. Its previous schools superintendent was arrested for perjury last year. The district has been accused of wasting tax dollars. A statewide grand jury report reached the conclusion some of its School Board members shouldn’t remain in office.
That dumpster fire turned into an all-out wildfire after five School Board members appointed by the governor fired Superintendent Vickie Cartwright. These unelected officials make up the majority of the board and voted to oust her in a late-night meeting Monday. There was no notice to the public that her firing even was going to be discussed.
Most of DeSantis’ appointees took office after he suspended four school board members this year following the grand jury’s recommendations. They will be gone in a matter of days (only one of them will stay on for another two years). Next Tuesday, four new board members elected by voters will be sworn in, the Herald reported.
Across the state, including in Miami-Dade, DeSantis-backed candidates won several school board seats. Those who assume it will be business as usual don’t understand what DeSantis’ endgame is. What happened in Broward is a taste of the scorched-earth politics that will follow. Be prepared for school boards to launch culture wars on things like LGBTQ books and sex education. Superintendents, who serve at the pleasure of elected members, will have to walk the line.
The Broward school district has had many issues that predate Cartwright, and she’s been criticized for not doing enough to address them. The district, under former Superintendent Robert Runcie, let the convicted Parkland shooter fall through the cracks prior to the tragedy, then tried to keep information about his disciplinary record from the public. A recent audit found the school district improperly approved contracts with longtime vendors who overcharged the district and parents $1.4 million. That’s the reason the five DeSantis-appointees gave to fire Cartwright. But less than a month ago, the School Board had already decided to reprimand her on a long list of issues and required her to provide a progress report in 90 days.
Cartwright’s firing, just months after she was hired permanently in February, does not feel like a meaningful step toward fixing problems. It’s a message that the DeSantis gang — emboldened after his landslide reelection victory — will set the house on fire to get what it wants. It doesn’t feel like a local decision but one decided at the higher levels of state government. In September, the chair of the State Board of Education suggested he and his colleagues remove Cartwright from office, but they don’t have the authority to do so.
Cartwright, under orders from the School Board, defied DeSantis’ ban on mask mandates last year. The district was fined. The Miami-Dade School Board also went against the governor, and two of its members were replaced by candidates he supported in the primary elections.
The point couldn’t be clearer.
In the case of Broward, the governor’s appointees won’t have to deal with the ramifications of their hasty decision. It will be up to the members sworn in next week. That’s if they don’t vote to reinstate Cartwright.
Her dismissal will do little to make the public trust Broward County Public Schools again. It only proves that DeSantis — adept at using Florida’s system of government to his advantage — can make decisions even in parts of the state where his policies are unpopular. If it happened in deep-blue Broward County, it can happen anywhere else.
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