Lake Wales school superintendent's firing was unfair and unlawful, his attorney says
The firing of former Lake Wales Charter Schools Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich was unlawful, unfair and the termination process violated his employment contract, his attorney said at a hearing Thursday before the charter district's board.
But if the board is willing to change his termination to “without cause” and offer to pay Rodolfich a severance, any further actions by his client against the board would go away, attorney J. Kemp Brinson of Lakeland said.
Rodolfich was fired with cause on June 7 by the Lake Wales Charter School District board in a 5-1 vote after hearing privately at least some parts of an investigation into complaints that he had created a hostile work environment and racially discriminated against at least one employee.
Two other options were explained by Brinson. The board could leave his termination as "with cause" and negotiate a settlement. Or the board could go to court to defend a lawsuit over the matter.
“If we do not find a solution, we have no choices left to us but to file a lawsuit,” Brinson said.
“We are not going to say much at all about the allegations themselves, the substance of the investigation or the underlying concerns that went into it,” he said. “We will leave that for the courtroom if it comes to it."
In a video recording of the meeting, Rodolfich could be seen seated behind his attorney. He did not attend the board meeting in which he was let go.
The board members were given summaries of the interviews the investigator conducted, but no written report has been prepared nor the terms of his contract followed for a termination, Brinson said, calling the investigator professional.
Tampa-based attorney Terin Cremer of Barbas Cremer PLLC met individually with each board member the day before and the day of the firing to provide a verbal summary of the interviews she conducted with about 30 employees during her part of the investigation.
The board voted to fire Rodolfich with cause at a special meeting within hours of meeting with Cremer. Several said the allegations against him were substantiated once they heard those summaries.
The Ledger has requested the summaries from the charter school district’s attorney, Robin Gibson. He declined, citing an exemption to Florida's public-records laws that shields material from active investigations.
Reason for the hearing
The only board member who spoke at Thursday’s hearing was Chairman Danny Gill, who told his colleagues the purpose of the hearing was to hear from Rodolfich’s attorney. He urged them to be respectful and courteous and not engage in gossip and speculation regarding the situation.
“This matter has affected many people in various ways, and we should always strive to be sensitive to others,” he said. “Gossip and speculation regarding the situation doesn't help this community heal. And only creates more of a division. The board is handling this matter based on pure facts and not emotions.“
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He also cited a section within Rodolfich’s contact saying he was entitled to a hearing within 20 days after receiving the written charges against him.
“Any comments today will be handled by our attorney,” Gill said. He added, “Please do not take the lack of Board response today as affirmation or confirmation of any statements made.”
He recapped the board actions prior to and on June 7 and then read the reason for the termination with cause.
“And as required by section 6B of the agreement, the Board decided to terminate for cause for the following reasons set forth in section 110.227, sub one Florida statute,” he said. “(A) violation of the provisions of law or agency rules (B) conduct unbecoming of a public employee and (C) misconduct.”
Was the contract process followed?
Brinson said that this was “an unusual situation.” After watching videos of the board meeting, he said, he “was struck by the number of times one of you asked, well, do we have a policy on this? Is there a procedure for this? And the answer was, no, we just have to figure it out.”
He also acknowledged the board was likely not to respond to his presentation at the hearing because “wise attorneys” usually tell their clients it is best not to say too much.
Still he said, “There is still a possibility of an amicable path forward.” He added, “We're here today just to talk in good faith, to try to reach a resolution.”
He said there are very specific circumstances when the superintendent cannot get severance pay when terminated with cause under the contract and even those are not very clear.
“In addition to the legal obligations imposed by the contract, there are also certain obligations imposed by Florida sunshine statutes that require you to do your business with transparency and in the open and not behind closed doors,” he said.
The process should give Rodolfich an opportunity to respond to the allegations. While Rodolfich was interviewed by the investigator, Brinson said he was concerned his client was not given an opportunity to respond.
“You probably believe that he was clearly confronted with the allegations and the evidence against him,” Brinson said. “That he had a chance to provide a thorough and detailed response to those allegations.
“That is not how these investigations work,” he said. “That is not how this investigation worked. I am not in any way casting aspersions on the investigator."
He added that Rodolfich never got “to see the complaint. There was no information that flowed from the investigator to Dr. Radovich. There were only questions asked and answers given.”
“You don't get to find out what the allegations were," Brinson said. “You don't get to review and respond to the evidence. You're simply asked questions and you're required to answer them. It's more like a deposition or an interrogation or a police interview than it is an opportunity to be heard such as the one that you probably believe he was afforded.”
"We can guess what some of those concerns are, what some of the allegations were, based on the questions,” he added.
“I am only saying that I think that you have a conclusion about what that process looked like that is not true,” he said. “So as we sit here today. We have still not seen the allegations. We know via rumor, via what some of the questions were, via some verbal summaries, what some of them probably are. We have not seen the evidence. We have not seen the findings.”
Brinson said he had spoken with Cremer to also hear the summaries shared with the board. He also said the one-on-one meetings between the board and the investigators were conducted “outside of the sunshine.”
“I am not casting aspersions on her,” he said. “The purpose of those conversations was to help facilitate whether some sort of amicable separation could be possible, and we approached it in that spirit, not in the spirit of learning what the allegations were so that we could fight against them.”
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He also said he understood that the board was under no obligation to negotiate after hearing the allegations privately.
“But what happened next ... was you took the next step,” he said. “You did not wait for the investigation to be completed, did not wait for the report to be finalized.
“You did not treat him fairly like you said was your intent when you initiated the investigation,” he said. “You jumped immediately to a termination decision, and you did that without the findings of the investigation being made a matter of record in the sunshine.
“You did that without any substantive discussion of the findings on the record at a public meeting,” Brinson said.
“Your council then sent a notice to us of the termination that is required under the contract,” he said. “In that notice, there is not a single fact. There is not a single charge explaining what it is that he did wrong.”
“This was not the process that the law requires,” he said. “And this is not the process that government in the sunshine requires. And this is definitely not a process that was fair to Dr. Rodolfich, and it's not the process you envisioned when you hired the investigator.”
Brinson said the process has damaged the reputation of Rodolfich.
“Rumor and gossip about what the allegations were, which have not been made public, in which, even I've never seen. Rumor and gossip about what the findings were. Rumor that he's a racist. Dr. Rodolfich is a passionate antiracist,” he said, both in Lake Wales and his home state of Mississippi.
Brinson said Rodolfich would have wanted to solve concerns his employees had about bias.
He said the board had backed Rodolfich "into a corner" and left them no choice but to sue.
“It's going to be a long battle," he said. "It's going to be ugly, it's going to be expensive. It is going to be a distraction, which we've said today already we do not want.
“You, however, have other options,” he said. “Make the termination a termination without cause and pay him the severance promised to him under the contract. If you do that, this is over today.“
Next steps
After Brinson’s presentation, Gibson said told the board that, unless they wanted otherwise, he would continue negotiations with Brinson. He urged any board member to speak with him privately should they have questions about the matter.
Gill then told the board the matter would be on the agenda for the July 22 meeting and ended the hearing.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lawyer for former Lake Wales school superintendent threatens to sue
