Discussion during the last board meeting focused more on agenda items, rather than on board members
By Florence Fahringer
Original Air Date: September 6, 2024
Host: Clocking in just over an hour on Tuesday, it was a blink-and-you-might-have-missed-it Sarasota County School Board meeting, during which legislative priorities for the coming year were decided. Oh, and someone did miss it, at least in person. Florence Fahringer has this report.
Florence Fahringer: This past Tuesday, the Sarasota County School Board met for a regular meeting; it was the second board meeting since the August primaries, where one board member (Tom Edwards) successfully defended their incumbency, and another (Karen Rose) did not.
Since losing her primary back in August, Rose has been conspicuously absent from the two interceding board meetings. Her absence has yet to be explained. The fact that she is the chair of the board further complicates her absence; in both meetings since the primaries, Vice Chair Timothy Enos has assumed the role of acting chair. Rose was technically present for this week’s board meeting, attending over the phone, though whether or not she was actually at the phone for the entirety of the meeting is unclear. Of the handful of times Enos checked in on her during the meeting, usually before a board vote, he was routinely met with silence.
Timothy Enos: We’ll be moving to the consent agenda; I wanted to make sure Miss Rose is on the phone — Miss Rose?
Karen Rose: [silence]
TE: Miss Rose, are you there?
KR: [silence]
TE: Okay, hopefully we can get Miss Rose back on the line.
FF: As for the content of the agenda, there were two specific items which called for individual votes: The approval of the mascot for a K-through-eight school; and the approval of the Twenty Twenty-Five legislative priorities. It’s that last item which was of particular concern to Christy Karwatt, a public speaker who addressed the board before their vote. Here she is, discussing why she believes a legislative priority for the Sarasota school board should be to lobby against a new state statute:
Christy Karwatt
Christy Karwatt: And I understand that the state statute basically is requiring us to use that levy also to fund charter schools. However, I hope in the future that we might fight to change that state statute so that districts are not required to share tax dollars with charter schools run by for-profit companies such as Charter Schools USA, which manages Florida Preparatory Academy at Wellen Park, and will be managing the recently approved Classical Preparatory Academy in Sarasota.
So I will be voting for the referendum in November, but I think the board needs to think long and hard about lobbying Tallahassee so that when we do share our funds, that the funds are not going to a private company who are using our students to get richer. Thank you.
FF: The referendum Karwatt refers to is the millage referendum, which Sarasota residents will vote on in the general election. It’s a vote on continuing a property tax which is already being paid. Those tax dollars normally go towards supporting the operations of Sarasota’s public schools, but due to new state policies, the tax dollars may now also go towards supporting the operations of Sarasota’s private schools — a fact which Karwatt and others are concerned about.
In the item before the board, six main areas are outlined as lobbying priorities for next year’s legislative session in Tallahassee. They are: Enhancements to the Voluntary Pre-K Program; Promoting deregulation in school operations; Ensuring efficiency and accuracy in scholarship funding; Increasing funding for school employee salaries, school safety, and mental health; and Modernizing funding for construction. None of those categories directly address Karwatt’s concerns.
Karwatt’s comments received no immediate recognition by the board. Minutes later, the item was on the floor, and it was afforded no discussion by board members. Enos put it to a voice vote, summoning a surprise participant: Rose’s chipper voice was among the four others which unanimously voted to approve the motion.
Soon after, public comments resumed, with some familiar faces. Some complained about the deep state and the alleged wokeness of the school system; others advocated on behalf of LGBT students, complaining that the board wasn’t doing enough to protect them. Many congratulated Edwards and Liz Barker on their victories, and some even went as far as to disparage Rose. But something else was present as the meeting wound to an end, something once so familiar to school board meetings, yet more and more foreign ever since December of last year: Brevity. This board meeting, as well as the one which occurred two weeks ago, lasted for under an hour, making them both the two shortest meetings of the year. With the primary season over, and cries for Ziegler’s removal nearly extinguished, the focus of school board meetings seems to be returning to policy.
This is Florence Fahringer, reporting for WSLR News.
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