Stranger than Fiction

School Board Lowers the Bar Even Further? Accurate, but not very creative.

School Board Buries the Bar Under the Building? Too many B’s.

School Board Takes the Bar, Turns it Sideways, and Shoves it Up the Taxpayers’ Wazoo? That one would never get past Standards and Practices.

I soon realized that despite my penchant for finding just the right headline, one simply didn’t exist to properly capsulize what happened Tuesday night. But the thing that I kept saying to myself while watching the whole affair was, "You can’t make this stuff up.“

That’s too often the case when it comes to this board, a fact reinforced by tales from readers who don’t even live in Manatee County, but regularly tune into our school board soap opera just for entertainment.

On Tuesday night, the board voted to repay more than $18,000 in legal fees to its former assistant-principal-turned investigator, Deborah Horne, who’d been arrested on a felony charge of failing to report child abuse in the Rod Frazier sex scandal.

Horne resigned from the district and took a deal with the state attorney’s office to enter a pre-trial intervention program. Florida’s PTI program allows first-time offenders facing qualifying 3rd degree felony charges to avoid a trial, but they must provide "a notarized typed sworn statement detailing the facts and circumstances of the offense for which the applicant has been arrested/charged. If the sworn statement so provided does not contain facts indicative of knowledge or conduct on the part of the applicant consistent with guilt of all of the elements of the offense,“ they don’t get the deal.

The 17th Circuit State Attorney’s website describes it as "similar to being on probation.“ Once they’ve completed the program, the charges are dismissed. Horne went through this process and the state attorney’s office even allowed her to complete it early.

However, what she absolutely, positively, in no way did do, was successfully defend herself against the charges she faced, which is the only way a school district is obligated to pay legal expenses for one of its employees. That’s the whole point of a PTI, to not have to face the charges. Nonetheless, that was the absurd pretzel logic a majority of Manatee County School Board members used to vote 4-1 in favor of covering Horne’s bills É or at least having the taxpayers do so. She wasn't found "guilty" because she didn't have to go to trial, so that must be the same as not guilty, right? Nice try.

God bless Karen Carpenter for being the lone board member willing to stand up for reason and common sense. I get the feeling she probably feels like Alice dealing with the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s book, Through the Looking Glass, each time she takes a seat on that dais. For her efforts, she’s routinely marginalized and sometimes even ignored, but were she not there to call a spade a spade, it would be even easier for the rest of the board to run roughshod over the community. At least she makes them blush a bit, while raising their hands.

I suppose Karen in Wonderland would have worked for a title.

During the item’s discussion, Carpenter presented an email from former Florida Senator and Circuit Court Judge Thomas Gallen, a longtime Manatee County resident, who despite having served half a lifetime in elected office, is no fan of Good Old Boy Florida politics. Gallen found the idea that a PTI equated to successfully defending oneself to be nothing short of absurd.

But even the judge’s input fell on deaf ears. Again, this is the Manatee County School Board, where matters of legal issue are only entertained when they support certain interests. It was just two weeks ago that board members were ignoring case law, an Administrative Law Judge’s recommended order, their superintendent’s recommendation, the staff attorney and the board attorney’s counsel, along with any shred of common sense to protect the employment prospects of another administrator snared in the very same scandal, one who had been convicted of failing to report child abuse.

Some board members went to great lengths to speak highly of Horne’s character in support of their decision on Tuesday, but no one ever discussed what actually happened. Without a trial, which Horne herself chose not to pursue, we are left with the findings of fact from two separate Administrative Law Judge’s recommended orders that dealt with the case, and the recommended termination of two former assistant principals for also failing to report.

Both make it clear that as OPS investigator, Horne did close to nothing in terms of investigating allegations of sexual misconduct by Frazier, who later pled no contest to multiple charges. Her half-day investigation included no effort to interview the accusers or to verify that the assistant principals had in any way dealt with the situation, as she later reported to her supervisor. (They hadn’t; Frazier’s personnel file remained empty on the matter up to the point of his arrest.) She clearly did not report the allegations to the Florida Department of Children and Families, as required by law. But hey – neither did anyone else!

Horne doesn’t seem any more guilty than a whole host of people who played parts in turning a blind eye to despicable behavior, and then sweeping it under the rug once allegations were made. Maybe that’s why the board voted in her favor, as it did for both of the assistant principals. When a problem is so systemic that no one doesn’t know it’s happening, it’s probably harder to point a finger in just one, or even any, direction. But elected officials aren’t put at the dais to do what’s most convenient. They are put there to do what’s right, and once again the Manatee County School board has failed its teachers, students, parents, faculty and taxpayers.

Once beyond the absurdity of the board’s actions, however, one next ponders how someone actually accrues upward of twenty grand in legal fees when they don’t even go to trial. It seems that about 10 percent of it came from press conferences and other media-related events. Again, expenses that taxpayers will cover.

The most ironic part of the whole ordeal is that Horne’s replacement, Troy Pumphrey, is embroiled in a feud with certain board members and their cohorts who want to see him dismissed over allegations that he failed to disclose some sort of legal entanglement while in the hiring process with the district.

From Pumphrey’s bar complaint against board member Dave Miner, it seems that the issue is a matter for which he was charged, but then, when the prosecution did not pursue the charge, it was dismissed and then expunged from his record. Pumphrey claims that he contacted the attorney in DC, where he previously lived and the charge was filed, who advised him that he did not have to disclose the matter, since it had been expunged. That was the wrong advice with respect to Florida law.

If that is in fact the case, it will be interesting to see if the board views Pumphrey’s situation as favorably as it did Horne’s. I’m guessing it won’t, even though if the charges were in fact not pursued, he’d have a much stronger case using the logic the board employed Tuesday night – especially if the matter did not have to do with a child being touched where they ought not have been.

Pumphrey remains on suspension and has a lawsuit against the school district, the board and Miner, in which he alleges, among other things, a hostile work environment – a charge that will be very hard for the district to defend given the very public actions of Miner.

The true irony, however, comes in the difference between Horne and Pumphrey as investigators. Completely unqualified for her job with no experience or training as an investigator, Horne had been elevated to a newly created position that did not even include a job description.

Looking at the findings of facts from the various ALJ hearings, as well as the criminal investigations, it is clear that she handled the Frazier case – along with another in which a 16 year-old student had sex with a school employee who later fathered her child – with what could only be described as gross and utter incompetence. Horne routinely failed to interview key figures or otherwise run down allegations of misconduct of both a professional and criminal nature.

Pumphrey took over the disgraced department, which had become a running joke – the Office of Professional Standards is unprofessional and has no standards – and investigated aggressively. He went wherever complaints took him, unencumbered by political associations, friendships or sacred cows, like famous football programs, good old boys, or "flagship“ schools.

For their efforts, Horne has earned the adoration, respect, empathy and confidence of many board members as well as the local cadre of educational figures who are always involved in Manatee County School Board politics. Pumphrey seems to be utterly despised by that same group. Nonetheless, we'll probably end up paying the legal bills for both of them. That, my friends, may tell you everything you need to know about Manatee County.

Dennis Maley's column appears every Thursday and Sunday in The Bradenton Times. He can be reached at dennis.maley@thebradentontimes.com. Click here to visit his column archive. Click here to go to his bio page. You can also follow Dennis on Facebook.