School leader’s firing ends drama

When Kevin Tynan’s name is called, silence fills the room for 20 seconds. Putting his arms behind his head to stretch, he shares, “I didn’t think I would be the deciding vote.”

After a final long pause, he votes ... “yes.”

Audible gasps follow as the audience looks stunned that Broward’s schools superintendent has been fired.

The dramatic moment marked the climax of three months of change, chaos and suspense on a School Board controlled by

appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The “reform board,” consisting of five Republican men and four Democratic women, became a laboratory of what can happen when conservatives gain brief control of a liberal school district with a long history of problems.

The experiment, which started Aug. 26, is now over. Only one of the five DeSantis appointees, Torey Alston, will remain on the board to fill out the remaining two years of the term of Patti Good, one of four members DeSantis suspended after a scathing grand jury report. The four others will be replaced by newly elected board members.

The school board live streams became must-see viewing for many, full of plot twists and cliffhangers. Many tuned in to see who might get criticized, investigated or fired each week. Twitter users frequently shared GIFs of popcorn after every new development.

A School Board that for years preferred to tout its successes and downplay its failures now had members in meetings regularly using terms like “hot mess” and “toxic culture” to describe the organization they led.

“I actually prefer no drama, but I think we have seen a lot of operational decisions that as a board, we have had to address, discuss and debate,” Alston, the board chairman, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Thursday.

There was no shortage of drama three days earlier when Alston told the board it was time to “blow up this incompetence, get rid of this culture of corruption.”

Zayra Lenchus, a former campus monitor and job coach at Monarch High in Coconut Creek, said she tuned in to every meeting and couldn’t turn away.

“It’s my reality show. They keep you waiting by the edge of your seat to see what’s going to happen next,” she said. “It’s sad because it’s supposed to be about kids.”

This new unfiltered board came as the result of a statewide grand jury report released Aug. 19, which concluded that former Superintendent Robert Runcie, who was indicted on a perjury charge last year, mismanaged the district, especially related to an $800 million bond for safety and construction.

The grand jury recommended five board members be removed, but one, Rosalind Osgood had already left before the report’s release to become a state senator. She was replaced by DeSantis appointee Daniel Foganholi in April.

On Aug. 26, DeSantis suspended the four remaining women — Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson — and replaced them with Alston, Tynan, Ryan Reiter and Manuel “Nandy” Serrano. With Foganholi, that gave the DeSantis appointees a majority until Nov. 22, when the terms would be up for all but Alston.

The five were ethnically diverse — with one Black, one white, one mixed-race Brazilian, one Native American and Mexican, and one Puerto Rican — and came from a variety of backgrounds, including law, finance, construction and politics.

“I think you have to look at the board and we look a lot like Broward,” Serrano told the Sun Sentinel. “There’s diversity, not only by color but by experience.”

It also was the first time since 2012 there were any men on the board.

The first major action of the “DeSantis Five” was to elect a new chairperson to replace suspended member Laurie Rich Levinson. While the four women wanted Lori Alhadeff, the five men chose Alston.

Many predicted that would foreshadow future votes, with a Republican majority constantly overruling a Democratic minority, even though the board is supposed to be nonpartisan. In reality, that didn’t happen on most votes.

There was consensus on several major decisions. All board members agreed to stop paying legal fees for suspended School Board members. They agreed to hold vendors accountable who had overcharged students and parents. They pressured administrators to comply with the state’s public records law. And they created a more welcoming atmosphere for public speakers, ending the practice of interrupting them or turning off their microphones when they veered slightly off-topic.

For the most part, the meetings avoided partisan battles over issues that have divided other school boards, including critical race theory, LGBTQ issues and COVID-19 restrictions. At a recent meeting, the School Board supported the administration’s decision to fire a teacher for insubordination for repeatedly refusing to wear a mask at school during the pandemic.

One exception was a proposal to share more tax money with charter schools, an idea that was opposed by the Democratic women.

