Will Broward Schools superintendent keep her job? School board will decide next week
In what could be the ending of a two-month saga, the Broward School Board will likely decide next week whether to retain Superintendent Vickie Cartwright or fire her again.
On Wednesday, roughly a week before that crucial discussion is scheduled for next Tuesday, the same board member who led the effort to dismiss her in November, Daniel Foganholi, returned to the dais.
Foganholi, who served on the board from April to November, replaced Rodney “Rod” Velez, whom voters had elected in the Nov. 8 election, but could not be sworn in as he had a former criminal conviction and did not obtain clemency, a necessary step in holding public office. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Foganholi to that District 1 seat in December.
READ MORE: DeSantis appointee, superintendent foe, sworn into Broward School Board ahead of key vote
On Wednesday, too, the board member who added an agenda item to terminate Cartwright at next week’s meeting, Allen Zeman, confessed he’s unsure how he’ll vote on it.
Zeman, who supported rescinding Cartwright’s original termination back in December, said Wednesday: “I’ve not determined how I’m going to vote on that motion next week.”
READ MORE: Five things to know about the man DeSantis appointed twice to the Broward School Board
And also on Wednesday: Board members voted 6-3 to postpone hiring a search firm for a new superintendent until next Tuesday, when they’ll take up Cartwright’s contract.
Board member Debra Hixon’s motion to delay the search firm carried 6-3, with Zeman, Foganholi and Torey Alston, a board member DeSantis appointed in August, dissenting. Board members Hixon, Nora Rupert, Sarah Leonardi, Lori Alhadeff, Jeff Holness and Brenda Fam voted affirmatively.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to be selecting a search firm when we don’t know the fate of the superintendent yet,” Leonardi said.
Zeman, on the other hand, said he wanted the board to get moving in case it fires Cartwright, noting searches take months.
“If in fact we need a new superintendent, we have to be ready to execute immediately,” he said.
How we got here
The board hired Cartwright as interim superintendent in August 2021; it named her permanent superintendent in February. She became the first woman to hold the role in the sixth-largest school district in the country.
Trouble started in August last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended four of the nine sitting School Board members following an explosive statewide grand jury report and replaced them with four of his choosing.
READ MORE: DeSantis suspends four Broward County School Board members, appoints replacements
The grand jury did not indict any of the board members, but blamed them for gross mismanagement of a nearly $1 billion bond program to fix aging schools and shore up school safety. The governor described their transgressions as “incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority.”
Critics charged that DeSantis stacked the board with his GOP allies in the most Democratic county in the state to get back at the district for enacting a mask mandate in August 2021 amid a surge of COVID-19 cases in the state. A month earlier, in July 2021, the governor signed an executive order prohibiting such mandates.
Others said the school district urgently needed the governor’s actions.
READ MORE: Was DeSantis’ suspension of four Broward school board members politics or much needed?
The four DeSantis board members appointed in August joined Foganholi, whom DeSantis appointed to the School Board in April to fill the District 5 seat vacated by Board Member Rosalind Osgood in March. She stepped down to successfully run for the Florida Senate.
The five DeSantis appointees gained a majority on the nine-member board. Following the August grand jury report, they began questioning Cartwright’s performance.
Cartwright’s November firing by board
On Oct. 26, after some board members called for Cartwright’s dismissal, the board unanimously placed her on a 90-day probation period and told her to report back in 90 days.
About three weeks later, the five DeSantis appointees fired Cartwright in an abrupt 5-4 vote late into the evening on Nov. 14 — days before four of the five would be off the school board due to the November elections.
They fired her after the board heard two audit reports revealing the district allowed two longtime vendors — one of which distributed caps and gowns, the other offering education management and training services — to overcharge the district and parents at least $1.4 million.
The four elected board members voted against firing her, noting the board may have violated the state’s Sunshine State Law for not posting an item on the agenda about Cartwright’s contract.
Citing that, on Dec. 13, the newly elected board rescinded the firing and agreed to revisit the topic in late January.
FROM DECEMBER: Broward School Board rescinds superintendent’s firing by DeSantis appointees
What does this mean for the superintendent’s future?
Zeman’s proposal calls for the board to fire Cartwright without cause at the Jan. 24 meeting and for her last day to be June 30.
Asked for comment on the possibility of Cartwright being fired again at the Tuesday meeting, Keyla Concepción, a school district spokesperson, said, “Superintendent Cartwright is looking forward to presenting her 90-day follow-up to the Broward County School Board next week.”
CAST YOUR VOTE: Who are your heroes at Miami-Dade and Broward schools? Nominate them here
Board Chair Alhadeff, along with Alston and Fam, had voted in December not to rescind Cartwright’s November firing. Now that Foganholi has returned, he will likely side with them.
Board members Hixon, Leonardi, Rupert and Holness supported Cartwright a month ago.
If those votes stick, that means Zeman’s vote would break the tie.
This story was originally published January 18, 2023 at 8:42 PM.
