It’s entirely possible, I suppose, that School Board Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice had no idea what Superintendent Mark Rendell was doing, even though she has been his staunchest supporter and fiercest defender in the district.
It’s possible Justice was completely unaware that Rendell had been offered – and was planning to accept – a principal’s job in Brevard County when she somehow circumvented state law last month to arrange an April 16 special meeting at which she urged the other board members to accept the superintendent’s offer to resign in exchange for more than $40,000 in severance pay.
Rendell originally asked for $62,545.60 in severance but dropped his demand to $40,000 the day before the meeting.
It’s also possible Justice didn’t know Rendell already had agreed to become the principal at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School while the board awaited his response to its counteroffer last week.
After all, Justice is a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative who often speaks of spending taxpayer dollars carefully. There’s no way she would’ve knowingly abetted Rendell’s attempt to double-dip from the public trough and walk away with a lucrative golden parachute when he already had another job lined up, right?
So maybe her curious behavior throughout this saga – she too often sounded more like his agent than his boss – was nothing more than ignorance.
Maybe she was merely gullible, too naïve to believe Rendell would dare try to take from the district’s coffers money he didn’t deserve.
Or maybe she was played.
We don’t have Justice’s explanation for all this, because calls to her cellphone and office phone were not returned.
Whatever the reason, School Board Chairman Laura Zorc, backed by Jackie Rosario and Mara Schiff, made sure Justice’s efforts on Rendell’s behalf went nowhere, refusing to accept the superintendent’s offer or rush into a yes-or-no vote simply to meet his April 17 deadline.
Eventually, nearing the end of the three-hour meeting on April 16, the board agreed to have its attorney, Suzanne D’Agresta, negotiate a more-palatable deal that didn’t include the non-disparagement clause Rendell wanted.
It proved to be a wise move.
Unable to pressure board members into a quick deal – or convince them to accept his offer of a sizeable, last-minute discount in his severance pay – Rendell abandoned the negotiations last week, when he submitted his resignation and gave the 30-day notice mandated by his contract. He’ll work here through May 24, then start his new job on June 3.
It was, by any measure, the best possible outcome for the district.
“We’re getting out of this with the lowest cost possible to the district,” Zorc said. “We’re paying nothing for him to leave, and the $25,000 fee we’ll pay to conduct a search for his replacement is something we’d have to pay, anyway – because he was leaving either way.”
Zorc, who warned the board in March that Rendell’s decision to hire a lawyer was an “aggressive act” and refused to jump every time his attorney sent a letter, deserves a rousing round of applause for reading the situation perfectly, reacting appropriately and saving the district a pile of cash.
As Rendell’s allies continued their pathetic social-media attacks on her, Zorc’s vindication came Friday morning, when, three days after accepting the Brevard job, the outgoing superintendent told a local radio audience that he had been “preparing for this” since August.
That’s when I wrote a column in which all nine School Board candidates vowed to hold Rendell more accountable than the previous board and, if elected, rein in the superintendent’s mostly unchecked power in our district.
That’s also when Rendell realized the makeup of the board would change.
“We saw the primary election and we knew the board was going to be different,” Rendell said on WTTB-AM’s “Local News Magazine with Bob Soos,” adding that “it was not a matter of if, it was a matter of when” he’d start searching for another job.
“It’s kind of the nature of the business that we’re in,” Rendell told the audience, saying board turnover often results in changes in superintendents. “So we saw all that coming and definitely prepared for it.”
Rendell told Soos and the radio audience he had “made it to the mountaintop” of public education by rising to the level of superintendent, but he wanted to return to the principal’s office because he missed being on campus and interacting with students.
“The further I’ve gotten away from the classroom,” he said, “the less-rewarding the positions have been.”
That’s a beautiful sentiment but we didn’t hear such talk until after the board voted against extending his contract. So I can’t help but wonder if Rendell, who will embark on his third stint as a high school principal next month, decided to take a career step backwards because he truly wants to work with kids again – or because he realized he was dog-paddling in the deep end of the pool.
Certainly, Rendell’s four years here have been a struggle – so much so that he made it impossible for the board to extend his contract, which would’ve expired in July 2020.
There have been too many scandals, investigations, legal challenges, whistle-blower complaints and other costly controversies, many of them of his own making.
There has been too much turnover – of teachers, support staff and even upper-tier staffers in the district office – often because of the culture of intimidation and retaliation that has been pervasive since his arrival.
There has been far too much tumult, which has taken a toll on almost every aspect of the district, including academic performance.
To be sure, Rendell has enjoyed a few successes since being hired here, but not nearly enough. He has been given plenty of time to fix the problems he inherited and move our schools in the right direction, but he has made too little progress.
Worse, he leaves behind a financial and administrative mess.
“His self-manufactured lack of district leadership is hindering our board responsibilities,” Zorc said, adding, “He has definitely created an atmosphere of confusion in our meetings, intentionally or unintentionally.”
Despite the board members’ lack of experience – Zorc and Justice have put in two-plus years of service, while Rosario, Barenborg and Schiff are rookies – the chairman defended their performance under difficult circumstances they didn’t create.
“The last five months would’ve been challenging for a seasoned board,” Zorc said.
One by one, though, the board members have addressed the issues put before them, overcoming the Rendell-provoked departures of the district’s chief financial officer, finance director, assistant superintendent for human resources and a senior accountant, all in a relatively short time span.
Rendell’s decision in March to hire an attorney, followed by his announcement that he was applying for other jobs, only added to their challenges – and their angst – as did Justice’s unwavering and often angry support for the superintendent, even after his relationship with the board had become “fractured beyond repair,” as she put it.
In one of the more bizarre scenes in recent weeks, board members were discussing at their March 26 meeting Zorc’s recommendation that Rendell be fired this summer. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Justice chimed in with a motion seeking to extend the superintendent’s contract to 2021.
The motion died, as it should have, when no one on the board offered a second.
It was the board’s April 16 special meeting, though, that produced the most compelling drama yet.
Under Florida law, the chairman is the only individual School Board member who may call for a special meeting. However, such meetings also can be called by a majority of the board.
So how did Justice orchestrate through board secretary Nancy Esplen the scheduling of the April 16 meeting to address and discuss the “mutual separation agreement” offer from Rendell’s attorney?
Nobody seems to know.
Zorc didn’t see any need for the board to rush to a special meeting. Rosario, Schiff and Barenborg all said they had agreed to attend, but none called for one.
Rosario said she asked Esplen which members called for the meeting, but was told, “I’m not allowed to say.”
Justice, meanwhile, kept quiet until it became awkwardly obvious that she – and she alone – called for the meeting, where she urged the other members to embrace Rendell’s golden parachute deal, saying, “I do believe the terms are reasonable and should be acceptable to us as a school board.”
Justice said she spoke to Esplen about calling for the meeting and believed the secretary would contact the other board members to ask if they wanted to join her. She said she never asked Esplen to not reveal her name.
Could this violation of state law have been nothing more than an innocent mistake? Might there have been some miscommunication between Justice and Esplen, or between Esplen and Rosario?
Maybe so, but why, then, did no one on the board – no one other than Justice – know who called the meeting?
Better yet: Why was it so important to Justice to schedule the special meeting for April 16, the day the Brevard Public Schools Board posted its agenda for the April 23 meeting at which Rendell’s hiring was to be approved?
Was it just a coincidence?
It’s possible, I suppose.
