Our School Board pays its attorney, Suzanne D’Agresta, a monthly retainer of $22,000 – plus expenses and other disbursements – to provide legal counsel, recommend outside law firms when needed and, generally, make sure the district’s business is conducted in accordance with Florida statutes.
“It’s her job to keep us out of trouble,” School Board Chairman Laura Zorc said.
It’s fair, then, to ask D’Agresta about the trouble caused by the board’s April 16 special meeting, which appears to have violated state law in the way it was called and the notice given to the public when scheduled.
In fact, the Department of Education’s Inspector General’s Office is investigating multiple complaints filed anonymously by district residents who have questioned how that meeting was called, whether sufficient public notice was given and why the board failed to approve the minutes in the time allotted by law.
Specifically, the complaints alleged that the special meeting was called by Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice alone, which would be a violation of the Florida statute that permits such sessions to be called only by a school board chairman, superintendent or a majority of the board members.
Justice needed at least two other board members to join her in calling the meeting, but none of them said they had joined in that action. Instead, the two other members listed as having called the special session, Jackie Rosario and Teri Barenborg, both publicly denied they had done so.
Equally as disturbing are the complaints that the board failed to provide the public with the two days’ notice of the meeting – called by Justice for the purpose of discussing now-departed superintendent Mark Rendell’s last-gasp attempt to walk away with a severance check he didn’t deserve – as required under Florida’s Sunshine Law.
The IG’s Office already has referred those complaints to our Sheriff’s Office and, according to Maj. Eric Flowers, the case is under investigation.
All of which brings us back to D’Agresta, who is supposed to advise the board on these matters.
Zorc, who chose to not call the special session because she believed Rendell was trying to pressure the board into a rushed decision, said she had consulted with D’Agresta on multiple occasions to ensure every aspect of the meeting was handled properly.
“I remember [board secretary] Nancy Esplen and I going back and forth with . . . [D’Agresta] before the meeting to make sure we were covering every base,” Zorc said. “She was adamant that everything was done the right way.”
But was it?
Certainly, D’Agresta has some explaining to do.
We need to know if D’Agresta confirmed before the special meeting that it had been called by a majority – in our case, three – of the board’s members before allowing it to proceed.
If so, how? If not, why?
We need to know why, even if she was unaware of the circumstances prior to the meeting, D’Agresta didn’t advise Zorc to stop the meeting immediately upon seeing there was a dispute over who called it and how it was called.
We need to know if the meeting could and should have been nullified.
We also need to know D’Agresta’s legal opinions regarding the public notice given for the special session and the School Board’s failure to approve and publish the meeting’s minutes by the statutory deadline.
So I asked her.
I sent D’Agresta – via the school district’s public information officer, Cristen Maddux – an email containing questions covering the above topics.
When she didn’t respond, I contacted her again.
Last Friday, I received an email from Maddux, who wrote that D’Agresta “will not be responding” to my questions. No reason was given.
So now it’s up to the IG’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office to provide answers to important questions on a situation that, if Rendell had reacted differently during that meeting, could’ve been so much worse.
It’s bad enough that Justice somehow was able to call a special meeting at which the board could have approved paying Rendell more than $40,000 in severance, even though he already had decided to take a job as the principal at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School.
Had Rendell agreed to drop the non-disparagement clause in his discounted offer, the board might’ve voted to pay him off – and would have taken that action at a meeting that appears to have been unlawfully called and scheduled.
“My heart stops every time I think about that,” Zorc said.
As it stands, Zorc and the other members of the panel are confronted with a difficult dilemma: Florida statute requires school boards to approve meeting minutes at their next regularly scheduled meeting.
But how can our board members approve the minutes of a special meeting that should never have taken place, especially when those minutes don’t include the names of the members who called it?
The board postponed approval of the April 16 meeting’s minutes at its June 11 meeting, and Zorc said she is seeking outside opinions. She won’t get one, however, from Interim Superintendent Susan Moxley, who said she is not advising the School Board on this matter and would defer to D’Agresta.
“I’m open to being corrected,” Zorc said. “I don’t know what the investigations turn up, but it doesn’t matter if we get just a slap on the wrist. We need to follow Florida statutes.
“If we did something wrong, I want to know about it.”
D’Agresta is being paid $22,000 per month to tell her.
