Kaddatz Hopes to Shake Up Complacent School Board

Alice Kaddatz is a long-time parent activist who has been watchdogging the Manatee School Board for years. Now she's thrown her hat into the proverbial ring and is seeking one of the board's five seats in August's election, vying for the district 2 seat in the non-partisan, countywide race.

Kaddatz, whose family has been in Manatee County since the 1800s, has put six kids through the school district and now has grandchildren in Manatee County schools. Her attention to the way the district is run became much more focused in 2012, however, after her daughter was sexually abused by a school district employee and popular football coach, in what would become perhaps the district's greatest scandal, leading to the arrest of five employees on felony charges.

Kaddatz's daughter and the family underwent an unthinkable ordeal following the abuse, which began in 2012. Assistant football coach Rod Frazier, who worked as a "parent liaison" at the high school, was accused of inappropriately touching the student, orchestrating an off campus meeting, and requesting a nude photograph from her.

An investigation by the Bradenton Police Department and State Attorney's Office painted a very troubling picture in which an employee ostensibly hired to help troubled kids, routinely behaved inappropriately, pulling students out of class to hang out in his office, where he had a district-issued computer that investigators described as containing an almost inconceivable amount of pornographic material.

Frazier later plead no contest to three misdemeanor counts of battery and three counts of interfering with a student's school attendance, though he only served house arrest. Meanwhile, many supporters of the high school and its nationally-ranked football team blamed the victim, an underaged child, rather than a man in his thirties who had been entrusted with authority over her.

The board added insult to injury when it took lengthy measures to absolve the administrators who failed to report the abuse allegations to state authorities, in accordance with a Florida law passed in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State. Despite other students and district employees alleging similar abuse/harassment and the district having to settle multiple retaliation suits with those who came forward against Frazier, the emphasis always seemed to be on protecting higher ups ahead of the interests of the victims.

The sex abuse scandal occurred along the same timeline as the district's epic 2012 financial scandal, which Kaddatz was front and center to observe, as she honed in on the way the district was being run. This, she says, aided both her understanding of the board's role in governing the district, as well as her insight into other problemed areas.

"What my family went through definitely got me back involved," said Kaddatz. "I started going to school board meetings again and seeing how many other problems we had, financially, academically, etc."

Kaddatz says that if she's elected, she would focus on both academic achievement and fiscal prudence, noting that the next board will have a very big job in overseeing a much bigger budget that will include revenues from both the extension of the half-cent sales tax and the additional 1 mill school property tax increase that passed in March.

"The job of the board is not to micromanage budgetary matters," said Kaddatz, "but they do need to make sure that there is oversight. When I hear things like cutting funding from the audit committee, that concerns me. That's an important part of our transparency, which we need right now as much as ever."

Recalling the board getting caught unaware when former Superintendent Tim McGonegal told members in late 2012 that the surplus he'd been reporting to them was actually an enormous deficit, she said that now is not the time to go back to having a board that will blindly go along with what the administration tells them, especially since it will be overseeing a leadership change following news last week current superintendent Dianna Greene will be leaving July 1.

"I don't think that finding someone who is going to continue on the path we've been taking is the right road when we've been failing our students in so many ways," said Kaddatz. "We need to hire a strong superintendent with knowledge of school finance who can also push academic achievement, someone who understands that making hard decisions is going to make some people mad and can handle that."

Kaddatz said that school safety also needs to be a top priority.

"We need to keep our schools safe," said Kaddatz. "Not only for the obvious reasons, but our students also can't focus on their studies if they're afraid that someone's gonna come in and kill them. It impacts the teachers as well. This affects academic performance all the way around. We have to make students and teachers know that we're doing everything we possibly can to keep them safe in our schools."

Kaddatz will challenge incumbent first-term board member Charlie Kennedy, who was elected in 2014. The clearest difference between the candidates is that Kennedy is excited about the direction the school district has been headed and wants to continue moving in the current direction, while Kaddatz thinks that there is plenty to be concerned about and favors major changes.

"I don't think that having 50 percent of your third grade students reading at grade level is very much to get excited about in terms of progress," said Kaddatz, "Even if it's up from 47 percent, that's still 50 percent of your students who aren't where they need to be. We need to do much better."

For his part, Kennedy acknowledges that the district's third grade reading scores, seen by educational experts as a key metric to future success, are nothing to brag about. But he points to other metrics like a bump in the district's grade from the state and a reduction of poorly-rated schools as evidence that the district is moving in the right direction. He says he's excited about the passage of the additional school taxes, which he was an eager proponent of, and says it will allow the district to draw and retain the best teachers to the district, which will then drive improvement.

Kaddatz thinks she offers voters a better understanding of a classroom from a parent's point of view, while still offering strong support for classroom teachers.

The race will take place on the August primary ballot. If no other candidate qualifies before the June 22 deadline, it will be a one-on-one race with no need for a November runoff.