Despite new facts, the indictment, arrest of Broward Superintendent Runcie remain suspicious | Opinion
Little about the indictment and arrest of Broward County Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie has been normal.
For days, the public — and even Runcie and his lawyers — were left to wonder: Exactly . . . why?
Imagine, in any other case, being accused, led away in handcuffs, your mugshot on display in every media outlet in town — and not knowing the specific charges you’re, all of a sudden, facing as your life flashes before your eyes.
The way this was handled alone has generated great concern.
Doesn’t the leader of the nation’s sixth-largest school district deserve better from the justice system?
As a woman said to Runcie during Tuesday’s meeting of the Broward County Public Schools Board, to many in the African-American community, it looks like this: “Degrees don’t matter. You’re just standing there as another Black man.”
Felony perjury charge
New revelations about the felony perjury charge released Monday by the prosecutor aren’t shedding much light on a key question raised by a slate of Black elected officials in the state: Given Florida’s highly partisan politics, is the superintendent’s prosecution politically motivated?
That’s because a peculiar set of circumstances has marked the case from the beginning.
It was brought about by a statewide grand jury impaneled by the Florida Supreme Court in February 2019 — at the request of newly elected Gov. Ron DeSantis — to investigate school system failures that may have led to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and to ensure compliance with new safety mandates.
On the campaign trail, DeSantis said publicly that he wanted Runcie out of office, but he didn’t have the authority to remove an appointed official in the same way he expelled elected Broward Sheriff Scott Israel for the poor police response to the shooting.
Rightfully angry and grieving Parkland parents were demanding accountability of the superintendent, particularly because he implemented and supported a second-chances program for offenders, Promise, that failed to detect and stop a shooter with a record of violence.
The parents wanted Runcie to apologize and resign.
Low-key, professional, Runcie demonstrated sadness, compassion and determination to make changes, but he didn’t apologize or resign — until now.
He will resign, Runcie said Tuesday night, not because of the felony charge, but for the unrelenting blame he’s received for the mass shooting.
“I will step aside so you can have the peace you are looking for,” Runcie said to School Board member Lori Alhadeff.
Her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, was killed in the shooting.
What a class act.
Two years later, DeSantis’ grand jury has delivered on what most likely be the end of the Runcie era, despite Runcie’s overall record of improvement of Broward schools by most measures during the past 10 years.
“Do you wonder why the public thinks there is something sinister about this?” Broward Commissioner Dale Holness, a fierce Runcie supporter, told the School Board.
“No one supported him when he got here. It wasn’t just what happened in Parkland. This has been ongoing. They used him to try to hurt you [the board] and get you out of office,” he said.
Runcie is, certainly, in trouble.
He’s accused of making a statement he knew to be false when he testified before the grand jury on March 31 and April 1.
To prepare, two days before testifying, Runcie contacted a witness in a criminal case, then he lied about it under oath when asked, the prosecutor says.
That criminal case is the indictment of former Broward Schools technology chief Tony Hunter, who was charged in January with rigging contracts for technology equipment and with accepting illegal compensation from a vendor.
It sounds damning, but the people Runcie contacted were his employees.
If you’re the person in charge of a school district and you need to testify about an issue, wouldn’t you collect the information you need from those on the ground handling it?
Did Runcie even know he wasn’t supposed to contact those people because they’re witnesses?
Of course, the worst part is that Runcie allegedly lied about making the contact.
He said he was testifying from memory of a workshop on the schools’ $800 million bond issue years ago.
Runcie entered a written plea of not guilty on Wednesday, but the case is far from a clear-cut situation.
There are so many questions, and each new answer begets more questions.
Bizarre case
The case is bizarre all-around.
The prosecutor on the case is Richard Mantei, a St. Augustine lawyer who lists no party affiliation and was one of the prosecutors in the case against George Zimmerman for the second-degree murder of teenager Trayvon Martin.
“There are two people involved here,” Mantei famously said then. “One of them is dead, and one of them is a liar.”
Zimmerman, he said, changed his story and exaggerated his wounds. The way Zimmerman says he shot Martin was “a physical impossibility,” Mantei added.
And we know how that trial turned out, with a not-guilty verdict for a teenager’s killer.
A rush in judgment in Runcie’s unusual and politicized case isn’t in anyone’s best interest and most important, not in the interest of Broward’s public school students.
But for DeSantis, it’s a promise made — and a promise kept — now that Runcie is facing an obscure perjury charge and the challenge of his career.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
