Chaos by design in Broward schools is DeSantis’ doing

Broward County School Board member Daniel Foganholi, a Gov. Ron DeSantis appointee, wants the board to immediately remove its chief attorney at its meeting Tuesday.

He claims general counsel Marylin Batista took “unauthorized actions” in an unresolved legal fight over how much money the district owes charter schools from a 2018 voter-approved bond issue. (The agenda item misspells Batista’s first name throughout. Maybe a lawyer should have reviewed it first).

School Board member Torey Alston, who also was appointed by DeSantis and not elected by Broward voters, wants to rescind a binding negotiated contract, approved in February, between the district and its teachers.

Welcome to the home of the nation’s sixth-largest school district, as “repurposed” by DeSantis, to borrow a popular term these days.

Alston and Foganholi don’t have enough votes to make either of these things happen. As Board Chairman Lori Alhadeff told me, “My colleagues and I will vote with the best interest of our district and students in mind.”

But things are likely to get ugly in public, and that’s what this is all about. It’s disorder by design.

The point should be obvious: to create enough of a perception of chaos and instability to provide a rationalization for the state to punish the district — or worse, provide another political basis for DeSantis to wreak havoc with more suspensions of board members in an election year like he did two years ago.

He got away with it once. Why wouldn’t he do it again?

Separately, Alston now wants the Department of Education in Tallahassee to investigate what he calls a “blatant corrupt culture” that he claims exists among certain board members, district staff and the Broward Teachers’ Union in the recent negotiations that led to a 3.96% pay raise for teachers.

As the Sun Sentinel’s Scott Travis reports, some money for those raises came from COVID-19 relief money that will dry up this year as the district grapples with financial pressures and faces the politically difficult closings of under-enrolled schools.

Alston alleges that pro-union board members leaked confidential negotiation details to the union to win the BTU’s endorsement. The charge seems ludicrous on its face as the union reliably supports Democratic board members anyway.

“I will weave together public and discoverable facts that illustrate a blatant corrupt culture that still exists in Broward County Public Schools,” Alston wrote in a letter to the state, describing an alleged “pay to play” culture.

If Alston is so certain that corruption exists — a felony under Florida law — he needn’t seek help from his friends in Tallahassee. He should walk right across Southeast Third Avenue in Fort Lauderdale and file charges with State Attorney Harold Pryor, a two-minute walk from his School Board office.

But no. For obvious reasons, Alston much prefers a different forum: Commissioner Manny Diaz’s Department of Education.

That’s the same DOE that acted as judge, jury and executioner by overriding a still-pending lawsuit and found “probable cause” that the district broke the law by not sharing proceeds of a 2018 bond issue with charter schools.

That long-simmering issue may also come to a boil in the coming days.

The School Board is scheduled to hold another private settlement discussion Tuesday (as allowed by law), and the following day, Diaz’s Board of Education, politically aligned with the charter school industry, will take up the issue in Tallahassee.

The mediator in the charter school dispute, former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, has told the state: “I am pleased to report the parties entered into a preliminary agreement to resolve the dispute.”

So it’s settled? Apparently not.

The Board of Education agenda item reads: “The State Board of Education will consider whether the Broward County School Board is unwilling or unable to comply with (state law) regarding revenue it collected under a local ad valorem tax … the State Board will now determine whether the District is unwilling or unable to comply and, if so, what actions should be taken to bring the Board into compliance.”

Through carefully calculated actions, Alston and Foganholi and their allies in the governor’s office are doing their best to seize control of the district. But it has to be done in the forum of public opinion, not a courtroom, and they can’t control the agenda because they don’t have five votes on the nine-member board.

Not yet, anyway.

Attentive voters are aware — or should be before election day — that these two disruptive board members were chosen by a Republican governor who has never been popular in Broward County. Nobody cast a ballot for either of them.

DeSantis knows what everyone in Broward knows: Alston and Foganholi could likely never get elected.

Another coup to override the will of voters will have to happen quickly, if at all, because an election is coming. Contested School Board races, still officially nonpartisan, are held in August, with a November runoff if no one gets more than 50% of the vote.