“Despite recovery efforts, we need at least another day before we can safely reopen schools,” this pop-up message on the front page of the Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) website said Monday, October 14th, five days after Hurricane Milton passed. The message then listed “factors” preventing reopening.
“Based on these factors,” the pop-up message continued, “schools and district offices will remain closed on Tuesday, October 15″ [boldfacing added].
However, the HCPS district offices at 901 East Kennedy Blvd in Tampa were not flooded, and had power restored in the morning of Thursday October 10th, the day after Hurricane Milton. Despite this, HCPS is keeping their main office on East Kennedy Blvd closed.
That narrative is also inconsistent with their own published academic calendar, which shows Monday was a “Non-Student Day” due to it being Columbus Day.
In addition, the regularly scheduled school board meeting for Tuesday, October 15th has been canceled. Such meetings are held at the district offices.
This popup message earlier in the day claimed “significant flooding, large, uprooted trees blocking access, and widespread power outages at 172 of our schools” [boldfacing added]. Thus the problems were not at the district offices, which were closed anyway.
HCPS’ claim in their second pop-up that the “reason” that schools were closed on Monday due to “cleanup efforts” at schools fails to explain why the “district offices” or any other administrative offices also had to be closed.
“The Superintendent and I decided together to cancel the school board meeting,” Hillsborough County School board chair Karen Perez said. “We have people trying to get our schools open to get students back into the schools because they have lost so much learning” [due to the recent hurricanes].
“Sometimes, people want to focus on the dot on a piece of paper rather that the piece of paper itself,” Perez said. “We need to get our schools open, and that is our focus.”
“Why is the Sarasota County School Board able to hold a public meeting today to discuss difficult decisions before them, and our school board is not?” said Jason Ferger, a long-time school board accountability activist. “Difficult decisions like, for example, make-up days.”
Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler announced in this Facebook post that the school board she is a member of was going ahead with its public meeting. Both meeting were scheduled for October 15, but Hillsborough cancelled theirs.
“Given their history, it certainly is possible,” Ferger said when asked if he thought the school board meeting was canceled to avoid further scrutiny of recent allegations of severe misconduct by the superintendent and his deputy. “We all just went through a natural disaster that was worse than we could have imagined, but the cancellation of today’s school board meeting raises questions. “
The next HCPS board meeting is not until November 19, more than a month away and a date that is well after after a controversial property tax hike to fund HCPS that is on the November 5th ballot has been decided.
“We’ll discuss make-up days on November 19,” Perez said when asked about decisions on make-up days.
Perez said she did not know if district office staff is getting paid days off as the district office remains closed. “You’ll have to ask the Superintendent,” Perez said.
The day before speaking to Perez, we reached out to embattled HCPS school Superintendent Van Ayres via email and text messages to ask about these matters. Ayres was given the entire day to respond, and we extended the deadline into the next morning.
Despite being given ample time, we received no response from Ayres to these questions we posed to him:
1. Why are the district offices at 901 East Kennedy closed today? Are those offices in any way inoperable?
2. Today is Columbus Day, and it is a “Non-Student Day” on your agency’s student academic calendar. But was administrative staff also scheduled to have today off?
3. If they were not scheduled to have today off, then who made the decision to close the administrative offices for today Monday?
4. Were the district offices also closed Friday, October 11th? We ask because our understanding is that electricity was restored to 901 East Kennedy on the morning of October 10th, the day after the hurricane.
The Tampa Bay Guardian has recently published a series of articles on Ayres’ vendor-paid trip to the Masters in April, followed by a questionable property swap deal with that same vendor within a month of the Masters trip. The evidence suggests more than mere mismanagement, but rather criminal behavior, which raises questions about Ayres’ involvement in deciding to cancel today’s school board meeting.
At the time of publication, the HCPS has made 10 posts on its official Facebook page, including posts that include text from the two pop-up messages mentioned above. However, none of their posts mention the cancellation of today’s school board meeting.
The cover photo, the large banner image that appears at the top of every Facebook page, continues to be about the November 5th tax hike. That cover photo is unchanged since before the hurricanes struck.
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