Florida Superintendent Pointedly Addresses Board Members Who Want Him Fired, and More

On Tuesday, May 30, 2023, Hernando School District (FL) held an open meeting lasting over eight hours, from 6 p.m. to almost 3 a.m. the next morning.

One week prior, on May 23, 2023, CNN reported the final determination regarding the actions of Winding Waters K-8 School teacher, Jenna Barbee, who showed the Disney movie, Strange World, as a complement to studying ecosystems. The movie happens to have a gay character. On May 17, 2023, I wrote in detail about Barbee’s situation and about how one of the parents happened to be school board member Shannon Rodriguez, who is backed by Moms for Liberty and is on an ultra-conservative, micromanaging quest to purge the district of what she considers “smut” even as she apparently signed a permission slip for her child to view PG movies in Barbee’s class.

Rather than directly communicating with her child’s teacher, Rodriguez instead went to the principal and then reported Barbee to the state, which opened its own investigation.

In its final report (with details presumably made public by Barbee herself since the information comes from her personnel file), CNN reports the following:

The final report from Hernando County says, “The investigation was completed regarding the parent complaint. You had the PG(-rated movies) approval forms for all of the students and had connected the movie to the curriculum being taught.” The school system maintained Barbee violated the staff handbook, saying, “You are reminded … that you must seek and receive administrative approval before showing a film or video.”

The report is signed by Cari O’Rourke, the principal at the school in Brooksville.

This situation could have (should have) been handled in a much smoother, peace-seeking, unobtrusive manner. Instead, Rodriguez blew it up, disrupting classroom and district and catapulting teacher and district into a frenzy that captured international attention.

What an advertisement for teaching in Hernando Schools!

Indeed, WFLA reports that Barbee had already submitted a letter of resignation prior to the incident and is one of approximatwly 50 teachers planning to resign at the end of the 2022-23 school year. As of May 18, 2023, WFLA reports that Hernando Schools already had “150 unfilled instructional positions.”

Understatement alert: Certain school board members’ zealously exacerbating a hostile culture of fear is sure to destabilize a district’s teacher work force.

But Rodriguez and her sidekick, fellow board member, Mark Johnson, prefer to blow things up and foment disruption in Hernando Schools.

Both Johnson and Rodriguez were set on firing district superintendent, John Stratton. Earlier on May 30,2023, three conservative legislators also called for Stratton to resign.

John Stratton

In the final hour of the May 30, 2023, Hernando Schools board meeting, each board member spoke either in favor of firing Stratton (Johnson, Rodriguez) or against (Susan Duval, Linda Prescott, Gus Guadagnino).

Rodriguez had a lot to say about her displeasure with Stratton. I’ll leave readers to watch and listen for themselves (7:28:47 in the meeting video included in this post). One criticism that Rodriguez expressed in her remarks prior to the vote is that Stratton was still around because he could not leave and was stuck, so to speak. In April 2023, Stratton was a finalist for the superintendency in Brevard, FL, but dropped out due to pressure instigated by Moms for Liberty in Brevard, as Florida Today reports:

In Stratton’s home district, a teacher at Fox Chapel Middle School in Spring Hills made threatening comments outside the presence of students to a guidance counselor on March 24, according to a timeline released by the Hernando School District. A threat assessment was conducted by Safe Schools staff and the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, with both agencies finding she did not meet criteria for imminent harm to others or herself and did not qualify for a Baker Act.

The teacher was later removed from the classroom but the administration’s handling of this caused an outcry that spread to Brevard when Stratton was named a finalist for the top job here.

Brevard’s chapter of Moms For Liberty, a conservative parents group, sent out a newsletter calling for members to reach out to Brevard school board members and ask that Stratton be removed as a finalist. In addition to concerns about the teacher incident, they brought up his political affiliation, saying he was the only registered Democrat out of the four superintendent finalists. Brevard’s school board is made up of a conservative majority, with Jennifer Jenkins serving as the only registered Democrat.

Hmm.

Stratton needs to go because he is a “registered Democrat.”

Liberal.

“Woke.”

Despite Johnson’s and Rodriguez’s efforts to remove Stratton, the majority of the Hernando school board expressed confidence in him and voted 2 to 3 to keep him in his job.

After 2 o’clock in the morning and prior to the vote, Stratton addressed the board, at times directly and pointedly confronting both Johnson and Rodriguez for their efforts to sow division in the district, including but certainly not limited to the effort to have him fired.

Stratton’s response to his accusers is important enough for the hours it took for me to transcribe. His remarks begin at 7:53:49 in the included video and are offered below in their entirety. I included links, bracketed notes, and formatting to aid with context/ease of reading.

Stratton’s response:

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank everybody who came out tonight and showed support. What you see here is 18 years of building relationships– building positive relationships– and valuing and supporting people and showing them the respect as a colleague, and I thank you for that.

Mr. Johnson, I understand that I am to be held responsible for the board not getting along, that is according to what your logic is there, but there’s a far bigger problem than that, and that is why we’re here now at this point in the midst of this chaos. And, I feel for staff, and I’m going to do my best to protect them because what we’re doing now is just listing items.

