Sarasota School Superintendent & Board Members are Missing Out on Opportunity
Did you know there's an Insight Community Engagement Meeting on April 29?
“I want to start by saying — I would much rather be at home tonight, reading my kids a bedtime story, helping with homework, or just being a present parent. But instead, I’m here — waiting through a multiple hour-long meeting for this chance to speak because the school board’s idea of “efficiency” has made meaningful participation harder, not easier.”
Public School Advocate Julie Forestier, speaking those words, attends all of the Sarasota School Board meetings, despite a hectic schedule. Her busy life consists of kids, a full-time job (she’s the Space coordinator for Social Equity Through Education Alliance (SEE) and is President of the Democratic Women’s Club of Sarasota.
With a start time of 6:00pm, the April 15 meeting ran three hours and 46 minutes. The community blames these lengthy meetings on the fact that Superintendent Terry Connor decided to cut public meetings from twice a month to one.
In November 2024, he cited that this new schedule would be tested for efficiency, starting in January and running through March. The public outcry was loud, with even the Sarasota Herald-Tribune holding the Superintendent accountable.
Newly elected President Trump would be coming into office and Sarasota citizens politely questioned the timing of the move. They saw budget cuts coming down the pike and wanted to not only make their stances known, but be kept in the loop as to what the board would be doing to prepare.
Student Avery Cole waited for close to three hours to speak during public comments. “I think tonight’s meeting being so long only shows how this meeting schedule is not working. I told my parents they could get me at 8 and I left at 9:15.”
An interesting factor is that the school board workshops were also reduced to once a month. Florida public schools are facing unprecedented roadblocks. In addition to the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, new laws being passed by the Florida legislation funnels funds out of public schools to charter school vouchers. It only makes sense to increase workshops and meetings to face challenges head on, not lessen them.
At the April 1 workshop, Dr. Moore, the Director of Strategic Community Engagement started her presentation three hours into the meeting. “It’s been a long morning and we’ll move through this expeditiously.”
There was a real palpable disrespect afforded to the speaker as she rushed through meaningful data and information. We feel disrespected if we wait at a doctor’s appointment. The workshop lasted over four and a half hours -covering topics from new insurance policies to school board meetings.
While Connor stated that the public would see the new school board schedule, regarding three new meetings dubbed Community Insight Connection, before the April 15 board meeting, I didn’t see it. In an email on April 3, I asked him:
Will the public be seeing the revised version before the April 15 meeting?
I really admire your 'fight'. I know the public can help the district with specific suggestions from you. They can be your 'A' team, not just the benchwarmers.
Please note: That anything you do write to me, goes into a public blog.
Thank you again so much for the reply.
Connor’s reply: “I will be posting it on the workshop agenda for public accessibility.”
With the school board agenda posting over 840 pages, I could have missed it. The original document was posted on the Dear Bubbie substack titled: Sarasota School Board Superintendent Proposes Insight Community Engagement.
There will be three meetings, one in South County, another in North County and one in Central County. The months these will be taking place are April, August and December.
I just discovered that there will be a meeting for the public on April 29. The start time is 6:00pm and held at Venice High School Visual Performing Arts Center. The “Informational Community Meeting 1” is in regards to the school attendance boundaries for Wellen Park High School.
This meeting appears to be topic specific and should fall under an additional meeting, rather than one of the three that the board agreed upon. At the workshop, Board Chair Tim Enos stated “we would have to add a couple of meetings.” He used the Venice High School Wellen Park redistricting as the example.
Enos excels at school security and social media issues. He manages to affably run a tight meeting with doses of humor and understanding. I would choose a public school for my kid over a charter solely due to his diligence regarding safety and having the most modern equipment supplied to some of the district schools. Yet, here’s what he said about school board meetings at the workshop:
“There’s over 30 school districts that do one meeting a month, so we would not be an outlier as it relates to the 67 counties.”
In other words, let’s strive for mediocrity. I wondered about the activity of the public school advocates in those other 30 districts. I asked former Sarasota Herald-Tribune Writer Steven Walker, who is now with the Orlando Sentinel, how many meetings are held monthly at Orange County School Board meetings. He replied generally two a month. Just like Sarasota had done for years.
He noted that while Orlando and Sarasota draw about the same amount of people to meetings, Orlando has a much larger population. Regarding holding town halls or additional meetings, he responded:
Sometimes. The superintendent has been known to go to schools if there are targeted issues raised at them. I know she held a few in the wake of ICE announcing their intent to operate in schools.
He said the topic of immigration was addressed in several of the normally scheduled meetings “on top of the billion questions I asked them for my reporting,” he laughed.
Enos continued to point out that he, along with board member Liz Barker, hold office hours two days a month and states that they have been very successful. Twice, I have emailed Enos asking for dates and links to his meetings and he has not replied.
The information isn’t on the school calendar, and I didn’t see it on his Facebook page.
Barker said she did like the three meetings as an alternative to going back to two meetings a month. “What I understand from talking to staff is that the cyclical nature of these board meetings lends itself better to doing the actual voting business that keeps the district in compliance once a month. That makes sense.”
She continued:
It makes sense to me that the community has experienced a challenge with trust and feeling like they can’t trust us to hear them and really take their concerns into consideration. I think as we continue to work together and we’re seeing this happen already, we will earn that trust back.
If any trust was happening, that quickly took two giant steps back when an important vote took place at the 4/15 meeting entitled: APPROVAL OF THE FLORIDA CENTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD, INC INTERAGENCY AGREEMENT.
