Broward School Board will have four new members. Will they reverse superintendent’s firing?
A week after the five Gov. Ron DeSantis appointees on the Broward School Board abruptly fired Superintendent Vickie Cartwright, four new members will be sworn in to replace them.
Allen Zeman, Rodney “Rod” Velez, Jeff Holness and Brenda Fam will take the oath of office Tuesday, after defeating their opponents in the Nov. 8 election.
They will join the four elected incumbents who voted against Cartwright’s firing late Monday night — vice chair Lori Alhadeff, Debra Hixon, Sarah Leonardi and Nora Rupert — and who unsuccessfully tried to rescind Cartwright’s dismissal on Tuesday.
Four of the five DeSantis appointees were not on the ballot. The fifth, board chair Torey Alston, does not come up for election until 2024.
The new board will face a consequential decision: Whether to reverse Cartwright’s firing or search for a new superintendent. On Tuesday, the nine-member board voted unanimously to hire a firm to conduct a national search.
Cartwright, 52, hired in February as the district’s first woman superintendent, replaced Robert Runcie, who was charged in 2021 with lying to a grand jury investigating the district over cost overruns in an $800 million school construction bond issue. He pleaded not guilty and his case is pending.
On Monday, the five DeSantis appointees — Alston, Daniel Foganholi, Ryan Reiter, Kevin Tynan and Manuel “Nandy” Serrano — cited concerns about two audits over two district contracts with two longtime vendors. The school district allowed the companies — one that distributed caps and gowns, the other offering education management and training services — to overcharge the district and parents at least $1.4 million, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported earlier this month.
That discussion led to the motion to fire her, proffered by Foganholi and seconded by Alston. Yet less than three weeks before, on Oct. 26 in another late-night meeting, the board voted unanimously to retain Cartwright and have her report back in 90 days on the steps she had taken to correct the board’s concerns.
READ MORE: Broward School Board abstains from firing superintendent, gives her 90 days to improve
Cartwright’s contract mandates that she receive a 60-day notice of termination, so she will stay on for at least two months. She’s also entitled to severance pay totaling 20 weeks of her $350,000 salary, plus any unused sick and vacation days, per her contract.
The Herald reached out to all four School Board member-elects about Cartwright’s termination.
Zeman declined to comment.
Velez also declined to comment, saying he would speak to the press on Tuesday, the day of his swearing-in ceremony.
Holness didn’t respond to multiple texts, emails and phone calls from the Herald. His assistant, Andrae Hill, said Holness was too busy and hadn’t examined the superintendent issue.
“He’s gotten the question quite a bit, but he hasn’t had time to review it,” Hill said. “He hasn’t even been sworn in yet.”
Holness wants to visit schools and meet with the community before weighing in, said Hill, adding, “He’s happy to visit previous board actions should it come forward.”
Fam said she didn’t attend the Monday meeting, but described the audit reviews that sparked Cartwright’s removal as “terrible.”
“They gave her 90 days to redeem herself from the violations that they brought to her attention, and then [Monday] revealed numerous more violations that were even more egregious, so the 90-day period was off the table,” Fam said.
The school district needs more transparency and accountability, said Fam, who ran on a platform of parental rights.
“Broward County deserves and needs a superintendent that is extraordinary, and Cartwright is just ordinary, and that’s just not going to suffice,” she said.
Asked if she would considering re-hiring Cartwright, Fam said, “The people that I represent do not want the status quo. They want change. They want something better, and that’s what we need to bring them.”
Jorge Altuna, the student adviser to the school board from Cypress Bay High School, opposed Cartwright’s dismissal Monday evening. On Tuesday, he spoke up during the special school board meeting.
“I have spoken to many students ... and we all feel that this is not a direction toward stability, but you have already taken this decision and it is your prerogative to do this,” Altuna said.
“I can only hope and express my eagerness to you and my expectation that we will at least stick to the commitment of 60 days, because we did not stick to the 90-day commitment to the public. And that we also hire, if that is your next action, a superintendent both permanent and acting that will care and provide for the needs of the students of Broward County just like, in my view, Dr. Cartwright has in her tenure.”
Anna Fusco, the president of the Broward Teachers Union, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from the Herald.
DeSantis appointed Alston, Tynan, Reiter and Serrano in August after he suspended four board members following the release of a damning grand jury report. Tynan, Reiter and Serrano did not meet the June ballot deadline for this year’s elections.
READ MORE: DeSantis suspends four Broward County School Board members, appoints replacements
DeSantis appointed Foganholi in April to replace Rosalind Osgood, who stepped down to successfully run for the Florida Senate. Foganholi served until last Tuesday.
He chose to run for the Coral Spring City Commission instead of the Broward School Board; he lost that election Tuesday.
This story was originally published November 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
