Prosecutors grill Broward schools spokeswoman about organizing Runcie rally after arrest
Prosecutors working for Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody grilled Broward County Public Schools top spokesperson late last month over her involvement in organizing an April 23 rally outside of school district headquarters in support of then-Superintendent Robert Runcie, who was arrested on a perjury charge two days earlier.
Transcripts of the sworn testimony of Chief Communications Officer Kathleen Koch from July 29 were filed with Broward County circuit court this week and it is part of the state’s perjury case against Runcie and the district’s former general counsel, Barbara Myrick.
It’s not clear why prosecutors would be interested in Koch organizing the protest. It’s not illegal for her to do so, although at least one of the nine members of the Broward School Board called her involvement in the event “inappropriate.”
Board member questioned Koch’s involvement in rally
”As one board member, I feel that it is inappropriate for the head of the school district’s communications department to be involved in such an event and I believe that energy and attention should have been directed towards students and educators instead,” District 3 Board Member Sarah Leonardi said in an email to the Miami Herald Wednesday.
The rest of the board did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.
Leonardi said she did not know that Koch was involved in organizing the rally until she read about it in a July 18 article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Leonardi also said she was bothered that the school district’s TV channel, BECON, was at the event filming along with cameras from local TV news stations.
“During the April workshop in which the board discussed the arrests of Ms. Myrick and Mr. Runcie, I stated publicly that I thought it was inappropriate for district cameras to film the rally that took place,” she said.
Both prosecuting and defense attorneys who spoke to the Miami Herald on background said prosecutors could be looking for anything in Koch’s testimony, from perjury to whether district computer equipment was used in any way to put together the rally.
Statewide prosecutor Richard Mantei, according to the transcripts, told Koch that because his office subpoenaed her, she was “compelled to come here and give testimony, which gives you effective use immunity for most things.”
“What that means is if you walked in here and told me today that you committed some kind of crime on the way up the stairway, we wouldn’t be able to use that statement against you in prosecution for that crime. Okay,” he said. “However, there is one important thing that isn’t covered, and that is perjury.”
Kylie Mason, spokeswoman for Moody’s office, said Thursday she could not comment on the ongoing case.
Sent notes to her work email account
Neither Koch nor her attorney, Jonathan Osborne, returned text messages and emails seeking comment. Koch said in her testimony that she used her personal computer to contact people about the rally on her own time, but she did inadvertently send notes she wrote about the event to her work email account.
“I don’t know why I sent it,” Koch told Mantei, according to the transcripts.
Along with Koch’s testimony, prosecutors also filed her notes with details about whom she contacted and planned to contact about the gathering, as well as chat records from the school district’s Microsoft TEAMS communication service, in which other top administrators discussed their support for Runcie and Myrick.
“We love you RR and Barbara J. Myrick,” Daniel Gohl, the district’s chief academic officer, wrote on the TEAMS chat on April 27.
Koch’s notes, which appear quickly typed with multiple typos, start with, “Wednesday. Spoke with RR about event, agreed. He advised law firms.”
According to the notes, Runcie told Koch he would take the idea to the executive committee of a local organization known as the Broward Workshop.
Runcie did not return a text seeking comment on the prosecutors questioning Koch.
Koch wrote in her notes that Keith, who she told prosecutors is Keith Koenig, chief executive officer of City Furniture, told her he would get a public relations firm he uses to distribute a press release Koch wrote to the media.
Koenig told the Miami Herald that he asked the PR firm, Smith & Knibbs, to distribute the press release, which was sent Thursday night, April 22, but he doesn’t remember Koch being involved.
“As I remember it, the rally was my idea,” Koenig said.
Linda Lewis, who emailed the press release to media outlets on behalf of Smith & Knibbs, did not respond to a question asking who organized the rally.
Koch told prosecutors that she put together the PR materials, but did not distribute them.
“I planned the event. I did not execute it,” Koch told prosecutors, according to the transcripts.
In her notes, Koch wrote that she did not want to be seen at the rally.
“I will be in the [headquarters building and] am meeting PR firm early, but do not want to be visible in any form at the [event] itself — to school board members [or] the media, which might ask me [about] Mr. Runcie.”
When prosecutors asked Koch about that part of her notes, she said she meant she did not think it would be appropriate for her to be there.
“It was a community support for the superintendent. And for me to be there as an employee of the district, I think would be a distraction,” she said, according to the transcripts.
Rally attended by many to support Runcie
Dozens turned out for the rally to support Runcie. Attendees included business, community and religious leaders including Koenig, Bob Swindell, CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, state Sen. Perry Thurston, Pastor Derrick Hughes of First Baptist Piney Grove, Kathleen Cannon, president and CEO of United Way of Broward County, Brian Johnson of the NAACP and Sidney Calloway, chair of the Urban League of Broward County.
Both Runcie and Myrick received large payouts from the School Board after agreeing to resign from their positions in May before their contracts expired. Runcie, who pleaded not guilty, received a severance package of $754,900. Myrick is also fighting the case. She pleaded “stands mute.”
She walked away from her position with a severance package worth more than $226,000.
They were both indicted as part of a grand jury Gov. Ron DeSantis requested in February 2019, in response to the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland a year earlier. Seventeen students and faculty members were killed in the attack.
The grand jury was tasked with investigating whether school districts committed fraud when they solicited and accepted millions of dollars from a state bond issue contingent on implementing safety measures required by the Legislature in the wake of the tragedy.
Runcie, 59, is accused of lying to the grand jury about whether he spoke to anyone before he testified on March 31 and April 1 about the line of questioning of prosecutors. Myrick, 72, is accused of disclosing grand jury proceedings; grand jury testimony is conducted in secret.
Vickie Cartwright replaced Runcie as interim superintendent earlier this month.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 6:28 PM.
