‘We love Bob Runcie.’ Business, political and faith leaders come to Runcie’s defense

Community leaders of government, business and faith congregated Friday morning outside the Broward County School Board to affirm their support for and rally the community behind Superintendent Robert Runcie.

Runcie, 59, was arrested on Wednesday morning and charged with perjury after a statewide grand jury investigating school districts’ compliance of state school safety laws accused him of making at least one statement in his testimony to the jury that he knew not to be true. Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials, who arrested Runcie, have not indicated what he said that led to the charge, nor has the Office of Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who is prosecuting the case.

The school district’s top attorney, Barbara Myrick, 72, was also indicted, for unlawful disclosure of statewide grand jury proceedings.

Both were released Wednesday and are scheduled to appear in court at 9:30 a.m. May 12 in front of Broward Circuit Judge Martin S. Fein. The School Board is meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday to discuss the situation.

Leaders attending the rally Friday morning praised Runcie’s decade-long tenure as superintendent and openly questioned the political motivations behind his April 15 indictment.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said he had looked into removing Runcie in the wake of the Feb. 14, 2018, Parkland mass shooting but couldn’t because he was not an elected official, convened the statewide grand jury in February 2019, a month after he took office. Seventeen students and faculty members from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High were killed in the shooting.

DeSantis’ office has not answered the Herald’s questions about the case, saying the courts will decide.

Many of the Parkland parents have been critical of Runcie and have called on gutting the Broward School Board. They lauded DeSantis for authorizing the grand jury.

“We are happy that governor DeSantis created the grand jury to investigate the failings of school districts in the state of Florida,’’ said Tony Montalto, president of Stand with Parkland, formed by the Parkland parents after the school shootings. Montalto’s 14-year-old daughter, Gina, was one of the 17 killed.

“The grand jury is doing its job by holding the people who are responsible for the safety of our children and staff members accountable. We know that Mr Runcie’s poor leadership contributed to the Parkland tragedy,” Montalto said in a statement sent to the Herald Thursday.

Speakers at Friday’s news conference presented a different view, citing the educational gains that Runcie, a Harvard graduate hired by the School Board in 2011, has brought to the nation’s sixth-largest school district, with 261,000 students. In 2017, the School Board voted unanimously to extend his more than $350,000-a-year contract to 2023, his second contract extension.

‘Witch hunt’ against Runcie, critics say

Derrick Hughes, pastor at First Baptist Church Piney Grove in Lauderdale Lakes, kicked off the rally with a prayer.

“Why are we here? What is this really about?” he said. “It is a political castration of a man, his good name, and the future of those like him who would dare go against the grain and the status quo. This past Wednesday morning, he was made a public spectacle without even knowing why. What is the underlying condition of what brought us here? A political promise.”

State Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, accused DeSantis, a Republican, of being the “undisputed co-leader in this witch hunt against Mr. Runcie.”

“I’ve never seen such vague conclusory allegations as those contained in this indictment,” Thurston said. “You know, if we were in a banana republic and you had a secret jury and you came up with ambiguous charges, then we would understand that. But this is not a banana republic and we’re gonna stand with Dr. Runcie.”

Runcie’s attorneys, Jeremy Kroll and Michael Dutko, Thursday afternoon filed a court motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that the indictment is too vague.

“Absent specificity as to what statement is at issue, the charging document provides inadequate notice to Mr. Runcie to prepare his defense, especially where his testimony at the proceeding lasted approximately 18 hours and spanned a two-day period,” the attorneys wrote.

Perjury charge puzzles legal experts

Legal experts are puzzled by the indictments, not only because of the rarity of charging someone with perjury for grand jury testimony, but because of how little information prosecutors have provided.

Edward O’Donnell, a Miami criminal defense trial lawyer and former prosecutor, said in his nearly 50 years of practicing law, he’s never seen a perjury indictment in a grand jury proceeding, and the indictment against Myrick also seems strange.

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen on both ends,” O’Donnell said in an interview Friday.

He called the indictment against Myrick for disclosing grand jury proceedings “one of the most technical, technical crimes on the books,” as well as “damn-near unconstitutional.”

And, if prosecutors thought Runcie had lied, they should have excused the grand jury and told Runcie they thought he wasn’t telling the truth as to not impede the investigation.

“A grand jury is an investigative tool. Why wouldn’t you want to correct a mistake or a lie?” O’Donnell asked.

The perjury charge stems from testimony that Runcie gave to the grand jury between March 31 and April 1, according to the indictment, which charged him with perjury in an official proceeding, a third-degree felony.

A perjury charge also requires prosecutors to prove the statement in question was not only untrue, but germane to the investigation.

“By failing to identify the statement at issue in the Indictment, Mr. Runcie is denied adequate notice to address the materiality of the statement at issue,” Dutko and Kroll, Runcie’s defense attorneys, wrote in their motion.

Broward County Commissioner Dale V.C. Holness, the former mayor of Broward County, cited the school district’s progress under Runcie: graduation rates topping 90%, the elimination of F schools in the district, the academic growth of Black students.

“The future won’t be as bright without Runcie in place,” Holness said at the rally. He called Runcie “the best superintendent of schools we’ve ever had in my 45 years living here. And I graduated high school in Broward County.”

Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam said the business community relies on a strong school district as a recruiting opportunity.

“You have a community that stands with Bob Runcie,” he said. “You have a community that questions this indictment.”

Keith Koenig, the founder and CEO of City Furniture and a product of Broward County Public Schools, also praised Runcie.

“We need Bob Runcie. We appreciate Bob Runcie. We love Bob Runcie and we’re grateful for the great work he does,” Koenig said.

Also present were Sidney Calloway, Chair of the Urban League of Broward County, and Kathleen Cannon, CEO of the United Way of Broward County, among other business and faith leaders.