School Board Right to Delay Vote on Saunders

Manatee School Board members were supposed to vote on whether to offer interim superintendent Cynthia Saunders a three-year contract as the full-time superintendent at Tuesday night’s meeting. Earlier that day, however, word broke that Saunders faces disciplinary action from the state after being accused of manipulating reports to inflate the district’s graduation rate, while serving as deputy superintendent.

Last Friday, outgoing education commissioner Pam Stewart notified Saunders that she’d found probable cause that Saunders had "fraudulently inflated graduation rates for her district by instructing subordinate district employees to improperly code student withdrawals,“ from 2014-16, while she was the district’s deputy superintendent of instruction.

Saunders is accused of having staff members deliberately miscode student dropouts as withdrawals for homeschooling–which are counted the same as students who transfer out of the district when they relocate–making the district's graduation percentage appear to be much higher than it actually was. According to Stewart, only 6 of the 121 students who withdrew from Manatee Schools in the 2014-2015 academic year were properly coded. The district has denied wrongdoing, saying it cleared Saunders over a year ago, following an internal investigation conducted when the allegations first arose.

At Tuesday’s meeting, newly-appointed board chair Dave Miner and his predecessor Scott Hopes–who have usually been on opposing sides of contentious issues–both pushed to move forward with a vote on a scheduled agenda item that would have given Saunders a lucrative three-year contract as the permanent superintendent. The two board members felt that because the contract would contain a fairly broad "with cause“ provision that would allow the board to terminate Saunders were the allegations proven, they should move forward and only deal with the matter if and when it proved necessary.

The rest of the board wasn’t as comfortable, and the item was ultimately pushed. This was a good move. I have no idea whether Saunders will come out of this clean, and while I very much hope she’s fully exonerated, this school board is in no position to ask the public to make such a large leap of faith, given both the district’s long-term track record and the massive taxpayer investments that have recently been made–including a 15-year extension of the half-cent sales tax, significant additional bond debt to fund the construction of new schools, and a 1 millage point hike in school property taxes.

The district claims that the practices described were limited to one school and had not been directed by Saunders. Again, I very much hope this is true, but the district’s many failures in recent years in regards to policing its own practices and completing competent internal investigations do not inspire the confidence required of such faith.

Saunders followed former superintendent Diana Greene to Manatee from Marion County, when Greene became the Deputy Superintendent in 2013. Greene was then promoted to superintendent, following Rick Mills’ retirement. Greene subsequently promoted Saunders to one of two deputy superintendent spots. Greeneleft Manateein July to take over Duval County Schools and the boardselected Saundersas its interim Superintendent. Greene has since offered Saunders a top administrative spot in that district, which was one of the factors that led the board to look atextending her services.

In the meantime, the district’s other deputy superintendent, Ron Ciranna, who oversaw operations and logistics, resigned amid asoftware system upgradescandal that was undertaken by Greene and went live (riddled with bugs andeight figures over budget) the day after she officially left. Under Greene, the district had previously been accused of using another questionable tactic to inflate graduation rates, paying nearly $1,300 for each would-be dropout that the district enrolled in an online private school called Smart Horizons–after which they would be coded as transfers instead of dropouts.

Manatee's heavy use of the practice, which was overseen by Saunders in her deputy superintendent role, led the Florida Legislature to amend the graduation rate calculations last year so that if a district pays for a student to transfer into another program, the classification would remain as a dropout. This caused the graduation rate in Manatee to drop by 2.4 percent. Manatee County, which had contributed nearly a fifth of the students enrolled at Smart Horizons statewide, was impacted more than any other district by the change.

Needless to say, this grey-area attempt to game the metrics on grad rates doesn’t bode well for the current allegations and gives board members even more cause to slow down in appointing Saunders as the permanent leader of such a massive enterprise. It will also be interesting to see whether Greene, who is facing the second major scandal that began under her leadership only to come to light after her departure, will ultimately face any consequences on either this issue or the ERP program.

The issue of Saunders' contract dominated Tuesday’s meeting, which stretched well past 11 p.m. The board finally voted unanimously to approve a motion to postpone the decision until its January 22 meeting. In the meantime, Saunders must decide between the options of filing an appeal to dispute the allegations in a formal hearing, not dispute them in an informal hearing, negotiate a settlement agreement, or surrender her certificates.

If the district’s confidence is not misguided, Saunders should be able to prevail in her appeal, and the board can move forward without the public backlash they would have likely received had they moved in haste. If the allegations are found to have merit, the board will find itself in the much more challenging position of looking for both immediate and long-term solutions to its leadership woes at a time when scandal and instability make it a less than attractive job for highly-qualified candidates. Were they to lose Saunders over the ordeal, she would be thefourth high-level administratorlaid low by a scandal just since the start of this school year, presenting quite a leadership vacuum from which to draw even a short-term solution.

Dennis Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University, where he earned a degree in Government, and also served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. Dennis's latest novel, Sacred Hearts, is availablehere.