School Board newcomer David Dyer believes he should not be forced to wait a year to have a voice in who represents the panel in a matter he considers crucial to the school district’s overall progress.
That’s why he plans to ask the board at Monday’s meeting to amend or rescind a September resolution – adopted 3-2 by what was then a Moms For Liberty-concocted majority – that currently allows Jackie Rosario to serve until November 2025 on a court-mandated work group charged with resolving the remaining issues stemming from a 1967 federal desegregation order.
The Moms-backed majority appointed Rosario to the School District/NAACP Joint Work Group in April, when she replaced Vice Chair Peggy Jones, who had represented the board since the group was created in 2022.
If Dyer’s request is denied, Rosario will be the board’s work-group representative for at least 19 months – well beyond the one-year terms that will commence next November.
“The vote on the resolution was taken after I was elected in August,” Dyer said last week. “This is a matter that’s very important to me, and I want to be able to vote. I’ll be happy to vote in April, as it was originally scheduled, but a self-serving resolution has denied me a vote I should take in my first year.”
In fact, Dyer formally objected to the proposed resolution six days before it was adopted, sending to School Superintendent David Moore an email claiming the board’s planned vote “disrespects the will of the voter” and warning that he was prepared to take the “procedural or legal” actions necessary to protect his rights as a board member elect and board member.
But no such action should be necessary. Rosario should so something she almost never does – put the best interests of our school district and the academic achievement of our children above her unabashed devotion to the local Moms group and its hard-right agenda, which our community soundly rejected last summer.
She should take this opportunity to do something magnanimous, rise above petty politics and prove she’s something more than the Moms’ puppet on the dais.
She should step aside.
Anyone who watched the work group’s Oct. 28 meeting clearly could see that Rosario is not the right person to represent the board in this process, which requires more than knowledge of the subject and a commitment to putting in the time.
For the work group to function successfully in such an environment, there needs to be a willingness to collaborate, to keep an open mind, to hear the people on other side and try to understand why they might see things differently.
These negotiations are as much about tone and trust – about building working relationships that enable inevitable disagreements to be handled without contentious rhetoric – as they are about issues and procedures.
Sure, there needs to be a framework for discussion, but it can’t be rigid. There needs to be enough flexibility in the rules to allow the parties to engage in conversations, rather than rely solely on a question-and-answer format.
In only two meetings – especially the most recent – Rosario has shown she lacks the qualities necessary to foster the spirit of cooperation required to enhance the joint efforts to resolve the issues that are preventing a judge from removing a desegregation order that continues to haunt our school district.
Instead, she has hindered the process, particularly during that hourlong Oct. 28 meeting, which was progressing as expected until she derailed the proceedings by challenging the NAACP’s decision to allow its attorney to ask questions.
It didn’t matter that attorneys for both sides have been a part of the discussions since the group first began meeting. Or that her complaint effectively spurred an argument that wasted the final 30 minutes of the session.
Rosario did what she has done for too much of her six years on the School Board – stubbornly refusing to back down, telling everyone what they already knew, continuing to speak when others were trying to respond, and then complaining when someone was forced to raise their voice to be heard.
“We have read those court orders; we have four attorneys on our team,” Tony Brown, president of the local NAACP chapter, told Rosario. “We don’t need you to define anything for us. … Please do not bogart our 30 minutes.”
Former School Board candidate Merchon Green, another member of the NAACP team, invited Rosario to watch YouTube videos of the group’s early meetings, at which the parties agreed that the association’s attorneys would be permitted to participate in the discussions.
Green welcomed Rosario to the process, but she warned that the board member was “giving off” a vibe that she “joined with bad faith” and with the intent to be “disruptive.”
Rosario didn’t budge. She said the group’s members should be talking to each other, not to attorneys. She failed to understand that, confronted with time restrictions and a need for expedience, the NAACP members had agreed to let their attorney ask their questions.
For those wondering: Rosario’s objection to the attorneys engaging in the discussion was the first time anyone had registered such a complaint.
Fittingly, Jodi Avila, one of the NAACP’s attorneys, rejected Rosario’s objection and said her client would not proceed under such terms. She said the district could take the matter to court, where Miami-based U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams is presiding over the case.
And just like that, the meeting was over – because Rosario’s unnecessary objection left no time to deal with the relevant issues.
“We’ve had our moments when we’ve been at odds in the past, but we were able to resolve our differences and get back to work,” Green said in a phone interview last weekend. “But with Rosario there, the entire tone was different. It felt extremely contentious.
“I can’t help but feel that she wanted to be on this group to be divisive and stifle progress.”
To be sure, progress has been made: Moore said he is optimistic the school district will finally rid itself of the desegregation order in the next calendar year.
But no one should be surprised by Rosario’s antics. She has been a disruptive influence for years, dating back to her childish squabbles with former school board member Tiffany Justice – who went on to become one of the Moms’ co-founders – and former chair Laura Zorc.
And as far as working with the NAACP: Rosario’s electoral district includes Gifford – the largest Black community in the county – but her positions on race-related issues are 180-degrees opposed to those constituents, leaving it to other board members to give them a voice.
“The Black community here doesn’t feel comfortable going to her with our concerns,” Green said. “There’s too much history.”
The work group’s already-skeptical members don’t trust Rosario or her motives, and they fear the damage she can do over the next 11 months.
She needs to step aside.
