Her absence continues to be unexplained; the board forges on without her
By Noah Vinsky
Original Air Date: September 20, 2024
Host: The Sarasota County School Board this week gave the go-ahead for a bandaid solution to fill vacant classroom positions. The board also approved next year’s school budget, which is less than this year in part because of declining enrollment attributed to private school vouchers. And ousted board president Karen Rose was missing from the dais … again. Noah Vinsky has a report.
Noah Vinsky: The Sarasota School Board met once again on Tuesday, resulting in the unanimous passage of the 2024 final millage rate and the 2024–25 budget.
The 2024 millage rate is set at 6.131, down from last year’s rate of 6.180. The school board’s opted budget also features some notable changes as opposed to years prior. The board commented on the challenges of this year’s budget since the closing of Federal COVID relief grants, which provided financial support to district operations since 2020. The final budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year totaled approximately $1.77 billion dollars, a decrease of nearly $68 million from last year. Board member Robyn Marinelli commented on the transparency of the fiscal breakdown of this year’s budget.
Robyn Marinelli: When I reviewed this last night, I showed my husband and I said, “Take a look at all of this.” Everything that you could possibly want to know is in here, and you even put the paragraphs for people to be able to understand, and that once we’re all done, it’ll be uploaded and be on the website. So I want the public to know that it’ll be there. You can look at schools, everything because, people have opinions about how we should spend the money and everything, but this way you can look for yourselves and see exactly where the $1.6 billion goes. So thank you all.
NV: September is school attendance awareness month, and the school board discussed chronic absenteeism in Sarasota County and across the state of Florida. But, chronic absenteeism hasn’t seemed to only affect the students. Board member Karen Rose was not present for a school board meeting once again. She hasn’t physically attended a meeting since losing the August 20th primary election to Liz Barker.
Rose’s absence was met with the dismay from many of those in attendance, particularly from former Sarasota High School teacher Christy Karwatt
Christy Karwatt: So I just want to say I’m concerned that Mrs. Rose is failing to show up. I know she’s on Zoom. But even if we had had zoom, if I did not show up to the classroom after not winning the thing that I was running for, I don’t think I would still have my job. So I think it’s time that Mrs. Rose, being the chair of the school board, decide that maybe it’s time to come back and to face the public. It’s okay. She didn’t win. It’s no big deal. If you’re a true educator and you really care about the students, you’re going to show up and be here for them.
NV: During the hearing of citizens, many commented on the district’s decision to contract short-term behavior analysts and behavioral technicians to fill school counselor roles. It’s a decision that superintendent Terry Connor called “not a permanent fix.”
Terry Connor: Thank you, community, for coming out and speaking on these two items. I know it’s always a challenge and it’s not the optimal decision to utilize staffing agencies. Obviously, optimally, we would want to hire and fill those vacancies. But Sarasota is not immune — we are facing a national shortage in filling a lot of our positions, whether that’s an instructional position or counselor positions.
One of the things I want to commend this board for is reducing the counselor ratio, right? There’s some unintended consequences to that. Once you add more positions, then you have to find more qualified people for that. And the reality is, it has been challenging to fill these positions. And so I want to just reassure the community that this is not a permanent fix for us. This is something in the meantime, we don’t want these positions to go unfilled while we still continue to search for a permanent position.
NV: Others commented on controversial former board member Eric Robinson, who was ousted in 2021 by fellow board member Tom Edwards. Rose nominated Robinson in March to serve on the board’s finance committee, even though he already serves on the audit committee. Co-director of Save our Schools Paulina Testerman stood at the podium and delivered an emblazoned response to Robinson’s continued presence on the board.
Paulina Testerman: Watching this board say one thing and do another is so frustrating for our community. To say that you want to take the politics out of our boardroom and then to drag the lifeless political corpse of Eric Robinson into this boardroom over and over again really tells us where you guys stand. We can’t trust your words because your words are one thing, your actions are another, and your actions prove to us time and time again that you support corruption. You support cronyism. You support bringing in people who have lost an election, who were on that board and our voters voted them out and said, “Hey, we don’t trust that guy!” but you guys are like, “No, that’s okay. We’ll bring him in anyway. He’s fine. It’s not like he’s gonna be in charge of money or anything.” Oh, wait, he is. And you guys keep bringing him here and you keep bringing him to sit on committees. Why? We have nobody else qualified other than Eric Robinson, the prince of dark money.
NV: This has been Noah Vinsky reporting for WSLR News.
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