Let’s talk about masks. That was a board decision. Never a violation of the law, although, Mrs. Rodriguez, you told me, “We violated the governor’s order,” we did not.

BOCC lawsuit: Again, a board decision. A majority board decision, not my decision.

Black Lives Matter: That teacher was exonerated not once, but twice. Twice exonerated. Zero. Zero. Zero fine, zero anything.

Zero.

That’s when all this started, with an outside representative that got involved there, too.

The drag queen: That’s, honestly, the one time you did the right thing: You called me. You called me, and I took care of it immediately, and you took care of it on your end, with Junior Service League. So, I don’t know why that’s being dragged up now. The school had no idea. In fact, I don’t think Lowman’s Law Firm had any idea, either, that there was a drag queen that was going to be the emcee. So, I worked it out with the Junior Service League that they got a different emcee. So I don’t know why that now is on the list, too.

And then, flags and stickers [in teacher’s classrooms], yes. Nowhere in the statute does it mention flags and stickers [as prohibited classroom items]. Nowhere. But, yeah, I’m going to protect these guys [pointing presumably to teachers in audience] because I cannot look at them and guarantee them that you’re not going to turn them in for indoctrination [pointing toward Rodriguez] for something to that matter, and that part of it (the law) is grey enought that, I don’t know, and I want to be able to protect, and if somebody, and what I’ve told, staff, if somebody thinks that that, in some way, is sharing your viewpoint, that’s what I worry about because, I, I don’t think– it says, “instruction in,” and I think there has to be content to have instruction. But, nonetheless, to protect them, they take it down.

That’s when the chaos started, is when those types of behaviors started happening. I’ll hit that in a minute.

Let’s go back to Fox Chapel. Every board member up here received the same exact texts. That Friday at 4:24, you received it about the incident, what was occurring with that teacher, along with that teacher’s name, just like was mentioned by someone tonight. That following Monday, you received a text that the [person] was cleared through our department, the sheriff’s department, and the therapist.

So, Mrs. Rodriguez, I hear you claim that you had no idea what was going on, and that’s not true. What I’ve see you do is backpedaling to get as far away from it as you can. What you didn’t know was until, I think you said nine or eleven days later, and, my opinion, what you didn’t know was that is was a trans teacher. [Stops and looks at Rodriguez for a silent second.] So, I think that was the difference, and then, in fact, the absolute, most conversation that I had with any board member up here was with Mr. Johnson. [Points to Johnson.]

Mr. Johnson and I spoke several times about this particular teacher and their spouse. Mr. Johnson was extremely concerned about their wellbeing– their mental health and their wellbeing on several calls. In fact, I got a call later– before the story broke– before the next board meeting– warning me to let that teacher’s spouse know that they might not want to be there at the next board meeting because the rumor on the streets are that they’re going to talk about “the transgender teacher at Fox Chapel.” This is before anything was known. So, yeah, the most conversations I’ve had were with you, and, and, I heard a lot of compassion during those times.

Then, when the story hit, that changed.

Were there mistakes made? Sure. Absolutely. Have people been held accountable? Abso-lutely. Have changes been made to our policies and procedures? Yes. Have the sheriff and I talked through that to make sure we’re on the same page and that I understand what an RPO means, and if they’re going to go that way, I understand what that means because that’s completely different than what was happening on Friday night than what happened four days later.

So, yes. And, and I understand, and I’ve said this before, I understand that people being upset about Fox Chapel. I do. And I understand criticism for not communicating. I appreciate that. I can at least wrap my mind around that.

But, then you start listing things last time like the attendance at Fox Chapel. You pulled two weeks of attendance at Fox Chapel and chastised me for that and put this as a reason for me to be voted “no confidence,” by the way.

What you didn’t do was pull the two weeks of all of our middle schools. And what I did, what you do see is that two of those days out of the two weeks, Fox Chapel was the lowest. Everywhere else, they were not the lowest. I had others that were far lower when it came to attendance. And when you look at their average daily attendance for the year, they’re not the lowest. So, they’re right on par with everbody else. They’re one of the lowest in that, but at 84 percent.

So, again, I find that–that’s a firable offense?

And then, notifications. We notify you more than we’ve ever notified you (board members). We notify parents all the time, too. We notify everybody. All. The. Time. And I’m going to be chastised for you not knowing about a fire alarm being pulled before it hit Facebook?

That’s a firable offense?

I don’t get it.

“Indoctrination.” I hear a lot about that. I want to be real clear: Our teachers follow the law. I heard some comments tonight that talked about that. You need to read the law because I have, and I’ve shared it out there– it’s “indoctrination in.” We cannot do that. I’ve made it very clear. We cannot do that.

I follow the law. I always have. I have to. So, I want to make sure the community knows: We follow the laws as they’re written. And we wholeheartedly– I wholeheartedly believe in parental rights. Absolutelly you know what’s best for your child. I don’t. We know how to educate them. We know how to do other things. We know how to follow state standards. That’s what we do and I, and, keep in mind, you’re not a “groomer” because you accept everyone.

