Mentor: Malcolm Thomas
I interviewed Superintendent Tim Smith yesterday and asked if he felt his predecessor, Malcolm Thomas, was undermining his leadership.
- “No, he was a mentor to me, and I’m really grateful for him,” Smith replied. “I could pick up the phone anytime and call him.”
- “And we’ve had a number of conversations, and I can tell you I’ve had some really perplexing situations and he has helped me get through those and just shared with me, ‘Hey, here’s something to think about.’ I really appreciate him doing that.”
Why this matters: There has been a persistent rumor that Thomas has pushed School Board members to get rid of Smith and replace him with Assistant Superintendent Keith Leonard.
Dig Deeper:
Smith: “I think (Thomas) has a passion for education, and I’m very confident that he wanted me to be successful.”
- “Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to talk to – it could be something about, ‘Hey, I got this tricky weather situation coming up.’ And he would say, ‘Well, here’s how we handled it on this situation.’ And he was just a really very helpful resource to me.”
Replacement: Payne vs. Leonard
Superintendent Smith refused to weigh in on whether Deputy Superintendent Shenna Payne would be a better choice for interim superintendent than Leonard.
Why this matters: There is movement in the community to ask the school board to reconsider its choice for interim at its meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 30.
- Smith: “I don’t know what the board’s going to do with that – if they’re going to revisit that and if they’ve had time to pause and say, ‘Well, did we just rush this? And did we not think about the deputy?'”
Dig Deeper:
On Shenna Payne:
“Fantastic. She is a dynamic educator. She’s a leader. She has worked so hard in her role of deputy, and she had some big shoes to fill because Norm Ross was a legend.”
- “Sheena Payne is an incredibly talented and impressive individual, and she cares about kids. She has a strength about her. She’s an excellent decision-maker.”
“She and I have worked side by side, and I am so thankful for Sheena Payne. She’s so reliable and loyal, and she has such a good heart.”
- “She is an outstanding individual, educator and leader. I’ve been very blessed to have her as my deputy.”
On Keith Leonard:
“Keith is a quality individual, and Keith has done a stellar job running our HR department.”
- “Keith is a loyal, reliable, strong leader. I couldn’t ask anything more from our assistant superintendent over human resources than what Keith has done.”
“So I think very highly of both of them.”
The full interview with Dr. Smith will be in Inweekly’s June 1 issue.
Weekly Presser
Mayor D.C. Reeves held his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
-Highlights-
Day Marina
The Pensacola Bay Pier – at the Maritime Park – will open at 6 a.m. on Thursday, May 25, and will stay open until 10 p.m. daily. The city will hold its official ribbon-cutting for the day marina at 3 p.m.
- “There cannot be any overnight,” Mayor Reeves said. “That’s not a policy that we have or even the Fish and Wildlife have, that’s an Army Corps Engineers permitting situation.”
Blake Doyle Skatepark
The mayor expects the closing time for the skatepark to be moved to 10 p.m. but won’t announce it officially until city staff has worked out all the details on how to enforce it.
- “We continue to have the intention of entertaining a potential third-party operator to come in,” said the mayor. “I believe it not only will enhance the experience of using the skatepark, but also it’s for it to be more inclusive for more kids that may not that want to get into skateboarding right now.”
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- “It’s an amazing park, and, of course, we’ve been getting nothing but positive feedback from the skateboarding community on the facility itself.”
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Homelessness
The mayor said city and county staff are meeting with the Continuum of Care (CoC) – the collective run by Opening Doors of Northwest Florida that coordinates services for the homeless – to determine how it will be organized going forward.
- “I’m interested to see what comes out of that,” Reeves said. “If the technical experts from the city, county and CoC in the room can come up with a viable solution, I’m ready to go. We have ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars that are set aside for homeless reduction as well $375,000 for Lotus campaign that they told wasn’t going to work here.”
Malcolm Yonge Gym
Mayor Reeves said, “We met the leadership at Lighthouse Christian, and they were in agreement that moving forward with a $40,000+ feasibility study to just find out what it would cost to fix it is probably not the best plan of action.”
- The Parks and Rec department is working directly with Lighthouse about honoring the lease to see if reasonable access could be provided to other facilities.
The city staff has not decided what to do with the property. The building will most likely be demolished before it would be sold to anyone, according to the mayor.
On Top
Pensacola Blue Wahoos continue to have the best record in the Southern League, 26-14, after their home series with the Tennessee Smokies.
Why this matters: The winner of each division qualifies for the year-end playoffs, and the Blue Wahoos are the defending Southern League champion.
Dig Deeper: The team sets atop the South Division with a five-game lead over the Beau Rivage Shuckers, winning seven of their last 10 games.
- Next up: Mississippi Braves in Jackson. Last night, the Blue Wahoos stole a season-high five bases, including their first steal of home since 2018, as they started their 12-game road trip with a 7-1 win over the Mississippi Braves.
Deputy Superintendent vs. Good Ol’ Boy as Acting Superintendent (Background Music – Theme from Dukes of Hazard): Yesterday there was a public forum at the Greater True Vine Baptist Church. Board members David Williams and Patty Hightower were there. WEAR TV 3 reporter Yona Gavino interviewed Hightower. (Pretty sure that Gavino has never read the school board’s policy manual or she would have called out Hightower.) Gavino writes, “Hightower wanted to clear up concerns, and confusion, over why Payne was passed over as interim.” Hightower responded (it was on the television): “‘It’s in the policy that if the superintendent becomes incapacitated, or has a long visit in the hospital, that the deputy takes over in that case,” Hightower said. “But when a superintendent leaves, whether they’re terminated or leave on their own, it says in policy that the board will appoint an interim.'” The first sentence is true. The second is not. The policy manual’s Section 1.24.3A. Recruitment and Selection says nothing about requiring that the board appoint an “interim” Superintendent mindful that when you read Section 1.24 in its entirety the only reasonable way to read it is that the Deputy Superintendent becomes the Acting Superintendent until a new Superintendent is hired. Section 1.24.3.A. describes a very deliberate and detailed process. Someone should ask the Department of Education why school districts have Deputy Superintendents if they’re not really the #2 person. Eager to see if Malcolm Thomas comes out openly against the Fetsko/Adams move.