On Tuesday night, at what had originally been billed as a "Special ERP Meeting," the Manatee School Board devolved into the sort of political clown show that has marked its longstanding dysfunction.

Instead, the board spent three hours of its last meeting before Tuesday's election making political hay by revisiting the naming of a soon-to-be-built high school in Parrish. Not that it wasn't eventful. Regardless of whether there were much bigger fish to fry, the meeting revealed just how poorly managed and politically-driven the naming had been. Surprised?

The ERP scandal, which continued to grow this week (read more here), was instead given press conference treatment on Monday. The district essentially told us, expect it to get worse before it gets better. At a meeting the week before, the board was supposed to revisit the name of its next high school. A bunch of folks in Parrish are understandably upset because the naming of a school that's already being plopped onto a plot of land too small to hold it and without adequate roads and other infrastructure around it (more on thathere), has been hijacked by a politically-connected developer who wants it to match his plans for a massive housing development he's constructing nearby.

Pat Neal is betting big on the little town of Parrish. The former state senator plans to build his most ambitious project yet, North River Ranch, on the agricultural hamlet north of the river. Neal plans nearly 5,900 homes across multiple developments that would transform the sleepy farm and cattle town to a suburbia rivaling Lakewood Ranch. Branding will be important and Neal wants not only the high school to bear his project's name but a major thoroughfare as well. During last week's proceedings, it came out that he has also been pushing to have Moccasin Wallow Road renamed as North River Parkway.

The board voted last summer to name the high school North River High after a relatively-quiet process of collecting public input that seemed to go smoothly. In fact, I at first had a hard time understanding how it had suddenly become a political lightning rod more than a year later, as the board got set to vote on rescinding the decision Tuesday night, given that ground is set to be broke in just a few months and the school will open in less than a year. It smelled of politics, especially right before an election, but that seems only half true.

According to the district's data, only 16 people submitted nominations for "Parrish High School," while 23 submitted for North River. There were 60 different names nominated in total, most having only one or two votes. No less than 160, however, were cast for Seawright High School, after Travis Seawright, a beloved Parrish livestock expert who passed in 2016.

Seawright taught agriculture and FFA at Southeast High School before becoming a county livestock agent. He founded the Manatee County Youth Livestock Fair and over a 30-year career after moving here from Carrollton, Mississippi, inspired generations of young Manatee County students to go into farming. Seawright’s expertise also provided valuable assistance to countless area farmers and ranchers. For a town steeped in agricultural tradition, Seawright's overwhelming support isn't much of a surprise.

There were two problems, however. First, according to the rules, Manatee County high schools cannot be named after people. Only middle schools and elementaries can, and they almost always are named after locals, many of whom are still alive–never a good idea, in my opinion.

The second problem was that the district didn't disclose that part when they solicited input, and when it became clear that the overwhelming number of people interested in giving it wanted to honor a local ag legend, it did nothing to see whether those citizens–who made up an overwhelming amount of the overall interest–would want to give additional input once they found out their nomination had been 86'd on a technicality. It turns out that those people and others who’d since learned about the naming threw their support to Parrish High, making it far and away the most beloved name for the school among those who cared.

People in the community started kicking and screaming almost immediately but were told that nothing could be done, that once the vote was taken, it was over, and that the process was too far along to change it anyway. This all raises questions about whether the bungling of the input process was designed to help the politically-connected developer get his way. When it comes down to doing as Pat Neal wishes or screwing up a seemingly simple process, each seems like an equal possibility given the parties involved.

At some point, the Parrish Civic Association got onboard to help organize the movement and pressure the district to go back and change the name, or at the very least gauge community input accurately. They too were met with resistance and told it couldn't be done, yet they came to discover on their own that the district could indeed change the name of a school, so long as it undertook six months of pretty much doing what it was supposed to do in the first place regarding public input. After more coaxing of board members, citizens finally convinced their local board member, Gina Messenger, to request it be put on the agenda.

In the meantime, Seawright was passed up in the naming of an upcoming elementary school to be built in the town, which the board voted to name after former board member Barbara Harvey, who retired in 2014. Some North River High supporters took an opportunity to suggest that the Parrish High movement was a response to the district naming a new elementary school in their town after a black woman from Palmetto. They added fuel by noting that Crawford Parrish, the first of the family to come to the area when it was still a dangerous piece of unsettled wilderness in the mid 19th century, had owned slaves, implying that there was a racial element to those people wanting the high school named in his honor as a sort of payback for Harvey Elementary.

Soon there were robocalls going out in the area asking if people really wanted their local high school to be named after a man who had once owned slaves there. The NAACP even sent the district an opposition letter that included an image of a lynching. Residents were outraged, noting that they wanted the school named after the community of Parrish, not Mr. Parrish, further noting that the name of the village was in honor of Crawford’s two sons, who had done much to build up the settled townand that their father had come to Florida after emancipation.

