Schools PR chief subpoenaed over pro-Runcie rally
Prosecutors who indicted former Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie on a felony charge are questioning why a top-level administrator organized a rally for her boss during school hours on school district property.
Communications Chief Kathy Koch received a subpoena from the Attorney General’s Office after the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported July 18 about her aggressive but stealth effort to save her boss’s job, detailed in notes she wrote to herself.
A transcript of her July 29 interview with state prosecutors and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is included in evidence prosecutors sent to Runcie’s lawyers in his criminal case.
Koch initially said under oath that she made calls to organize the Runcie rally on her own personal time, repeating an assertion she’d made to the Sun Sentinel in a July 15 email. But she quickly acknowledged that response may not be accurate.
“I don’t know exactly when the calls were made,” she told prosecutors. “My intention was to do as much as I possibly could do at home. I don’t want to misstate by saying broadly that they were all not done during the day.”
Neither Koch nor her boss, interim Superintendent Vickie
Cartwright, could be reached for comment Thursday, despite attempts by email and phone.
Prosecutors say Koch was being granted immunity during her testimony as long as she didn’t lie under oath. Runcie’s cellphone had been disconnected, and his lawyers couldn’t be reached for comment.
Much of Koch’s 49-minute interview focused on two pages of notes Koch sent from her personal account to her work email account describing the Runcie rally, which was held during work hours on April 23 in front of the K.C. Wright administrative building in Fort Lauderdale.
In her notes, she described getting approval from Runcie, contacting Runcie supporters in the community, writing a news release, coordinating with a public relations firm, editing a speaker’s comments and alerting security, all while trying to appear as though she wasn’t involved.
“I will be in [K.C. Wright] 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 to media, which might ask me about Mr. Runcie,” Koch wrote in her notes.
Prosecutor Richard Mantei asked Koch why she was concerned about people seeing her at the rally.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be visible at the event. It was community support for the superintendent,” Koch responded. “And for me to be there as an employee of the district, I think would be a distraction. And it just wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Mantei questioned her logic.
“It wasn’t inappropriate, I take it, for you to organize and set this up, to write up a press release, contact these people, and — to use your words — plan and execute the event, but then it was somehow inappropriate if you attended the event?” he asked.
“I think it would have been inappropriate for me to be visible at the event where the community was and I was an employee of the district,” Koch responded. “I did not think that would be appropriate.”
Koch said she organized the rally not in her district role but as Runcie’s friend.
During the interview, Koch said more than 20 times that she didn’t remember specifics about instances she had detailed in the notes. She said she didn’t know why she sent the notes to herself, knowing they would become public records.
She also couldn’t answer why she wrote the notes in the first place.
“I don’t know exactly — I don’t know,” she told prosecutors. “I just did that. It was just me being me.”
She also couldn’t decipher some hard-to-understand portions of her notes, such as when she wrote, “W-r-o called porto pay for his PR company to tie after.”
“It’s just gibberish,” Koch told prosecutors. “I don’t understand what it means. I don’t know if you ever typed something and you go back and look — I don’t know what that means.”
Mantei was surprised by that answer.
“You’re the communications chief for a very large school district, and I know you’re an experienced public relations professional. That’s what you said, you have done this for 20 something years,” Mantei said. “Are you in the habit of sending yourself gibberish that you can’t recognize?”
“I have never done this ever before,” Koch responded.
“Then help me understand what’s going on,” Mantei asked.
“I wish I knew why I did that,” she said.
Although the testimony was included in the file for Runcie’s court case, it’s unclear what relevance Koch’s efforts to save Runcie’s job have to do with his perjury charge. He’s accused of lying to a grand jury about whether he had been prepped by other administrators on matters unrelated to Koch.
The release of Koch’s testimony could simply mean prosecutors plan to use her as a witness, said Scott Strauss, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and former federal prosecutor with no ties to the case.
“If they call her as a witness, they are required to turn over any sworn statements good or bad to Runcie’s lawyer,” Strauss said. “They may never call her as a witness, but they don’t want to be accused of hiding evidence.”
The documents also contain group chat messages from Runcie’s top administrators showing their support for their boss, their belief that the state has a weak case and their sadness over his decision on April 27 to step down. Runcie’s last day was Aug. 10.
“It is underwhelming,” Chief of Staff Jeff Moquin wrote in the group chat on April 26 after reading a Sun Sentinel story detailing why Runice was accused of perjury.
“Very weak and a long stretch of credulity” Chief Academic Officer Dan Gohl added.
After Runcie and General Counsel Barbara Myrick, who also was indicted, announced April 27 that they would step down, the administrators voiced their love and disappointment in the group chat, which included Runcie and Myrick as members.
“Today is a travesty,” wrote Valerie Wanza, chief of performance and accountability.
“I have reported to several CEOs and worked with many General Counsels. I am so grateful to have worked with the best,” Chief Auditor Joris Jabouin wrote. “RR and BM. Combination of intelligence, integrity, class, and more. Love you both a lot.”