We’re public education. Beliefs, nonbeliefs, everything in between. They show up on our doorstep, and guess what? They’re ours. And we educate them, and we love on them, and we do all that stuff. We don’t care about all those other things, nor do we have time for that.

Book banning and “porn”: I mentioned it earlier today: It’s working. It’s working the way it’s intended to work by law. By law– not by our individual choices, but by law. If you want to make a book challenge, it goes through the process, goes through the committee, and you’ve seen the last few meetings– and that was ironic because the last meeting we removed a book, I was being chastised for books. And, again, that process is working.

So, chaos. You’ve heard today that we have more teachers than ever leaving the profession, and it’s because of these things I’m talking about– the trickle-down effect it has.

This chaos started when you started bypassing me, Mrs. Rodriguez, and you going to campuses to remove books, taking pictures of flags and stickers, and reporting directly to DOE.

You completely bypass me.

You tell me you have to do my job, yet you don’t even tell me that you’ve got a picture of something and that I can go take care of it because any time you’ve inquired about something, I’ve looked into it, that’s for sure. And then, so, again, this is what’s brought the chaos on, and, unfortunately, these last three weeks have been filled with nothing but hateful rhetoric on both sides of the issue, calling teachers “groomers.” And these are just distractions to our staff and our students, and we should be focused on finishing out the school year strong, recognizing accomplishments, celebrating student success, and motivating students to do their best at the end of the year.

[Motioning toward Johnson and Rodriguez] I really do find it hard to recall many positive comments that I’ve heard about the accolades that this district has made.

And, again, I know teachers and them have been out there, been busy preparing for final assessments, motivating students, planning their end-of-the-year celebrations, all of those things, the list goes on. Yet, the last few weeks, we’re spending time around this.

And I’m not naive. I know that politics played a huge role in every bit of this, but I fail to see why it should impact our staff and our students this way.

I also fail to see why any board member would be okay with blatant misinformation being sent out about the work being done in our schools. It’s just crazy to me.

As a leader, I hold my staff accountable. But I would Never. Publicly. Chastise. Or. Admonish. Them.

That is done in private. That is between us. And it becomes, yes, if something happens, it becomes, after ten days, it’s a public record. But that would never be my leadership style by any means.

And, again, I go back to some of the, some of the behaviors I’ve seen: Openly say, “We don’t care about teacher rights. We don’t care about contractural rights. We don’t care about labor laws or any of those things.” Frequent lectures. Badgering, and, quite honestly, yelling at me on the phone to the point where I had to get off of the call. And you lecture the board, as well.

[Sighs. Pauses.]

[Addressing Rodriguez] When I first met you, you, you, you told me that you wanted me to be an “alpha male.” [Audience laughter.] And that if I listened to and made all of the, you’d convince the other ones that were getting elected to give me eight months, and if I listened to all the changes that you wanted, and just did all the changes you wanted, I’d be okay.

[Rodriguez interjects: “No, I said I wanted you to be a leader.” Stratton cuts her off.]

And, and, yeah, I have yet to hear what those changes are, ’cause I have never heard about them. [Pause.] So, again, there’s been times that I’ve had to point out to you, you’ve been on the phone, speakerphone, with your husband and my staff, and he’s asking questions along with you. That’s just not professional. It’s not appropriate. We already know you called a teacher’s parent about something. That’s just not appropriate whatsoever.

And then, you also told me and another staff member on separate occasions that if I just ran all decisions by you, and if I listened to you give me your advice, I listened– I could choose to use your advice or not– but if I followed your advice, I would be doing the right thing. And then you went on to say that if you were in charge, you would always be doing the right thing.

So.

I also know times when people speak out, that’s when you kind of lash back out at them. And when I’ve informed you about resignations, you’ve said, “Good. What about this one?”

[Pauses. Looks toward Rodriguez with both hands in a shrug.]

And you wonder why there’s a lack of trust. [Looks directly at Rodriguez.] You wonder why people feel the way they do. And Mr. Johnson, you didn’t help when you walked around the district office calling people “lazy.”

So.

So, again: Why are we here?

Because chaos is here. Chaos has happened.

We don’t want to be in this [chaos] world. We don’t want to be doing this. We want to do our jobs. I’m thankful for everyone out there that summer is coming. I’m very thankful so we can reset and get something back on track. ‘Cause we’re not fighting “porn.” We’re not fighting “indoctrination.”

We’re not fighting these things.

We’re going to follow the law the way they’re written.

Thank you, Chair.

Rodriguez might take issue with a gay Disney character, but she obviously has no qualms with trying to carry the superintendent’s stones in her pocket.

The verbal “no confidence” vote immediately followed Stratton’s remarks. When it was clear that Stratton would remain as Hernando Schools superintendent, the audience, who remained respectfully silent during all related discussion (“alpha male” comment excepted), erupted in applause and cheers.

In that moment, the world was as it should be for Hernando Schools.

I wish the Hernando School teachers, staff, and admin a restful summer and a calmer 2023-24.

_____________________________

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