This had not been workshopped, and the public learned about it less than a week before it came to vote. They had limited details.
In a Dear Bubbie blog, Support Our School Co-founder Carol Lerner said: “I believe the community, myself included, was blindsided by the newly proposed plan to go to a case-managed referral program rather than contracting to have full-time therapists on site in schools.”
Support Our School’s Lisa Schurr stated that this is just one of many reasons that the school board needed to go back to two meetings a month.
There is no surprise that board members Bridget Ziegler and Robin Marinelli were in agreement with the superintendent’s proposal. Despite a lot of talk on the subject at the workshop, one clearly remembers when Ziegler attempted to cut the public speeches down to one minute on an important topic. Marinelli immediately seconded her.
The public knows where they both stand, even if they attempt to talk a good game.
Meanwhile, Marinelli must have been so exhausted from the long workshop, she proceeded to talk without her microphone on. When pointed out to her, she sighed: “There’s just so many buttons.”
Ziegler laughed and said: “There’s one. Just one button.”
On the subject, board member Tom Edwards described himself as an “outlier”, providing what seemed like the best compromise for staff and the public.
“Just three more meetings when we typically have two meetings a month to get feedback to get information from the constituency,” he began. “And plus, we’re elected officials. I think we need to be available to do that part of our job. What we’re elected to do.”
He expressed concern that the meeting proposal (that the public didn’t see) was “pretty scripted.” He continued, “More than half of it is presentation and topic-oriented and it’s not really doing what we are saying.”
That is exactly what the April 29 meeting looks like.
Edwards continued:
“I completely understand the staff’s situation. I can’t be more supportive of that.” He suggested a '“hybrid”, keeping staff time at a minimal:
The presentations themselves - the powerpoints all of that is so big and so much time goes into that. I think we could ratchet some of that time down so it’s bullet point, more conversational and less time from staff.
The superintendent is pushing hard for ‘efficiency’ but could be losing real opportunity along the way. First, there’s the issue of 'burnout’, which could explain an odd exchange he had with the non-profit media group Suncoast Searchlight. This took place on Facebook with accusations flying that Searchlight was misleading the public, including its headlines on a recent agenda item.
They appeared surprised that this back and forth was placed before the public on a Facebook page. Searchlight is composed of investigative journalists, who are impeccable with detail and fact-checking. While we want Connor to defend our public schools with the virtuosity of a Yo-Yo Ma, this was more like an out of tune, dissonant melody. I am assuming the exchange was deleted, as I couldn’t find it again.
Forestier made this point:
When you reduced board meetings from twice a month to once, you said it was to improve efficiency. But today’s agenda is 849 pages long. That’s not efficient — it’s inaccessible. No working parent, teacher, or concerned community member can reasonably be expected to read and respond to that much material in time to weigh in. In fact, I honestly don’t even know how any of you had the time to read it thoroughly.
This model isn’t saving time — it’s reducing transparency, limiting accountability, and pushing the public out of the conversation. It’s making it more difficult for parents, teachers, and students to be here and be heard. Not only do fewer meetings mean longer meetings, it also means fewer chances to understand what's happening, ask questions, and speak up before decisions are made. That’s not a cost-saving measure — that’s a democracy-reducing measure.
I appreciate the proposal for listening sessions and think they could be meaningful tools for dialogue. But they can’t replace actual board meetings.
She concluded that two meetings a month had been the standard for years in the A-rated school district “because it works”.
This meeting was such an overload, the even the League of Women Voters seem to be late in getting out their report card on grading the meeting.
This Dear Bubbie Substack had only Part One coverage of the School Board Meeting, because there is too much to unpack in one blog. Topics came up on “deselecting books” and the low number of students with measle vaccinations. Then there was the budget. . .
Meanwhile, on a national podcast, James Carville called Sarasota the capital of “sexual hypocrisy” citing Ziegler as a prime example. We’ll give her one minute to respond.
Back in the Orange County School system, board members are single-focused not to lose students (and funding) to the charter schools. They just hired a consultant to lure students back to public schools. This will cost the county in the area of $935,000 or $1,000.00 per student.
I hope that the Sarasota School Board will delegate the public for ideas before spending almost a million dollars on a gamble. One new charter school in Sarasota advertised on Facebook.
The public has literally asked the Superintendent what they can do to help. Based on the April 15 meeting and this upcoming April 29 Insight Community mystery, it feels more like he’s saying: Just get outta the way.
I subscribe to the school newsletter and never got notice.
I asked Stephen Walker what he thought of Sarasota’s public school advocacy organizations and its people. He replied: “I said when I left Sarasota, that I felt the public there was very engaged. Orlando has great public advocacy too, like Stephana from the Florida Freedom to Read Project.
“Sarasota has something special, though.”
To set up an appointment with Liz Barker, here is the link to sign up. The times and dates are as follow: Wednesday May 14th 11-1 and Tuesday May 27th 5:30-7:30
To set up an appointment with Tim Enos - you’re on your own. Hopefully, you’ll get a reply when e-mailing him.
As we stated, there is a meeting at Venice High School on April 29. See details in the body of the blog.
Saturday, April 26 is the big one! Support Our Schools will be featuring Education Author and Podcaster Jennifer Berkshire in a forum to be held at the Unitarian Universalist. Go to their website for details. Hurry on now. It is not too late to register.
(Thanks to Steven Walker, who will always have a piece of Sarasota’s heart.)