New College board member floats leadership shakeup, 'terminating' all employee contracts

[Zorro]

Last edited Mon Jan 30, 2023, 12:38 PM - Edit history (1)

A new president, new board chair and new legal counsel all will be up for discussion Tuesday when the New College of Florida board meets, along with the possibility of ending faculty tenure, terminating all employee contracts and rehiring anyone who who fits into the school's "new financial and business model."

These are all ideas floated by new board member Eddie Speir in a recent Substack post. They could result in a big shakeup less than a month after Gov. Ron DeSantis reshaped New College's board in a bid to reinvent the 63-year-old Sarasota school.

Speir, a Christian school founder appointed by DeSantis to the board, wrote a Substack post over the weekend saying he wants to "Discuss need for new president and possible motion to give Pat Okker title of Interim President."

New College President Patricia Okker has been on the job for less than two years, but DeSantis' push to transform the school has led to speculation about her future at the college and that only increased when Tuesday's board agenda was released with "President Okker's Employment Agreement" as one of the discussion items.

The agenda also includes "Election of the Board Chair and Vice Chair" and "General Counsel to Board of Trustees." Speir appears to be a driving force behind some of these discussions.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/30/ron-desantis-appointees-to-new-college-board-could-shakeup-leadership/69853637007/

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune also will be terminating reader comments to their online articles in two days. Also from the article:

Speir has a long list of motions he plans to make at Tuesday's board meeting.

Among them is a proposal to identify "wokeness" as a "set of beliefs" akin to religion. He then wants to identify aspects of wokeness that are "shared values" worth preserving, that are "dogmatic" and should be excluded from curriculum and that are "pledges of fealty" that should be actively fought against.

"One such example of a pledge of fealty is the demand that woke pronouns are used," Speir writes.

Speir also wants to explore ending faculty tenure and "terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration and immediately rehiring those faculty, staff and administration who fit in the new financial and business model." He wants to board to send a letter to "the new counsel" seeking a legal opinion on the feasibility of such a plan.

Another motion Speir plans to introduce would remove some media members from the meeting.

"I move that we remove USA Today and its affiliates from the list of approved media outlets until an apology is received with a commitment from USA Today to adhere to its own policies," Speir writes, referencing Herald-Tribune parent company Gannett's flagship newspaper, USA Today.