When it comes to teaching math and reading, Eagle Arts is, by some measures, among the most ineffective schools in Palm Beach County. Take the school’s performance on the state’s language arts exam, which measures reading ability. Last year, Eagle Arts’ p
On its Facebook page and website, the school displays photos of Walt Disney and offers regular paeans to the premise that ‘learning can be fun,’ posting pictures and videos of its students singing, dancing, composing poetry and drawing.
The pushback angered Blount fur ther, and they s a y h e b e g a n d i r e c t i n g his screaming fits at each of them. Separately, each woman soon decided she had had enough.
In Simone’s case, the tipping point came in the first week of classes, as she sat in her office with two other administrators, listening to Blount shout at them over the speaker phone. She resigned t h a t d ay, a n d I r o n s t o n e resigned from the board the same week.
“I believe in building staff up, not tearing them down,” Simone said in an interview. “As an educator, I felt I was unable to do my job effectively because of the constant chaos that surrounded Mr. Blount, which was so unlike any other educational environment I had been in.”
The clashes continued with the principals tapped to replace Simone: first, Michael Smith, an assistant principal who had left a position at a nearby public school. He lasted less than a month on the job before being fired after clashing with Blount.
Hi s re pl a c e ment , Paul Copeland, resigned after two weeks to take a job as a funeral home director.
Blount declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to questions. In an email declining to comment, he told a Post reporter that he would “pray that you see the light.”
“I am here to serve God’s purpose and work daily to instill His vision to make a difference in education,” he wrote. “God knows I am here to serve His children.”
Parent accused of hacking into system
B y t h e t i m e B l o u n t assumed the principal role, many parents were fed up with the clashes and constant turmoil.
In November, one mother emailed parents an online petition calling for Blount to be removed as executive director. The move angered Blount, and three days later he called the sheriff ’s office, claiming that the mother had hacked into the school’s email system and destroyed files.
Blount offered no evidence that she had done so, and the case was dropped after the mother denied the allegation, according to the sheriff ’s office report.
The petition, which garnered just 11 signatures, was dismissed by the school’s board of directors, which employs Blount but is largely composed of Blount’s longtime friends and associates.
When Skyler Goodwin’s son lost his cellphone at the school in January, the school declined to report it stolen to the sheriff ’s office. Angry, Goodwin took to Facebook to criticize the school.
“Worst school I’ve ever had my son in,” he wrote. “Thi s school i s horrible. Teachers have been in and out. Losing staff every week. It’s a joke.”
Hours later, Goodwin got a phone call from Blount, who was in Los Angeles leading children on a paid trip to meet acting recruiters but had seen the comment. He demanded that Goodwin remove it. If he didn’t, Blount said, he would expel his son.
Goodwin refused to take it down, and Blount eventually relented after a warning from the school district that he had no legal right to expel a child.
Through all of this, Sheffield worked at the school as a study hall teacher and after-school attendant, while her daughter took classes in sixth grade.
In October, her first month o n t he j o b, more t ha n a dozen employees resigned, she said.
Florida requires teachers to be certified, but Sheffield said Blount got around her lack of credentials by designating her a permanent substitute. In the end, the studyhall job ended up being “a glorified babysitter.”
Students would file into her class and spent the entire period on computer programs designed to help them improve at math.
As other teachers resigned, the school would add stu- dents to her class. To handle the teacher shortages, she said, some students were given two study hall periods a day.
“All they were doing was getting on their computer programs for hours,” she said. “I’d have 40 students mushed in my classroom, all doing different things.”
Shouting fit could be heard in a classroom
By then, the purges had begun. Blount would fire several people in a single day with no warning and no indication of what they had done wrong.
“From the time I started until the day I was let go, 11 people were fired or quit,” said one teacher who lasted less than five months before being among six fired in a single day. “The whole place was just a toxic work environment.”
Even after-care counsel- ors weren’t spared. Nicole Mollison, who started as an after-care counselor in September, remembers Blount storming into the cafeteria one day where they were watching a group of young elementary students.
She had yet to meet Blount, and he didn’t bother to introduce himself. Instead, she recalled, he yelled at her and a co-worker: “Get up off your lazy butts!”
“I was so baffled at the way he decided to address us,” she recalled. “He’d just start talking to people like they weren’t people. I’d never had a boss like that before.”
S hef f i e l d s a i d she was never subjected to a screaming fit directly, but that she and her students would hear Blount reaming out teachers in the hallways.
“He would be screaming so loud you could hear it in the classroom,” she said.
In a statement, the school d e c l i n e d t o a d d r e s s t h e accounts of Blount’s screaming fits. “Due to privacy and employment regulations, we are unable to answer this question,” Kirk, the board member, wrote.
Quinn, the school’s chairman, declined to respond to questions about the school’s staff turnover and falling enrollment. In a statement, he said the public’s focus should be on “the wonderful strides made by Eagles Arts Academy and its mission and the parents of those who are thriving.”
In March, after watching colleague after colleague laid off, Sheffield became a victim of a purge herself, fired during spring break along with another study-hall teacher and a group of aftercare workers. There was no phone call, no explanation, no reason cited. Just an email from the assistant principal saying her services were no longer needed.
Another teacher who still works at the school said the teachers live in constant fear of being fired or screamed at in front of students.
“I’ve witnessed people in tears,” the teacher said. “You don’t know if you’re going to get hauled into his office. And if you do get fired, he’ll just trump up something.”
After being fired, Sheffield said she hired a private teacher to assess Jill’s reading ability. Her verdict: Jill was reading at a lower level than she had been a year earlier.
“Her education regressed,” Sheffield said. “She is further behind than when she graduated fifth grade.”
School district administrators have been watching the school closely all year. Monitors visit the campus frequently and were present to oversee administration of the state exams, the Florida Standards Assessments, last month.
I f t h e s c h o o l ’s p e r f o rmance on those tests does not improve, district officials warn that they could force the school to close, though that decision would ultimately be made by the county school board.
By then, former employees worry about the effect on the educations of hundreds of students.
“Even the good students a r e g o i n g t o b e i n f o r a world of hurt,” said Douglas. “They’ve got a three-year hole in their education.”