Parrish’s county commissioner, Priscilla Trace, whose family dates back five generations of farmers in the area, also joined the fight. Trace and Parrish Civic Association President Gretchen Fowler eventually met with Neal to see if the sides could come to some sort of compromise. Fowler told me that Neal admitted to funding the robocalls about Crawford Parrish and said that his real interest was in having the name of Moccasin Wallow Road changed to North River Parkway, suggesting he’d give them the high school (leaving little doubt whose actual call it was) if he could have the road. Both Fowler and Trace said they told Neal that they were in no position to negotiate on behalf of an entire community regarding the name of a historic road. That essentially put the issue before the board Tuesday.

Neal’s lawyers had warned the district that they would sue if the board reversed a decision that was made in accordance with proper policy and procedure, as the company had made investments and would suffer losses based on the belief that the school would be named North River High. Messenger wanted to rescind the decision to name it North River. Board chair Scott Hopes, who was appointed by Governor Scott–which usually doesn’t happen in Manatee without Neal’s blessing–was opposed to the motion.

Hopes had process on his side, however. The school district's attorney, Mitch Teitelbaum, advised the board that as taking away the name would, in essence,changeit, they would still need the six-month period prescribed by district rules. As such, Hopes denied Messenger's motion. To his credit, board member Charlie Kennedy made his usual effort to find a middle ground, asking if anyone would be opposed to calling it North River Parrish High School or some other combination of the names. Both sides quickly shot the idea down. Nice try though, Charlie.

That’s when things got more political. Whenever Pat Neal is in the room, you can practically see the strings move on board member John Colon's back. Colon was appointed directly by Neal, who’d been delegated the task along with fellow developer Carlos Beruff after the passing of Mary Cantrell. This was the case when Neal asked for a break on school impact fees, and it was the case Tuesday night as Colon again shamelessly lobbied for Neal at all points, often looking toward where the developer was seated before speaking.

Hopes was appointed directly by Scott, who he’s had a longtime relationship with dating back to their time in the healthcare industry and appointments to other positions like the board of trustees at USF. Neal is nonetheless Scott’s biggest Manatee County supporter, however, and there’s little doubt Hopes would have preferred to avoid rankling the homebuilder. Hopes also made a pretty good case that the school district had much bigger and more immediate problems to deal with, and that the board shouldn’t be wasting an entire meeting on something that had been approved according to policy (no matter how ham-handedly) more than a year ago, while in the midst of a financial crisis of tens of millions of dollars in the ERP program–which still doesn’t work correctly, despite costing more than twice what was promised.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the interest of the people of Parrish is sincere. I’ve talked to many of them, and they justifiably feel like they’ve been ignored in this process, and that the naming of an institution that will likely grace the community for at least a century is being hijacked for the sake of better marketing some McMansions they'd rather not see in their town anyway. In fact, they feel like there’s an effort to erase their historic community altogether and rebrand it as Lakewood Ranch’s north county cousin. They’ve been trying for a long time to have their say and Tuesday’s 3-2 vote to start the clock on that six-month process was well-deserved.

It’s the timing of the board’s actions that I find curious. Bringing up a divisive issue that would obviously put two board members (Colon and Hopes) in difficult political positions just ahead of an election Tuesday in which both face challenges (as does Kennedy), seemed more designed to make sure that the board’s current majority stays intact no matter the outcome in those three races–especially given that there will soon be an opportunity for someone to control the process of hiring a new superintendent. Regardless of who I do and don’t agree with issue to issue, I very much like the idea of having a split board during such a critical process, providing some measure of check and balance, rather than the quiet anointing of someone favored by the old guard that is so fond of the board’s current majority, along with two of Hopes' and Colon's opponents.

In this sense, the people of Parrish seemed like pawns in a political game, rather than a party whose interests were being well-represented. Messenger and fellow board member Dave Miner, who were the loudest proponents of the name change, could have taken up their cause a long time ago when it would have been much easier to avoid both inconvenience and litigation. Indeed this is something a responsive board could have very easily rectified up to a year ago.

This late in the game, however, Neal has a much better case for claiming a change would be injurious. And with money being flushed down the toilet by the tankful on the ERP project, one has to ask quite seriously whether it would be worth spending any money at all fighting a powerful developer over the name of a building, when every penny will come at the expense of the students who are to be educated in the very classrooms it is being built to house.

As much as I think the people of Parrish have been rooked–again–I don’t think it would be equitable to ask every taxpayer in the county to fund such a fight, especially at a cost to resources that would be better spent on students. We’ll have to wait six months before a new school board makes that decision, however. Meanwhile, elections are Tuesday. Coincidence? You tell me.

In the meantime, the people of Parrish's best chance might be coming together as a community and deciding whether to pursue trading the name of the road for the school. Otherwise, there's no guarantee Neal wouldn't ultimately be able to use his juice to get both. One in the hand is usually worth more than two in the bush.

School District Disarray has a Familiar Stench

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