FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a grand jury up on its recommendation Friday afternoon to remove four Broward School Board members after a scathing report that accused them of having “engaged in acts of incompetence and neglect of duty.”
The removals are effective immediately for the four sitting members: Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Laurie Rich Levinson and Ann Murray. The school board members were notified of their terminations by email Friday.
There was a fifth member who was recommended for removal, but she is no longer on the board: Rosalind Osgood, who resigned in March to successfully run for the state Senate.
In announcing the suspensions, DeSantis said, “These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement, across the district.”
Reaction to the termination was swift: Max Schachter, whose son, Alex, was killed in the Parkland shooting, considered it “payback” that the school board members were suspended. “Karma can punch back!” he tweeted as he thanked the governor.
The 122-page grand jury report details mismanagement within Broward schools after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland. The grand jury report was completed in April 2021, but was publicly released more than a year later, on Aug. 19.
The board members were part of a majority on the board who supported former Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie. The grand jury indicted Runcie on perjury charges in April 2021, and much of the report is highly critical of his leadership. Runcie stepped down in August 2021.
Among the findings and allegations in the report:
—Runcie and the school board, “through fraud and deceit,” mismanaged an $800 million bond referendum, failing to renovate schools and leaving students “in decrepit, moldy, unsafe buildings.”
—The school district delayed installing fire alarms with 40-second delays recommended by a former chief fire official that could have avoided a deadly evacuation during the Parkland shooting.
—The business group Broward Workshop, whose membership included Runcie, wielded influence over school board members to keep Runcie in power, despite problems in the district.
—Runcie frequently lied to the board and the public.
—The school district has shown “an almost fanatical desire” to manage its image and “feel that they are at war with the local media,” especially the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
A week ago, Levinson called the grand jury report “a political hatchet job.”
Good called it “unfortunate that this grand jury process has been weaponized and politicized in such a way to retaliate against board members who disagreed with the governor’s views.”
And Korn said she “looked forward to reviewing that information and reassuring our community that I have always placed our students first.”
DeSantis immediately named four replacements to the Broward County School Board:
—Torey Alston, a county commissioner who was appointed to an empty seat on the commission.
—Manual “Nandy” A. Serrano, a member of the Florida Sports Foundation board of directors, and CEO and founder of Clubhouse Private Wealth.
—Ryan Reiter, past president of the Broward Young Republicans, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and director of government relations for Kaufman Lynn Construction.
—Kevin Tynan, an attorney and former chairman of the Broward Republican Party. In 2009, he was appointed by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist to replace suspended School Board member Beverly Gallagher.
DeSantis asked the Supreme Court to convene the grand jury in 2019 to focus mostly on safety and security issues statewide in the wake of the Parkland tragedy, although the focus morphed into corruption within the Broward school district.
At least part of the report’s delay was a result of appeals by certain School Board members. Some members fought to have it redacted or expunged. When a county judge rejected the requests, they tried to have an appeals court keep their names out of it. The 4th District Court of Appeals twice denied their appeals this summer, the most recent time on July 27. They appealed again to the state Supreme Court, which declined to hear it.
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(Sun Sentinel staff writer Scott Travis contributed to this article.)
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