The biggest story coming of out Pensacola this week is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s arrest of Bellview Elementary School Assistant Principal Laura Rose Carroll and her daughter Emily Rose Grover, a 17-year-old Tate High School student, for allegedly using Carroll’s access to the student data system to cast fraudulent votes that helped Grover win homecoming queen this fall.  Every major newspaper in the country, as well as People magazine, has shared the story.
I doubt former School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas would have ever called in FDLE to investigate the election fraud. He most likely would have done the investigation internally and buried the results. For all we know, others have hacked the database in the past for elections and grade tampering.
Kudos to Dr. Smith and his administration for calling in law enforcement.
Ms. Bursey, your comment on the two superintendent terms being mutually exclusive is valid in terms of the limits of their actual decision making capabilities.
But I read Rick’s comment through my own understanding/opinion that it was Malcolm Thomas’s longstanding practice of jealously guarding the open secret of his administration’s inability to handle serious matters–security, protocol, policy, discipline, law–through inner sanctum gag orders.
Which is, of course, exactly what set up a scenario where a student had been accessing sensitive information for years–are you kidding me?– through her administrator mother’s account, and finally landed on this bit of lunacy.
I’m sure it won’t be the last holdover from Thomas’s time. We can only hope that the worst that gets visited on any school from that is a rigged Homecoming crown. It would be nice if Thomas’s tenure had no impact on the current circumstances. Unfortunately, the two tenures are still yoked in some degree of mutual inclusivity, and will be for some time.
Your comment about what Superintendent Malcolm Thomas would have done was unnecessary as their decisions are mutually exclusive. Just complimenting the new superintendent for his action would have sufficed. .