Why the Rush to Replace Patton Middle School?

Frustrated by the lack of response by the UCFSD School Board, more than 100 UCFSD residents submitted a detailed, 11-page Complaint under Board Policy 906 on February 18, 2025 (attached) Nearly two months later, the Board finally responded. Unfortunately, the Board’s response (also attached) provided nothing new, and displayed the usual combination of arm-waving, irrelevancies, misleading statements, and outright untruths. A local resident analyzed the Board’s response, point-by-point and found nearly every one of them to be inaccurate or misleading. His analysis, which he shared with the Board in late April, is attached.

Two of the most important requests in the Complaint were for (1) a public hearing and (2) an evaluation of the Middle School project by an independent third-party expert.  These were rejected out of hand.  

We really don’t want to engage with the public…

The Board did not respond to the request for a public hearing by the one-hundred-plus complainants.  Clearly, they do not want to engage and interact in real time. As with the 3-minute public comment period at School Board meetings, the Board avoids interacting with the public by not providing direct responses to questions and issues. Instead, it prefers to pick and choose what is addressed to avoid difficult issues.  No follow-ups are permitted, and there is no opportunity for back-and-forth dialogue that might lead to shared understanding. The School Board’s oft-proclaimed desire to engage with the public is a fantasy.

Not surprisingly, soon after the taxpayer complaint was submitted, the Board revised Policy 906 to eliminate the provision for a public hearing, confirming that they really, really don’t want to interact, ever.

And, we sure don’t want anyone knowledgeable to complete an independent analysis.

With respect to the independent analysis, the School Board stated that the District is prohibited by SEC rules from seeking financial advice from anyone other than Municipal Advisory Firms. This is not true. The SEC rules apply only to financing (bond issuance), not to financial and project analysis. The financial analysis of the Patton project is sorely lacking, and the District is not acting in good faith when it says it is prohibited from seeking outside expertise. No doubt, the Board and Administration recognized that a competent and objective analysis would expose that their pet project to build a brand-new middle school makes no financial sense.

The Superintendent confirms his dishonesty.

The Complaint noted that Superintendent John Sanville and other UCFSD officials were under investigation for violating numerous State and Federal laws (story here) and questioned whether they could be trusted for a fair and honest evaluation of the CFPMS project. In its response, the School Board assured the one-hundred-plus complainants that Sanville “is of the highest moral character and behavior.” To reinforce this, the District later mailed the Complainants a letter from John Sanville announcing that all these complaints “have been dismissed after thorough review.”

But the Sanville letter was a complete fabrication (story here). Ironically, it proved the point that he cannot be trusted. Multiple complaints before government agencies remain outstanding. They have not all been dismissed, and no complaint has “received thorough review.” Sanville, the School District, and other officials remain significantly exposed to penalties for numerous violations of law. The District’s response only reinforces the suspicions about Sanville’s veracity with respect to the CFPMS project.  

One can only hope that the new Superintendent will not engage in such perfidious behavior.