Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended four members of the Broward County School Board after a grand jury recommended their removal due to alleged incompetence, neglect of duty, and abuse of authority.
Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray, and Laurie Rich Levinson were suspended immediately by DeSantis on Friday.
The Governor said that the action was taken in response to a grand jury report that was made public last week and suggested that the members of the school board be suspended for “deceit, malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, and incompetence.”
“It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance,” DeSantis said in a statement. “This action is in the best interest of the residents and students of Broward County and all citizens of Florida.”
The grand jury convened 15 months after Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which claimed the lives of 14 students and three staff members.
The school board has nine members, two of whom were elected after the deaths of Hixon’s husband Chris and Alhadeff’s daughter Alyssa in the Stoneman Douglas shooting.
They ran on platforms that advocated for increased campus security.
Alhadeff, in particular, has frequently clashed with the targeted members, most notably regarding Runcie’s performance prior to his resignation.
The grand jury stated that Runcie’s and the accused board members’ “uninformed or even misinformed decisions, incompetent management, and lack of meaningful oversight” have resulted in massive cost overruns and delays in the SMART Program, a multimillion-dollar bond approved by county voters in 2014 for school safety and renovation initiatives.
According to the report, the $1 billion program, which was supposed to be completed in 2021, is now projected to cost $1.5 billion when completed in 2025 — estimates the jury referred to as “wishcasting.”
According to the jury’s findings, the district “produces training materials on ‘Building the Brand’ as though the district were all important and its students were merely commodities and instruct employees to always consider how situations might affect the perception of the District as opposed to the reality.”
Following the report’s publication last week, the board’s chairwoman, Levinson, vehemently denounced it as a “political hatchet job” carried out by the governor.
Former Broward County Commissioner Torey Alston, former Broward School Board member Kevin Tynan, Manual “Nandy” A. Serrano, and Ryan Reiter were appointed by DeSantis to replace the school board members.
