Trails in the Sand by Peter Traceit, the Street Detective
Ol Peter has been doing more than dragging this week. The Detective has been pounding sand to get the news.
This week’s digging landed Peter in the Broward Schools board room where the sand was mixed with water and the mudslinging was on full display.
It appears that Super Cartwright’s lies have finally caught up with her.
Ol Peter Traceit was curious about the Super’s evaluation and so he dusted off the computer and tuned in to this morning’s meeting.
After doing some digging into the hiring debacle of the Chief Facilities position, Traceit is wondering if Super Cartwright is playing or is she as confused as she looks.
Traceit has learned that a local Black man, Willie Hopkins, applied for the Chief Facilities job. The process was like a roller coaster ride of twists, turns and upside-down loops. It does not surprise me that Hopkins has said he doubts he wants the job at this juncture. The Detective is wondering why anyone would want to work for Broward schools, especially in this capacity.
Sifting through the sandy details, tells Ol’ Peter that Hopkins came out as the winner because Broward Schools is a cesspool of deceit. With the mess outlined by the Grand Jury around the $800 million dollar bond project, desperation is the only word that comes to mind to describe anyone who wants to lead this facilities and construction task.
In discussing this dirty process, Board Member, Foganholi came out slinging mud. As Cartwright tried to blame the outdated district processes for her mess, Foganholi corrected her and stated there was “no process problem, but a leadership problem”. Foganholi called Super Cartwright out on her big Pinocchio lies when she told him that Hopkins had embezzled funds from his job when working for the city of Pompano almost a decade ago. It was evident that Cartwright felt pressured to hire Hopkins after the interview committee made an error on his scoring sheet which placed him in second place when he should have been in first. Though he had worked in significant positions relating to the job in recent years, she and her staff dug until they found something from a decade earlier. To Traceit’s surprise, what they found was not embezzlement as the Super quoted to Foganholi. What they found was Hopkins had left the job with the city of Pompano and began another in Cobb County, Georgia. He maintained medical insurance with the city of Pompano. Once finding out he had moved to different employment, the city of Pompano sent him a letter terminating his relationship with the city as well as his medical benefits. The city of Pompano also requested payment of medical benefit payments received during the time Hopkins should not have been covered by while working for Cobb County.
Broward schools used this decades old information to cite that Hopkins had been terminated from a job and he did not divulge this on his application. According to Hopkins, he never received notification of this “termination”. The termination letter was sent to the address of his ex-wife in Florida, but he lived and worked in Georgia.
The Detective has been sleuthing for a while. The question here is how someone is fired from a job when they have been living and working at another job in another state for months. Something in the sand ain’t clean.
Foganholi further ad-monished Super Cartwright arguing that Hopkins is a father, veteran and all-around decent man and Cartwright’s lies defamed his character.
In her usual form, Super Cartwright pointed her dirty finger of blame at her new HR Chief. She was slammed in the sand again by Foganholi when he reminded her that she has failed to be accountable to anyone or anything. He redirected the accountability to her.
Foganholi also brought out that while the Super has diversity on her Executive team, she only approves of them and their work if they were handpicked by her. Street Detective surmises that The Super has failed to embrace the talent of minorities that existed prior to her coming and only brought in diversity because she was criticized so harshly for not valuing diversity. So how did The Super respond to this criticism? She brought in Black and Brown people whose representation doesn’t matter because they won’t speak out on issues important to Black employees and students. They will support the Pinocchio lies of their boss to keep their well-paying jobs. Could Super Cartwright be deceiving the Board with these Black folk who are supposedly representing diversity all the while their loyalty has been bought and paid for?
Not so fast, Board Chair Torey Alston reminded others around the table that Cartwright made this dirty mess and it’s her job to clean it up. The Chief Facilities position has been open for more than a year and work for the Bond project is seriously behind as outlined in the Grand Jury report. When asked whether the Board should appoint a task assigned person, Board Chair Alston redirected accountability back to Super Cartwright stating she needed to be creative and get her job done.
The sand is getting wet and hard to tread, but the Detective will continue sleuthing through the sands to get to the bottom of this gritty sand pit of a mess.
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