Torres: Should someone barred from working for school district be on school board?

School board member Gene Trent, elected in November, lied on his teacher job application in 2015.

This information, long suspected, was made public by the school district this week with the release of an April 4 letter from acting Superintendent Susan Hann to Trent after a lengthy months-long investigation. Trent admitted he answered "no" on the application when asked if he had ever been arrested.

This means Trent, who quit his teaching job in November to be able to serve on the school board, is barred from working for the very same district he oversees as one of five elected board members. It also means he violated a policy rule the very same board he serves on is supposed to uphold.

And that's a problem.

Something about this doesn't sit right. How can someone barred from working for an organization be on the board that oversees that very organization making important budgetary and staffing decisions?

"The investigation has revealed a School Board policy violation in connection with seeking employment with the School Board. Such incident has already been reported to the Florida Department of Education, Office of Professional Practices Services," concluded the investigational report conducted by Orlando law firm Rumberger, Kirk & Caldwell.

Neither Trent nor School Board Chair Matt Susin responded to my request for a comment or reaction.

More: Brevard schools removes Cocoa councilman as substitute; complaint came through Gene Trent

Tampa attorney John Grant, who sits on the Florida Commission of Ethics, said the issue does raise ethical concerns.

"If someone filed a complaint, I believe the staff would find legal sufficiency and the commission would find probable cause," he said.

The investigation into Trent's 2015 employment application was initiated after several seemingly politically-motivated complaints were made against Trent on Oct. 15, 21 and 26 of last year. Trent, at the time, was in a heated race for the school board seat he later won.

There were six complaints in total and Trent was cleared in three of them.

In the letter from Hann, Trent was told he was "welcome to reapply for employment with Brevard public schools as early as April 3, 2024."

We already know the arrests happened, and Trent willingly answered a FLORIDA TODAY reporter's questions about them in the run-up to the election. No convictions followed. One was an arrest for battery, in which Trent has said he was trying to protect his spouse from a club owner who put his hands on his wife's hips at 4 a.m. after Trent and his wife attended a wedding. The other was for violating an alcohol ordinance about serving beer after hours to an employee after the restaurant they were working in was closed.

By lying on his employment application, the investigation found that Trent violated the school board's standard of ethical conduct.

More: Schiller slams Brevard School Board, adding to turmoil amid superintendent search

According to the investigative report, "When asked why he put “no” on his application, Mr. Trent replied that he believed because more than twenty years had elapsed and these were low-level crimes, he did not think he needed to check 'yes.'"

Interesting. Remember, it was Trent himself who passed along a complaint on Jan. 13 claiming Cocoa Deputy Mayor and Brevard County firefighter LaVander Hearn was not completely honest about his BPS application to work as a substitute teacher. Now he finds himself in the same "penalty box."

It took five days for the district to complete an investigation into the matter involving Hearn and impose a one-year employment ban on him. It took 161 days for them to do the same to Trent. The district took another 30 days to make the results public.

The investigation also concluded that Trent violated policy by campaigning during school hours, though that consisted of one email sent to a sitting board member asking for a meeting outside of school hours.

He was also found to have violated the district's internet policy. Teachers are only allowed to access the internet for educational purposes. Trent's browser history revealed he accessed Fox News and Reddit and tried to access Facebook and TikTok. Trent also admitted to perusing the MLS listings of homes for sale in the morning as he also works in real estate.

The investigation noted there was no evidence that Trent's internet "use interfered with his supervision, control, and protection of students or was not commensurate with his assigned duties and responsibilities."

"It is not lost on the investigators that the complaints investigated herein appear to be motivated by political purposes and the fact that Mr. Trent was running for School Board," the report states. "Regardless, however, the investigation has revealed a School Board policy violation in connection with seeking employment with the School Board."

So, what happens next?

On a board of politically friendly faces, likely nothing.

It's just another black mark against a district still reeling from a slew of ousters and retirements, including the forced resignation of Superintendent Mark Mullins and last month's sidelining of Interim Superintendent Robert Schiller.

Contact Torres at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on Twitter @johnalbertorres or on Facebook at facebook.com/FTjohntorres.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Brevard School Board member Gene Trent violated district policy