INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Tuesday night, the Indian River School Board put an end to acrimony and lingering questions over a controversial hire that resulted in public outcry, when it unanimously voted to terminate the contract of its new personnel director, Stuart Singer.
The action had been recommended by Schools Superintendent Dr. Fran Adams a few days before in an e-mail to board members saying that Singer after one week on the job, was not going in the right direction and needed to be removed.
In that e-mail, Adams never mentioned problems with Singer that surfaced in sister publication Vero Beach 32963 three weeks ago and caused public protest among at least one state legislator, as well as parents of school children, teachers and concerned citizens.
Singer’s immediate contractual hire by the Indian River County school system circumvented state law that required him to wait six months to be rehired after collecting a pension plus a salary from the Osceola County school system.
But Singer, 67, who was an Osceola County school administrator for over 15 years, got around the law because Indian River County School Board Attorney Suzanne D’Agresta arranged for her firm to hire Singer and launder his salary from the school district through the firm — an arrangement supported by Adams and approved by four of five school board members.
Tuesday night, however, the arrangement ended with the vote to terminate the contract.
First to step up to the plate and express regret for voting to put Singer in the job was School Board member Claudia Jimenez, who took responsibility for her “role in enabling this to happen.”
Jimenez said she regretted a lack of discussion about the hire before voting to approve the contract with Singer despite a lack of clarity and a lack of information.
“Was the hire legal? Yes. But did it pass the smell test? No,” she said.
Upon reflection, she said, she saw the lack of ethics and the conflict of interests in having a personnel director for the public school system employed by D’Agresta’s law firm.
School Board member Jeff Pegler spoke next about his initial vote to approve Singer’s contract and why he changed his mind: “Out of all of the decisions I have made in the past two years on the school board, this is the only one I agonized over after it was made,” he said.
Flouting state pension law troubled him, explained Pegler. And, he appreciated the superintendent’s decision to rescind the contract with Singer.
Board Chairwoman Carol Johnson, previously an ardent supporter of the Singer hire, made an about-face to end Singer’s employment contract, saying: “I applaud Dr. Adams for fixing the problem.”
