A long-awaited grand jury report into the management of Broward schools recommended that Gov. Ron DeSantis remove five School Board members, four of whom still are on the board.
One of those, Rosalind Osgood, has already left the School Board and is now serving as a state senator. The others recommended for removal are Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson.
The report, commissioned as a result of the Parkland tragedy, said the five “have engaged in acts of incompetence and neglect of duty.”
Korn is running for re-election on Tuesday. The terms of Levinson and Murray are up in November. They are not seeking re-election. Good’s term ends in 2024.
The five were former Superintendent Robert Runcie’s supporters on the School Board. The grand jury indicted Runcie on perjury charges in April 2021, and much of the report is highly critical of his leadership. He stepped down in August 2021. Runcie could not be reached for comment Friday.
“It should be obvious that …. attempts to hold the Superintendent and his District staff accountable have been routinely and openly thwarted by the majority of the Board, the very same majority we seek to remove from office,” the report said.
Korn, reached by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, said she was in a meeting and would comment later.
Osgood defended her track record on the School Board, saying she respects the grand jury’s opinion but fiercely objects to being cast as incompetent. She said academic achievement in her district improved during her tenure on the board, which lasted from 2012 to March 2021.
“I disagree with anything that casts me in a light that I’m incompetent or was committing any crimes,” Osgood added. “If I did, they would have put me in jail. I showed up every day and fought and worked for the people of Broward County. And I will continue to do so.”
Had she not been a success on the School Board, she would not have been elected by a landslide to the state Senate, Osgood said.
“I can’t explain the motive for the results with the grand jury,” she said. “I agreed with Mr. Runcie on some of his principles, and I disagreed with him on others. And I let him know when I met with him one on one.”
Nora Rupert and Lori Alhadeff are the only other two School Board members who have served since the grand jury first convened in January 2019, but were not recommended for removal.
“They have participated in the management of the District along with their colleagues during that time. But they have not neglected their duties in this fashion,” the report said. “They have diligently attempted to hold the Superintendent and the rest of the District accountable.”
As for School Board members Sarah Leonardi and Debbi Hixon, who joined the board in November 2020, “they have not participated in the misdeeds of their peers and we have no further comment about them.”
Daniel Foganholi was appointed by DeSantis to replace Osgood this year and is not mentioned in the report.
The report cites numerous examples of how the grand jury believed Runcie failed to lead and the School Board allowed this.
The report said Good, Levinson, Korn, Murray and Osgood gave Runcie glowing evaluations, even though he frequently lied to the board and failed to manage a school renovation program funded by an $800 million bond fund by voters in 2014. While Alhadeff, Rupert and former board member Robin Bartleman gave Runcie critical reviews, those by Runcie’s supporters were “almost a funhouse mirror version of the more critical evaluations put forth by their minority peers.”
The grand jury suggested that the Broward Workshop, a business group where Runcie was a member, may have influenced the evaluations.
“The Broward Workshop — a politically active club of business owners who often donate generously to the campaigns of local school board candidates — has made it crystal clear that one of its ‘2021 Top Goals’ is to ‘support continuity of leadership at Broward County Public Schools),’ which it plans to accomplish specifically by ‘engaging] with School Board Members’ and ‘collaborating with community partners to enhance the School Districts reputation,’” the report said.
The group gave a slide presentation to its members on April 7, 2021, two weeks before Runcie was arrested, saying the sole measure of its success would be whether Runcie remains superintendent, the report said.
“They are ‘brazen about supporting Board members who align their own votes and statements with Workshop priorities, just as they are very clear about not supporting those who do not,” the report said.
Although the grand jury and the report have been finished since April 2021, the release has been delayed. Those who were named in it were given an opportunity to read it and file objections, which were reviewed by the prosecutors.
“It’s been long overdue. I’m relieved to hear it is out now,” Rupert said. “Now everyone will get to look at it. I thought the delaying tactics were very unfair to the Parkland community as well as the broader community.”
“We need to be transparent and people need to be held accountable for doing their jobs or not doing it,” Rupert said.
The long delays have created a cloud of uncertainty in the district. Hixon said the board can now focus on changes that need to be made.
“I’m glad it’s finally come out. We don’t have anything hanging over us any more and we can move forward and make the right decisions,” she said.
The report comes more than a year after the grand jury’s indictments of Runcie, former General Counsel Barbara Myrick, and Tony Hunter, the district’s former chief information officer.
This was the fourth grand jury report in 25 years to focus on the school district, and the most scathing one. The other reports came out in 1997, 2002 and 2011.
This was also the first grand jury to issue indictments. Although two School Board members were arrested in corruption cases in the 18 months before a 2011 grand jury report came out, neither arrest was directly related to the grand jury.
Although the original focus was on school security, the grand jury’s attention shifted to mismanagement and corruption identified by the South Florida Sun Sentinel related to technology and the slow progress of an $800 million bond to renovate schools.
The grand jury was announced Feb. 13, 2019, the week of the one-year anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, which left 17 people dead and 17 wounded.
DeSantis, who had just been sworn in the month before, announced there needed to be accountability for the Parkland tragedy. He started Jan. 8 by suspending Sheriff Scott Israel, declaring “the massacre might never have happened had Broward had better leadership in the sheriff’s department.”
Citing failures by Broward school officials to ensure student safety before the mass murder of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, DeSantis petitioned the state Supreme Court to impanel a statewide grand jury. The court agreed.
Runcie and many School Board members publicly supported the effort. Runcie said he was proud of the efforts his district had made to improve school security and welcomed a review.
“We try to get the facts out, but if you don’t want to listen, I can’t make folks listen,” Runcie said at a town hall on Feb. 25, 2019. ” I welcome an independent review of what this district is doing related to safety and security.”
There was reason for that confidence. Although the Sun Sentinel had identified numerous failures related to the Parkland shooting, none had been identified as criminal in nature.
Many of the problems, from poor security in front of schools to inaccurate reporting of school crimes, were issues statewide and not just in Broward. And the first two interim reports identified nothing specific to Broward schools.
The first public sign that the scope of the grand jury report had broadened came in a Dec. 10, 2020.
The report suggested that the Broward school district’s building department had “hijacked” the $800 million bond program, which has been plagued by delays and mismanagement since voters passed it in 2014.
It accused the building department of delaying projects for years in an apparent effort to secure certain large-scale projects for preferred vendors. It recommended abolishing the department and turning inspections over to county or municipal inspections departments.
But the recommendation was buried in a report that mostly focused on statewide mental health issues and largely went unnoticed by the public.
The first grand jury’s first major bombshell happened on Jan. 11, 2021.
Tony Hunter, the district’s former chief information officer, was arrested on bid rigging and bribery charges related to a $17 million technology contract. The case is related to the purchase of Recordex Simplicity flat-screen devices from 2015 to 2019.
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The district and grand jury began looking at Hunter’s actions after the Sun Sentinel questioned the technology deal and Hunter’s ties to the vendor.
Hunter is not named in the report released Friday.
The most shocking development came three months later, after Runcie was indicted on a perjury charge, and Myrick was indicted on a charge of unlawful disclosure of statewide grand jury proceedings, also a third-degree felony.
Myrick said she had not yet read the grand jury’s report and likely would not get a chance to read it until Friday night or Saturday morning.
“I’m not going to comment,” Myrick said. “There’s no need to call me back later. It’s not something I want to talk about or deal with.”
After initially suggesting he would stay on as superintendent, Runcie offered to resign instead of going on paid leave pending the outcome of his case, which was supported by the majority of the School Board.
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