The school district paid an outside attorney more than $20,000 to conduct a five-month investigation that produced no substantial new information about an employee’s social-media posts that were, at worst, inappropriate.
That should bother you.
During that protracted investigation, the district continued to pay the employee, Vicki Sidles, her full salary to stay home and, as ordered by the district’s Human Resources Department, not do the job for which she had repeatedly received “highly effective” ratings from her supervisors.
That should worry you.
And when the Fort Pierce lawyer, David Miklas, completed his scatter-shot investigation, which required from district staffers hours of assistance to provide information and technical expertise, his report raised more questions than it answered.
That should upset you.
What should concern you most, however, is the one troubling question that remains unanswered: What was the real motivation behind this investigation, which was launched under former Superintendent Mark Rendell, who has since left the district under a cloud.
Certainly, it wasn’t justice, which had nothing to do with anything that happened after the State Attorney’s Office in April found no evidence that Sidles committed any crime.
But was it Justice – as in School Board Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice, who tried unsuccessfully to have Sidles prosecuted and fired over Twitter posts that disparaged her and Rendell and, at times, inferred the two were engaged in an improper relationship?
In a 13-page statement emailed to interim Superintendent Susan Moxley, School Board Chairman Laura Zorc and board members Mara Schiff and Jackie Rosario on Sept. 9, Sidles makes it clear she believes Justice used her clout to push for and possibly steer the School District’s investigation.
Sidles, who resigned earlier this month to take a job in the private sector, wrote that she also believes she wasn’t the sole subject, or even the prime target, of the district’s “bogus and wasteful investigation” – a suspicion she contends was confirmed when Miklas “interrogated” her on July 9 in an office in the HR Department.
“It became pretty obvious early on that they weren’t coming after me,” Sidles said last week. “Their attorney told me he didn’t even need to question me, and that he already had all the information about me that he needed.”
So what did the lawyer want to know?
“I was there for more than three hours, and only the first 10 minutes were about my social-media activity,” she added. “He spent the rest of the time on a fishing expedition, questioning me about other people, specifically board members and especially Jackie Rosario.
“They were looking for some kind of collusion between me and them.”
Relying on what she called the “best of my memory,” Sidles shared in her written statement to Moxley and the three board members details of Miklas’ interrogation, which included questions that raise suspicions:
nDid any board member ever tell you
what to tweet?
nWere any of those who signed the petition (that Sidles created earlier this year to urge the board to not renew Rendell’s contract) current board members?
nHow many times have you used your personal email to contact board members?
nHave you ever contacted board members during a board meeting?
nWhy did you buy Mrs. Rosario a cell phone?
nWere you aware that Mrs. Rosario was getting unsolicited porn on her district cellphone?
nWhy do you call her Jackie?
Why was Miklas asking Sidles all those probing questions about other people, particularly Rosario, who has no apparent connection to the allegations against Sidles or the investigation?
“Justice blamed Rosario for Rendell leaving,” Sidles said, referring to the embattled superintendent resigning in April to take the principal’s job at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School.
Justice also challenged Zorc’s criticism of Rendell during the final months of his tenure here, and there were angry clashes between Justice and Rosario and Justice and Zorc during public meetings.
Did the conflict between Justice and the other board members affect the district’s investigation of Sidles, who publicly expressed support for both Zorc and Rosario in her tweets? Did Justice suggest to Miklas that he try to find some connection between the three?
Don’t expect anyone to fess up.
Justice did not respond to a message left on her district cell phone, nor did Miklas respond to a voice message left at his office.
But Sidles wrote in her statement that it was obvious – to her, her Vero Beach attorney Kelly Armitage and the union representatives who attended her interview – that Miklas was “trying to obtain information detrimental to at least one board member and possible two.”
She wrote that Rosario was “definitely in the crosshairs” and asked if the rookie board member knew she was being investigated, why she was being investigated and who made the accusations.
Again, this is Sidles’ story as she remembers it and it is hard to check because (surprise!) there is no transcript of the interrogation.
On July 10, Rosario sent an email to Michelle Olk, the district’s labor and employee relations director, asking for a copy of the “transcript and all recordings” of the interview, “all of the notes and questions” asked during the interrogation, the reason for the investigation and “what the investigator is looking for.”
In a July 11 email to Olk, who relayed Rosario’s request, Miklas wrote that the interview wasn’t recorded and no court reporter was present to provide a transcript.
In that same email, Miklas added: “I am now quite curious as to why she wants all possible evidence of the investigation. Please keep me apprised as to whether anyone, including any board member, attempts to interfere with the integrity of this investigation.”
But which investigation?
The investigation that resulted in him recommending that Sidles, who essentially spent five months on paid vacation, be suspended for five days without pay for “unauthorized use” of her work computer, “unprofessional conduct” in social media postings and “making malicious and intentionally false statements” about members of the district leadership?
Or was there some other surreptitious investigation we don’t know about – one that prompted a line of questioning that had nothing to do with Sidles’ tweets?
“It was a waste of taxpayers’ dollars, period,” Zorc said Sunday. “The rabbit-hole line of questioning cost us $225 per hour. With the previous superintendent, these investigations [using outside attorneys] got out of control.”
Moxley has since restructured the district hierarchy, restoring the position of “assistant superintendent for human resources” to keep such investigations in house.
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