The issue that created the most tension was the future of Cartwright, who had just been hired permanently in February after serving six months as interim superintendent. Before that, she was forced out of a previous superintendent’s job in Oshkosh, Wis., following a change on that School Board.

Cartwright wasn’t around when the grand jury report was completed in April 2021, so the elected board members resisted efforts to blame her for the management problems identified in the grand jury.

But at a Sept. 15 state Board of Education meeting, chairman Tom Grady suggested Cartwright should be removed, arguing she had failed to fix many of the problems identified in the grand jury report.

Cartwright acknowledged at an Oct. 25 meeting that she had been worried about her future.

“Early on, Chair Alston recognized my nervousness during a board meeting when a conversation was occurring regarding my contract,” Cartwright told the board. “He and I had an honest conversation where he expressed that there wasn’t an agenda. I immediately shifted my attitude to become more trusting.”

In early October, it looked like Cartwright would survive. Board members rated Cartwright effective in her first evaluation. The four recently appointed board members were given the option to participate, and only one did, Reiter, who ranked her highly effective based on his “brief observations.” Foganholi, who started in April, gave her effective, the same as the four elected members.

But on Oct. 18, the five DeSantis appointees voted not to accept the evaluations, complaining of a flawed process.

But criticisms of Cartwright’s leadership quickly intensified. Black residents, who were angry about a decision in June to demote several Black administrators, became angry over a botched search for a facilities chief where a Black candidate was twice eliminated, first due to a scoring error and then due to questions from a previous job about his personal leave time.

Some board members voiced frustration about Cartwright’s decision to give large separation packages to three administrators without board approval. Alston accused her of rallying the Broward Teachers Union and other groups to a meeting to oppose a possible decrease in property taxes — one that Alston said was never planned.

On Oct. 21, Alston placed an item on the Oct. 25 agenda to discuss Cartwright’s future. He accused her of having a “getting-to-November” attitude — waiting out this board until new elected members were sworn in Nov. 22.

“Staff members made comments about this being a temporary situation, which does create a getting-to-November culture,” Cartwright said at the Oct. 25 meeting. “They were looking for stability since there has been such instability . ... I wasn’t clear enough to keep rumors calm, and I accept responsibility for that.”

At that meeting, it looked like there were enough votes to fire Cartwright, especially after Alhadeff, who had voted against hiring Cartwright in February, hinted she was leaning that way.

But at the end of the 12-hour meeting, Alston and Cartwright met privately and she agreed to a 90-day improvement plan to try to resolve board members’ concerns. It passed unanimously.

Although it looked like Cartwright was safe for 90 days, Alston said that agreement was never meant as a guarantee.

“It was up to 90 days to get things fixed, so a probationary period,” Alston said. “During that period, you saw a series of things that popped up that did have the superintendent’s fingerprints on it.”

On Nov. 3, three audits of contracts related to educational software as well as caps and gowns for graduating seniors identified at least $1.4 million in excess charges and favoritism toward certain vendors. Numerous text messages and emails that auditors hoped to search as part of the review were missing or deleted, and the district failed to maintain a records retention policy.

The issues predated Cartwright, but problems continued under her watch, auditors found.

The audits were on the agenda for Nov. 14, but few were expecting them to lead to Cartwright’s firing. No media were in attendance except for the Sun Sentinel, which had uncovered the problems that triggered the caps and gowns audit. Only a half-dozen people were in the audience.

At 9 p.m., Foganholi made

a motion to fire the superintendent. Although he’d brought up the idea twice before, and Tuesday would be his last day as a board member, he said he didn’t know if he would propose it until the meeting, hence no advance notice to the public.

“I reacted on the spot because of the audits,” Foganholi told the Sun Sentinel. “Deleted messages, favoritism, everything that was mentioned. Anybody that watched that meeting should feel the same way I did.”

There was “one regret. I should’ve done it earlier.”

Cartwright remained calm during the meeting, defending herself by saying she had taken steps to resolve problems that came to her attention.

