Anyone familiar with the challenges currently confronting our School Board, particularly the fate of its embattled superintendent, knows these are difficult times that need to be addressed by serious people.
This is not the time for ideology-driven politics to infect these local discussions with the toxic tribalism that has poisoned our national discourse.
Just as party affiliation should have no role in electing School Board members, politics should play no part in determining how they resolve their issues with Superintendent Mark Rendell, whose performance over the past four years put his future with the district in doubt.
We don’t need to have the Vero Beach mayor inferentially questioning School Board Chairman Laura Zorc’s allegiance to the Republican Party, merely because her strong presentation at a recent Taxpayers’ Association luncheon drew praise from local Democrats.
The Taxpayers’ Association is, after all, a non-partisan organization.
Besides, shouldn’t we welcome this all-too-rare example of bipartisan civility? How can anyone find anything negative in the Democrats of Indian River posting on its Facebook page a positive review of Zorc’s appearance at the event?
“Some hard questions were raised,” the post stated, “but she handled them with transparency and respect.”
Anybody see anything wrong with that? Mayor Val Zudans did, apparently.
Posting on his “Indian River Patriots” Facebook page, Zudans wrote: “The IRC Dem Party Chair sat in the front row at the same table as Jackie Rosario, Mara Schiff and Stacey Klim” at that Taxpayers’ Association meeting, adding, “Apparently, the local Dem party is satisfied.”
Was this – as some viewed it – an attempt to infer that Zorc, a staunch conservative who actively campaigned for Ted Cruz and remains a member of the county Republicans’ executive committee, has gotten too cozy with those on the other side of the political aisle?
We need to be better than that, especially when it comes to our troubled school district, which under Rendell’s leadership has become a financial and administrative mess.
Teachers are fleeing in droves. Employees continue to complain of a management philosophy of bullying and intimidation. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been wasted on legal fees and investigations.
Academic performance is down.
And now there’s news the district’s health insurance fund has for years been used to cover the costs of state-mandated, bus drivers’ physicals – medical exams that were, under the terms of the support staff’s union contract, supposed to be charged to the district.
According to recent emails between Rendell and Mike Murray, president of the Communication Workers of America’s Local 3180, the superintendent refused to correct the mistake, even after being notified by the union late last month.
Instead, Rendell responded with a March 29 email, stating he would make the necessary corrections in the next budget and fully reimburse the health fund for the erroneous charges.
“As you all are aware, we have been short-handed in the Finance Department this year, and a there have been a lot of people handling a lot of additional duties,” Rendell wrote, adding, “My goal is to finish out this budget year with as few changes as possible.”
In his response, Murray wrote that he disagreed with Rendell’s decision to not act on a “direct violation of our contract” and was left with “no other choice but to proceed with filing a grievance,” which he did.
Murray said Rendell finally agreed to stop using the health fund to pay for the physicals, but the grievance will not be withdrawn until the district fully reimburses the fund – an amount in excess of $50,000.
“We still don’t know how long this has been going on,” Murray said, “or how much they owe.”
We don’t know a lot of things about the district’s budgeting since Rendell ran off his chief financial officer, Carter Morrison, with a bunch of bogus charges earlier this school year.
Wouldn’t you like to know how much the district has spent on investigations of employees during Rendell’s reign? Zorc would.
In fact, she sent Rendell an email seeking copies of “all engagement letters of employee investigations since June of 2015,” requesting the investigators’ final invoices. That was on Feb. 15.
Rendell promptly responded, writing that he would “have staff work on this starting next week.” It’s now mid-April, and Zorc is still waiting for the information.
Is it any wonder that Zorc and three other board members have decided not to renew Rendell’s contract beyond the 2019-20 school year?
Do you really need to ask why Zorc wants to fire him?
Yet, Rendell’s tough-talking allies are out there in the community – enlisting aid and comfort from partisan friends in the media, spewing venom and alternate facts on social media and trying to inject inane political rhetoric into the conversation.
The worst among them is this gasbag Shawn Frost, a former School Board member who continues to embarrass himself on social media with partisan nonsense.
Did you see his Facebook rant, commenting on Zudans’ post Friday about Zorc’s presentation at the Taxpayers’ Association luncheon? He comes across as angry and even unhinged in his desperate attempt to support and defend Rendell, whom he described as a “conservative superintendent.”
Frost claims in his lengthy comment that Zorc was elected to serve as chairman by “Dems” and that the board is “Democrat controlled 3-2,” ignoring the fact that four of the panel’s five members are Republicans – probably because they’re not his kind of Republicans.
He also makes silly claims that the “Dems applaud Zorc’s fiscal policies as she wastes TENS of thousands in search costs,” alluding to the money the district will spend to find a new superintendent, and mentions the “HEAVY legal costs” that will result from her “handling of this issue.”
That, in every way, is ridiculous.
First, the cost of the district ridding itself of Rendell is a fraction of the costs of the legal fees, lawsuits and investigations – as well as the expense of replacing teachers and staff – resulting from his wrongheaded decisions.
Second, there will be no legal costs, “HEAVY” or otherwise, as long as the board fulfills the terms of Rendell’s contract. This is especially true if he resigns.
Frost also rambled on about conservatives getting the “wool pulled over their eyes,” his regrets over fundraising and “clearing the field” for Zorc, and how Rendell “got into studying political science after meeting (Ronald) Reagan and has a “Make Education Great Again” hat in his office.
Then there were Frost’s posts on Twitter, where he engaged with what appears to be a knowledgeable district employee and referred to Zorc and her county commissioner husband, Tim, as being “on the government dole.”
He also referred to “union thugs,” adding, “The unions (love) #LiberalLaura and her stooge, Rosario.”
Clearly, Frost and his ilk should be ignored, because they have deluded themselves into believing that party matters more performance, that politics matter more than principles. That’s too often the case in our nation’s capital. It should not be the case here.
We should want the best people for the jobs – teachers, principals, superintendents and board members – regardless of whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, conservative or liberal, or even independent.
This district has serious problems. We don’t need political solutions.
