A two-month Sheriff’s Office investigation of the School Board’s April 16 special meeting – a hurriedly called session to discuss a severance offer for then-Superintendent Mark Rendell, who resigned the following week – found no evidence that any crime had been committed.
That finding doesn’t mean laws weren’t broken, however.
In fact, the School Board failed to adhere to Florida statutes governing both the calling of special meetings and the public notice required for such meetings.
The board also failed to approve and publicly post the meeting’s minutes within the statutorily mandated time period, then falsified them in a feeble attempt to cover up the illegal manner in which the special session was called.
We know this because board members during that meeting – which was recorded on video – openly questioned how the special session was called and whether the notice given was sufficient. They then voiced concerns about the minutes’ contents at subsequent, similarly recorded meetings.
The evidence is there for all to see.
Also available for public viewing are the meeting’s minutes, though what you’ll now find on the district’s website is a doctored version that dishonestly reports the special session was called by a “majority” of the board and conveniently omits the names of the three members initially credited with calling it.
Despite all that, however, Sheriff’s Lt. Kyle King, a longtime detective who investigated the circumstances surrounding the April 16 meeting after the Florida Department of Education received multiple complaints from community members, somehow saw something entirely different.
After twice viewing the three-hour video, reading the meeting’s minutes and interviewing everyone involved – School Board members, the board’s attorney and district staffers – King said he found nothing unlawful.
He said his investigation revealed no willful attempt to circumvent state law in the way the board called the meeting or how it notified the public. To the contrary, he said that Vice Chairman Tiffany Justice sought and followed the guidance of School Board Attorney Suzanne D’Agresta in initiating and scheduling the special session.
As for the altered minutes, the detective said they didn’t become an “official record” until they were approved by the board.
“The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t conduct oversight of School Board operations,” King said. “My charge in this case was to investigate complaints that a crime was committed, and that was the scope of my work. Based on my investigation, no crime occurred.”
Bolstering King’s view is the fact the School Board took no significant action at the April 16 meeting – Justice’s predictable motion to accept Rendell’s exit terms garnered no support – so no tangible damage was done.
The only real harm was to the public image of a board that refuses to admit the meeting never should’ve been held – yet felt it necessary to adopt a new policy in the aftermath that provides specific wording clarifying the procedure for calling special meetings.
Still, there’s one line at the end of King’s report that’s troubling from a rule of law perspective: “I find no evidence of any actions pertaining to these complaints that could be construed as contradictory to Florida statutes.”
There, he’s wrong.
According to the statutes, school board special meetings may be called by only the superintendent, chairman or a majority of the board’s members; school boards must provide the public with at least two days’ advance notice in a newspaper of general circulation in the county when scheduling special meetings; and it is a first-degree misdemeanor to knowingly falsify public records, including the minutes from school board meetings.
But in this case, the two board members who allegedly joined Justice to create a majority entitled to call the special session – Jackie Rosario and Teri Barenborg – denied during the meeting that they had done so; the board’s notice was published the morning of the meeting, not two days before; and the board unanimously approved the minutes from its April 16 special session, despite knowing they were amended to falsely report that a majority of its five members called the meeting.
The statutes also require that the minutes from special meetings be approved at the board’s next regularly scheduled business meeting, but our School Board didn’t approve the April 16 minutes until June 25.
How did King miss all that when saying no statutes were violated?
King said he drew no distinction between calling for the meeting and agreeing to hold one, attending one and actively participating in one.
“The consent to hold the meeting is inferred by the unanimous, un-coerced presence and participation by each member,” he wrote in his report, adding, “The meeting proceeded for about 2 ½ hours without any objections or expressions of concern regarding the legal foundation upon which the meeting was based.”
At the 2-hour, 32-minute mark, however, Rosario took the meeting in a different direction, demanding to know who called the special session. Her question sparked a discussion in which she, Barenborg and board member Mara Schiff each stated publicly that they did not call the meeting and merely agreed to attend.
“Clearly, they wanted everybody to know they weren’t the ones who initiated the meeting, but that was irrelevant to me,” King said. “As far as I’m concerned: By showing up and sitting in their chairs, they agreed to have the meeting.”
During those final 30 minutes, it also became obvious that Justice – Rendell’s staunchest ally on the board – initiated the call for the special session, but she never admitted doing so during the meeting.
King’s report states that Justice told him she initiated the special session because Rendell’s offer expired April 17 and she wanted the board to address the matter. He said his investigation did not delve into her motives, though we later learned Rendell had already accepted a principal’s job in Cocoa Beach when the meeting was held.
King said he believes the controversy over how the meeting was initiated stemmed from “confusion” over the wording of the statute.
“When Ms. Esplen polled the other board members and they agreed to attend, they were saying they wanted to have a meeting,” King said. “There’s nothing in the statute that specifies the exact language that must be used, so how Ms. Esplen asked the question doesn’t matter.”
King’s report also absolved the School Board of any wrongdoing in providing public notice of the special meeting, stating that – in addition to advertising in a local newspaper – staffers made a “good-faith effort” to alert the community by posting notices on the district website, calendar and newsletter, as well as via email blasts to subscribers on April 12.
“Furthermore,” he wrote, “this circumstance does not render the meeting illegal.”
Pressed to explain his indifference to the changes in the minutes, King said he was convinced a majority of the board’s members wanted to have the meeting, so the minutes weren’t falsified.
“People can argue about whether the minutes are accurate,” King said, “but anyone who wants to know what happened at the meeting can go to the district’s website and watch the video.”
If you do, maybe nothing will jump out as an obvious crime, but laws were broken.
See for yourself.
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