“I’m very concerned that as I discover things and put corrective actions in place, somehow it becomes my fault,” she told the board. “What message are we sending to future leaders?”

Cartwright supporter Debbi Hixon urged the interim board members not to fire her.

“You’re not going to have to deal with the chaos that we’re going to have from removing the superintendent,” HIxon said.

Alston supported Foganholi’s request, but Serrano and Tynan initially said they wouldn’t support it. They pointed to the 90-day plan agreed to three weeks earlier.

“I’m a lawyer. I believe in playing fair,” Tynan told the Sun Sentinel. “I thought I was going to be a no-vote.”

Reiter appeared to be on the fence, but he counted six no-votes.

“Knowing this is going to fail, I’m still voting yes to hold you accountable,” Reiter told Cartwright.

But then Serrano shocked the audience by changing his vote.

“With the comments being made tonight, I’m going to say yes,” he said.

Asked about it Thursday, Serrano told the Sun Sentinel, “It’s not that I flipflopped. I am allowed to change my mind as more facts came in.”

With the four women voting no, Tynan was the tie-breaking vote. He mulled the decision for 54 seconds before casting the yes vote that may end Cartwright’s brief tenure with Broward schools. After hearing Reiter and Serrano’s votes, “I was swayed.”

Hixon, perhaps Cartwright’s staunchest ally, was heartbroken by the vote. She looked at DeSantis appointees after the vote and said, “People warned me I shouldn’t trust you. It turns out they were right.”

The next day, Hixon tried to rescind the vote and do it over a few days later, raising Florida Sunshine Law concerns about the issue not being on the meeting agenda. By the time it could be reconsidered, four of the five board members voting no would be gone.

Interim General Counsel Marylin Batista gave conflicting answers Monday and Tuesday about whether the meeting created Sunshine concerns. The request for a redo meeting failed by the same 5-4 vote.

On Friday, Batista sent a memo to Alston saying the vote complied with the Sunshine Law since the meeting had been publicly advertised and was open to the public.

Hixon told the Sun Sentinel on Friday she wouldn’t ask the new board to reconsider.

“I believe it is up to the new board members to decide if they want the chance to vote on it,” Hixon said. “One of them should bring it forward if they feel they should get a say.”

Incoming member Brenda Fam has indicated she wouldn’t support rescinding the vote. The three others — Jeff Holness, Allen Zeman and Rod Velez — declined to comment or couldn’t be reached.

Cartwright’s contract requires her to be given 60 days notice. She’s expected to remain superintendent until an interim replacement is named.

Support for Cartwright within the district appears tepid. At an Oct. 25 meeting, some public speakers urged the board not to fire her. But few said Cartwright was a great leader, instead arguing that a DeSantis-appointed board shouldn’t overturn the will of the elected board that hired her.

Lisa Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association, wrote a letter of recommendation last year for Cartwright’s hiring as permanent superintendent. But on Thursday, she told board members in a letter that the district had “spiraled more and more out of control.” She thanked them for firing Cartwright.

“We have an extremely dangerous safety and security deficit on our campuses. Budgetary decisions are being made by individuals who have no understanding of the implications,” she said. “Facilities problems, lack of communication, failure to make decisions in a timely manner, are all plagues upon our schools and have only gotten worse since the Superintendent’s permanent status.”

Cartwright told reporters Tuesday she was shocked by the action but wouldn’t say whether she plans to fight it. On Thursday, she gave a speech to student government leaders without ever addressing the issue. She was tight-lipped with a Sun Sentinel reporter afterward.

“I’m putting my faith in God,” she said. “I will continue to stay focused on students.”

Gov. DeSantis’s office, in a statement, praised the interim board members but didn’t directly address the firing of Cartwright.

The board members were “able to implement the actions they felt necessary to improve their school district,” DeSantis Press Secretary Bryan Griffin said.

“Across the state of Florida, parents and citizens are getting involved in their local school boards and demanding improvement,” Griffin said. “This involvement is indeed a good thing that has the governor’s support.”