Florida Atlantic University trustees continue to resist having the choice of a president dictated to them.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the trustees approved a change to their bylaws. The change might seeem minor to anyone who hasn’t followed the politics of the search for a successor to former President John Kelly.
Under the old rules, the vice chair would have become chair if that position became vacant. Under the new rules, the trustees would fill that position.
Brad Levine chairs the trustees and the presidential search committee. State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues suspended the search July 7. He ordered the system’s inspector general to investigate.
In one scenario that FAU’s wider community feared before Tuesday’s change, Rodrigues and his bosses—the Board of Governors—would conclude that the search was flawed and order a new one. Gov. DeSantis then would remove Levine, blaming him for improper oversight.
Vice Chair Barbara Feingold then automatically would have succeeded Levine. The chairman decides who serves on the search committee. Feingold could have chosen enough members to ensure her preferred choice, which seems to be State Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay. Feingold has donated to Fine’s campaign and his political committee.
Feingold was the only one of 13 trustees not present Tuesday, but she tipped her hand during last month’s meeting. After criticizing Levine over the search, Feingold said she had not voted for any of the three finalists. Fine was not among them. Feingold also acknowledged that she is the potential donor of $30 million toward FAU’s dental school but is withholding that committment until FAU’s next president is chosen.
Kim Dunn, who chairs the FAU Faculty Senate, proposed the bylaw change to “improve operating procedures.” It passed 10-2. That was about the same margin by which the trustees last month backed Levine against Feingold’s criticism.
Coupled with last week’s Faculty Senate proposal that the trustees offer Interim President Stacy Volnik a three-year contract, the message from FAU is clear: We don’t want Randy Fine to be president, even if he is the stated choice of Gov. DeSantis and, presumably, Barbara Feingold.
Next week will mark three months since the search committee chose those finalists. No one knows when the investigation of the search will be complete or what might happen after the findings become public. The next Board of Governors meeting isn’t until Nov. 8.
For now, none of the finalists have withdrawn. The search, however, is like a plane circling the airport and awaiting instructions. Someone needs to bring the issue of FAU’s next leader in for a landing.
I’m told that Feingold is in regular contact with the governor’s office, where staffers understand that she is a major Republican Party donor. Clearly, though, Feingold is in the distinct minority when it comes to who should lead FAU.
Next month, the Faculty Senate will get an update on the dental school, which would be named for Feingold’s late husband, Jeffrey Feingold. It seems obvious that if the choice comes down to having the dental school or having Randy Fine as president, almost everyone in the FAU community will be happier to live without the dental school than to live with Fine.
Boca makes progress in reducing crowding in schools
The effort to reduce crowding in Boca Raton’s public schools continues to make progress. The effort to fill more of Delray Beach’s schools continues to lag.
Based on the Palm Beach County School District’s count after the first 11 days, the most dramatic difference can be seen at Calusa Elementary in northwest Boca Raton. For years, Calusa ran well over its capacity of 1,166 students. Parents complained, but they also liked the school.
Last year, however, Blue Lake Elementary opened. Boca Raton donated land for the campus, near Military Trail and Spanish River Boulevard, when the land deal for a previous site north of the city fell through.
Blue Lake took many students who would have gone to Calusa, where enrollment is now just 821 compared with 1,242 before Blue Lake opened. Blue Lake is just slightly under its capacity of 972. Money to build the school was already in the district’s budget when the city donated the land.
Elsewhere, the city keeps realizing the benefits from the 2016 sales-tax increase that voters approved. That revenue paid for rebuilds and expansions of Addison Mizner and Verde elementary schools. Each is now K-8.
Those expansions especially reduced crowding at Boca Raton Middle, which also had been one of the district’s most overcrowded campuses. It can hold 1,417 students but has 1,181. Omni Middle, in northwest Boca Raton, has room for 1,417 students but this year’s count showed 1,033.
Enrollment at Boca Raton High School also has stabilized. Not long ago, it epitomized the city’s crowding problem. Thanks to, among other things, a crackdown on boundary jumping, the school is slightly under capacity at 2,881 students.
The only potential crowding problem seems to be at Spanish River High School. Its capacity is 2,571, but about 2,750 students are attending.
Overall, it remains a success story for Boca, enabled by public money, public land and reliance on facts. When school crowding became a political issue six years ago, one speaker claimed that the problem was children of undocumented immigrants. No, it was just supply and demand.
Delray schools far under capacity
Unfortunately, not enough has changed in Delray Beach’s schools. They have too few students, not too many.
For years, city officials have tried to improve the schools’ image, hoping to draw more middle-class families. Janal Bowens, the city’s education coordinator, recently told city commissioners that Delray Beach needs to “change the narrative.” The numbers reflect that urgency.
Pine Grove Elementary has room for 852 students, but just 385 attend. Banyan Creek Elementary has room for 1,200 but only 873 are there. Plumosa School of the Arts is two-thirds full. So is Spady Elementary.
Carver Middle’s capacity is 1,552. The 11-day count showed that just 676 are enrolled. Atlantic High, with a capacity of 2,446 and the International Baccalaureate program, is about 25 percent under-enrolled.
Of course, fewer students can mean normal lunchtimes and easy-to-navigate corridors. But when schools are chronically and dramatically under-enrolled, district officials consider closing some of those campuses. That’s especially true as traditional public schools face more politically driven competition.
The Legislature removed all income requirement for the private school vouchers that Tallahassee once said would go only to the state’s poorest students. That drains money from public schools. So have recent court decisions forcing districts to share money with charter schools.
Bowens noted the disproportionately low scores by Delray Beach students on reading tests. She said the city could use more help from the school district. City Commissioner Ryan Boylston told me that a better answer might be to rely on the city’s non-profits. One way or the other, education will be an issue for Boylston if he becomes mayor next year.
Burke receives stellar evaluation
Many school superintendents in Florida would love to get the evaluation that Palm Beach County’s Mike Burke just got.
Five of the seven school board members gave Burke perfect cumulative scores of five. The other two gave him a 4.6 and a 4.0. Unlike many other regions, the county has remained comparatively free of ideologically-driven politics. Burke has guided the district through most of the pandemic and after. Three board seats are up next year.
Delray to annex unincorporated land
Delray Beach is about to annex roughly five acres into the northwestern part of the city. The action will eliminate a “pocket”—unincorporated land that the city surrounds.
Single-family homes will go on the vacant land. The action seemed fairly routine at the planning and zoning board until Chairman Chris Davey raised issues, after which the board voted 4-3 against recommending approval.
Mayor Shelly Petrolia, Davey’s ally, was the only to vote against the annexation on first reading. She expressed worries about pedestrian safety on the narrow road. The developer, though, intends to add wide sidewalks. I would expect the annexation to pass second reading by the same 4-1 vote.
