There are aspects of the School Board’s April 16 special meeting – the one called by Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice alone, in violation of Florida statutes – that still bother me, given that the purpose of the session was to discuss now-departed superintendent Mark Rendell’s last-gasp attempt to walk away with a sizable severance check he didn’t deserve.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
The Florida Department of Education’s Inspector General’s Office is investigating multiple complaints filed by anonymous district residents who have questioned how that meeting was called, whether sufficient public notice was given, and why our School Board failed to approve and publish the minutes in the time allotted by state law.
In fact, the DOE already has referred to our Sheriff’s Office the complaints alleging the board did not provide the public with the two days’ notice required for special meetings under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
Sheriff’s Maj. Eric Flowers confirmed last week the complaints prompted an “active investigation being handled by our detectives,” who need only watch the district’s video recording of the meeting, where School Board Chairman Laura Zorc said notice of the special session first appeared in a local newspaper on the day it was held.
That’s a problem.
Just as troubling is the School Board’s failure to meet its statutory obligation to approve and make public the special session’s minutes at its next regularly scheduled meeting, which was April 23.
The board was scheduled to approve the minutes at this week’s meeting, though Zorc said last weekend she first would ask that they be amended to include who called the special session.
That’s where it gets problematic.
That’s where it’s possible, if not likely, the board’s April 16 special meeting was illegal, because Florida law states such sessions may be called by only a district’s superintendent, school board chairman or a majority of the other board members.
So who called it?
According to the special meeting’s agenda, the additional session was called by Justice and board members Jackie Rosario and Teri Barenborg.
As of Monday, however, only Justice had publicly acknowledged she had called the April 16 meeting, doing so coyly – she never actually uttered the words – and only after she was confronted late in the session by rookie board member Jackie Rosario.
“I’d like to know who called this meeting,” Rosario said during the controversial and sometimes-contentious session, at which she conceded she had been unaware of the policy for calling special meetings.
“I did not ask for it to be called. I was asked if I would attend,” she added. “I did not call the meeting.”
The board’s other first-year members, Barenborg and Mara Schiff, also said they did not call the meeting, only that they were asked by School Board secretary Nancy Esplen if they were available and wanted to attend.
As for Zorc, who possesses the legal authority to single-handedly call a special meeting, she said she decided against it because she had grown weary of Rendell trying to dictate the terms and timing of his departure and attempting to manufacture crisis scenarios to enhance his efforts.
How, then, did the meeting get scheduled?
Based on the board’s discussion of the matter 2 ½ hours into that special meeting – when Rosario demanded answers – there’s plenty to make us suspicious and more than enough to draw the DOE’s interest.
For starters, there’s Rosario’s insinuation that Justice, when trying to enlist allies to join her in calling the special meeting, told Esplen to not divulge her identity.
Rosario said she asked Esplen, “Who’s calling the meeting?” She said Esplen told her the board member seeking the special session had instructed her not to say.
“I don’t know why it has to be a secret?” Rosario said, later telling Justice, “If you called the meeting, let your name be known.”
Schiff said she, too, had concerns about how the meeting was called and that she was “equally distressed … at the obfuscation” of the process that produced it.
For the record: Justice denied that she asked Esplen to not tell the other board members she was pushing for the special meeting.
“To be clear, I did not ask for my name to not be attached to this in any way,” she said, later telling Rosario, “I’d like to state that I do not appreciate you calling me a liar on the dais.”
Clearly, though, someone is lying.
But who?
And why?
