In a tight vote, Broward School Board approves Runcie’s nearly $755K severance package

The Broward County School Board narrowly approved Superintendent Robert Runcie’s $754,900 separation agreement during a special meeting Tuesday morning, with two board members whose family members were killed in the Parkland shootings critical of parts of the payout.

The deal, passed in a 5-4 vote, was worked out the day before between Runcie’s attorney and School Board Chair Rosalind Osgood, who was aided in the negotiations by Walter J. Harvey, Miami-Dade County School Board’s attorney on loan for the talks.

Runcie, 59, will remain with the district with full salary until Aug. 10, at a cost of $112,529, per his severance package. However, he will not be performing his duties as superintendent, but rather helping a yet-to-be appointed interim superintendent with the transition.

“It allows us to move on as a district and focus on students and student outcomes,” said Board Vice Chair Laurie Rich Levinson, one of Runcie’s supporters.

Some Broward board members critical of Runcie deal

Other board members, however, took issue with Runcie staying on for 90 days — his contract calls for 90 days’ termination notice — and an $80,000 payout related to his Chicago pension plan. The board hired Runcie as superintendent in 2011 from the Chicago Board of Education, where he was chief of staff.

Debra Hixon, whose husband, Chris, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Senior High athletic director, was killed in the Feb. 14, 2018, Parkland shootings, criticized the provision in the package that allowed Runcie to stay on for 90 days while he assists with the transition to an interim superintendent.

“What is his job going to be?” asked Hixon, one of the nine board members.

Voting for the agreement were Osgood, Levinson, Ann Murray, Donna Korn and Patricia Good. Nay votes were cast by Lori Alhadeff, Hixon, Sarah Leonardi and Nora Rupert.

Runcie is leaving the district as a result of an April 15 statewide grand jury indictment charging him with perjury. The district’s longtime general counsel, Barbara Myrick, 72, was also indicted; she is accused of disclosing grand jury proceedings.

He pleaded not guilty; she entered a plea of “stands mute,” which means the court will enter a plea for her.

Both offered to resign last month — not due to the indictments, they said, but because board critics have cited their continued employment as a remnant of the policies and conditions that led to the Stoneman Douglas shootings, which resulted in the deaths of 17 students and faculty and wounding of 17 others.

The School Board approved Myrick’s $226,000 separation agreement last week.

On Tuesday, the School Board approved the following severance package for Runcie, for a total of $754,900:

▪ $112,529 for Runcie’s base salary from May 3 to Aug. 10;

▪ $145,980 for severance, based on 20 weeks of his $356,201 annual salary;

▪ $141,962 for 816.08 hours of unused sick time;

▪ $87,588 for 450 hours of unused vacation time;

▪ $68,000 in his Florida pension;

▪ $80,000 in his Chicago pension;

▪ $35,200 in Broward retirement savings plans;

▪ $39,685 for 100 days of payments into the Florida Retirement System;

▪ $18,956 for eight months of medical benefits;

▪ $25,000 for his attorney working on his separation agreement.

Runcie, Myrick departures come at pivotal time

The exits of Runcie and Myrick leave the School Board having to find two top administrators as the district — the nation’s sixth largest with 260,000 total students, including charter schools — prepares for a busy summer school program aimed at catching up children who’ve fallen behind during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also preparing for the return of most students to in-person learning in the fall.

Runcie’s allies on the dais said the deal is fair to both the district and Runcie, whom the School Board hired in October 2011. Board Member Murray acknowledged that the agreement could seem like a lucrative payout to the public, but altering it would be punitive to a public employee who has not been convicted of any wrongdoing.

“We are not a jury. We’re not trying anyone. We’re just trying to to take care of business today,” Murray said.

His critics, however, including Alhadeff, who lost her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, in the Parkland shootings, voted against the agreement.

She took issue with the board paying Runcie’s $80,000 Chicago pension reimbursement for 10 years of service since his Aug. 10 departure from the district is two months shy of his Oct. 4, 2021, 10-year anniversary date.

“Ninety-six percent is still not 100%, so why would he receive his $80,000,” she said.

That number could have been $320,000 higher had Runcie’s lawyer Sherry Culves gotten her way in negotiations with the School Board. Runcie’s employment contract stipulates the board would pay into the Florida Retirement System for the four years he worked at the Chicago public school system prior to being hired in Broward in 2011. That was based on him serving 10 years as superintendent.

The School Board payment into his Chicago pension would have been $400,000, Culves said. Osgood on Monday said she wasn’t willing to pay that amount since $80,000 was the number stated in Runcie’s 2017 contract extension to 2023.

Board Member Good said she wasn’t comfortable paying Runcie his full salary for 90 days.

“We can’t just pay him because we want to pay him for 90 days if he’s not performing work duties,” Good said.

The agreement also requires the district to negotiate and pay Runcie’s attorney fees upfront in his criminal case. Should he be convicted or plead guilty or no contest, however, he would be required to reimburse the district for his attorney fees and forfeit the $80,000 in the Chicago pension payment.

DeSantis authorizes grand jury

Gov. Ron DeSantis authorized the statewide grand jury in February 2019, a year after the Parkland shootings. It was tasked with investigating whether school districts committed fraud when they solicited and accepted millions of dollars from a state bond issue contingent on implementing school safety measures mandated by the Legislature in the wake of the shootings.

The grand jury, which ended on April 17, also investigated whether on-campus crime was under-reported by school districts. A report the grand jury filed in December 2019 cited a Broward Teacher’s Union’s school safety and discipline survey that alleged teachers who reported students with discipline issues to school administrators were seeing those students returned to their classes without being disciplined at all, or in some cases, after some sort of ‘conference.’ ”

Runcie is accused of lying to the grand jury about contacting at least one witness in another case it was investigating that resulted in the January indictment of the district’s former technology head, Tony Hunter. He was charged with one count of bid tampering and one count of unlawful compensation in the pending case. He pleaded not guilty.

He’s accused of skirting the bidding process by purchasing for the district $17 million in flat screen monitors from a friend’s company in Georgia.

The statewide prosecutor also said Myrick contacted someone on the witness list in the Hunter case as she prepared to testify before the grand jury last month.

The School Board unanimously approved Myrick’s separation agreement Thursday. She is walking away with $226,000 — a combination of her severance, pension, unused sick and vacation time and health benefits.

Prosecutor Richard Mantei, who works for Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, said in court records that he has phone records showing Runcie contacted someone on the grand jury witness list on March 30, the night before he gave his testimony to the grand jury on March 31 and April 1.

Among those who appeared at Tuesday’s meeting to express support for Runcie was his wife, Diana Runcie.

She said that any criticism that he fostered an environment that allowed the Parkland tragedy was unfair, as is any criticism that her husband was not there for the survivors or victims’ families.

She described how he cried himself to sleep after returning home from the school that night, recalling him say, “I can’t believe they killed my babies.”

As far as programs he championed, such as PROMISE, which tried to steer troubled kids into an alternative school rather than jail for certain misdemeanor offenses, she defended her husband.

“He saw kids were being kicked out of school for petty offenses, and he said kids belong in school,” she said.