.jpg)
Will
School Board Explain Itself?
Probably Not, Says Powell
By
Robin Ford Wallace
One Dade citizen
attending Thursday’s March meeting of the Dade County Commission asked the
commissioners to explain recent doings of the county school board.
Why, asked Carol
Varnell, had the Dade County Board of Education chosen to pay Superintendent
Shawn Tobin $44,500 to leave early rather than letting him serve out his
notice? “We have to pay extra money
because of what the school board did. I
don’t understand,” said Ms. Varnell.
Also, she asked,
what had happened with Tobin anyway?
Had he resigned? Everything had
seemed to be moving smoothly along, she said; then suddenly, it came out Tobin
was leaving. “Did something bad happen
that they couldn’t get along?” she asked.
“To me, it was like a hush-hush thing,” she said.
The commissioners
explained that the school board was a separate entity and didn’t have to give
them a reason for its actions. “I
can’t really demand that they share it with us,” said Dade Executive Chairman
Ted Rumley.
Ms. Varnell wasn’t
having any of that. Rumley was the head
of the county, wasn’t he? “How come you
don’t know that when people in Dade County want to know it?” she asked.
Rumley and the
other commissioners explained that what the board of education had done was buy
out Tobin’s contract, and that part of the $45,543.98 it paid him was for
salary already earned as well as accumulated vacation time. “I think it ended up being around 20, 25
they paid him to go away,” said District 2 Commissioner Scottie Pittman.
“I believe we
could have stomached to give him another nine weeks for that,” commented a man
in the audience.
“That’s a lot of
money coming out of Dade,” said Ms. Varnell.
“I think the people of Dade County have been done wrong by the school
board and I’ll tell them that.”
Rumley couldn’t
answer Ms. Varnell’s questions but speculated school board members themselves
would oblige. “Surely they’ll come out
and have a briefing,” he said.
But board of education at-large member David
Powell says no, they probably won’t.
“I doubt they’re
going to come out and give their reasons,” said Powell, contacted by phone on
Friday.
Board Chairperson
Carolyn Bradford had issued a written statement at the time of the buyout, he
reminded, thanking Tobin for his service and saying the move would allow the
board to appoint an interim superintendent and begin a search for a permanent
replacement. “That’s all the
information that’s going to be given,” said Powell.
And Powell – the
only one of the five-member board to vote against the buyout – says he’s as
much in the dark as anybody as to why his fellow board members acted the way
they did. “I’ve asked the same
question,’ he said. “I can’t tell you
why because they haven’t told me why.”
Powell said he’d
learned about the buyout pretty much “through the grapevine.” “Why there was even a mention of a buyout, I
don’t know,” he said.
He said that in
earlier executive sessions – executive sessions are closed-door conferences the
board uses to discuss personnel matters – it had become clear that Tobin was
not going to be asked to stay on.
“Shawn was not getting his contract renewed,” he said. “He knew he wasn’t getting a renewal. It never went to a vote because it wasn’t
going to get the numbers.”
And Powell, who
continues to champion Tobin – “He’s not perfect but I believe he’s done a good
job running the system” – says he didn’t understand that, either. Powell said he’d solicited input from the
community and the other board members about what Tobin had done to earn their
disapproval. “My phone never rang,” he
said.
In any case, said
Powell, Tobin had accepted that his Dade tenure was over and had been able to
use credit for his years of military service to qualify for an early retirement. But as to the early buyout, Powell said the
idea for that appeared to have evolved from a chance remark the superintendent
had made earlier after learning about a colleague in another county being
offered a similar deal.
“Shawn made a
comment in passing about, ‘If you want to buy me out,’ ” said Powell. “People took it upon themselves to run with
that.”
Powell explained a
contract buyout was a good thing for an employee, because he could take his
lump sum and leave, perhaps accepting another position, as he understood Tobin
to have done.
The Planet emailed the other board of
education members for comment on the buyout but by the time of this writing had
not received a reply.
And indeed, the
Dade Board of Education is not traditionally an overwhelmingly forthcoming
body. Ms. Varnell was able to ask her
questions directly to the Dade County Commission, and receive face-to-face such
answers as the commissioners were able to furnish.
But at public
hearings at the Dade Board of Education, the board has invoked written
guidelines specifying it will listen to the public but not answer.
Yet it is to the
board of education that the lion’s share of the public’s local tax dollars
go. Chief Appraiser Paula Duvall of the
Dade County Tax Assessor’s office confirmed Monday that of each Dade real
estate tax dollar, the school board receives about 75 cents and the county
commission 25.
The school board
is to hold a work session this afternoon at 5 p.m. at which it is slated to
take up the matter of finding a new superintendent. Associate Superintendent Cherie Swader has been appointed interim
head of the system.
robinfordwallace@tvn.net
No comments:
Post a Comment