FLEMING ISLAND – The Clay County School Board postponed voting on a revised anti-fraud policy, which was intended to protect whistleblowers, at its meeting last Thursday night, citing concerns over the revised language.

“Any employee who reports actual or suspected fraud or any other illegal conduct in good faith shall not be subject to retaliation,” the revised language read.

“Any employee who feels he or she is the subject of any such whistleblower retaliation may file a complaint with the Superintendent, the Florida Chief Inspector General or any other appropriate state agency.”

The new language defined the superintendent as the “agency chief inspector” unless the suspected fraud involves the superintendent or a school board member.

The policy revisions are a response to an investigation into allegations that several principals, staff members and former Superintendent Charles Van Zant Jr. deliberately mislabeled students as disabled to increase graduation rates. The Florida Association of District School Superintendents, a lobbying organization, conducted that probe after the allegations were made public August 4, 2016.

Board Chairwoman Janice Kerekes, a political rival of Van Zant’s, argued last month that the original investigation could be viewed as a conflict of interest. She and Vice Chair Carol Studdard pointed out that the inquiry may also have been incomplete, because they had heard of people with information who hadn’t been interviewed but were afraid to come forward out of fear of retaliation.

However, Renna Lee Paiva, president of the Clay County Education Association, said at the Jan. 5 meeting that she found the revised language confusing. She added that she had heard varying opinions on whether the language was legally adequate.

“I agree with Ms. Paiva that it’s not in the right format,” Kerekes said of the revised policy. “I think we should look at it some more and bring it back in a better format. I would like to strike it (from the agenda). We really should get it right.”

The board unanimously voted to table the item. No date was set to revisit the issue.

Kerekes drafted a letter to Florida’s Inspector General last month requesting a review of the original investigation and – if the Inspector General found the original inquiry to be insufficient or biased – a new independent investigation would be conducted. The board, despite some misgivings by board members Ashley Gilhousen and Betsy Condon, had previously approved 5-0 sending such a letter.

Clay Today made a public records request to Clay County School District for the letter to the Inspector General, but was denied based on an “ongoing investigation.” However, the original investigation concluded last year.

In other business, the board laid out its legislative priorities for 2017 in advance of the Florida Legislature convening its regular session March 7. Clay County's priorities this year include three main bullet points:

–Revise Florida statutes and related State Board of Education rules regarding third grade promotion and retention to provide clearly defined alternative pathways for student promotion and retention with a more balanced approach that considers both assessment results and local evidence of student performance; ensure that the final decision on student promotion and retention is made at the local level; ensure that student promotion or retention is not dependent upon, or denied by, a single assessment result.

–Restore and support the authority of the school district to levy, by simple majority vote, up to 2.0 mills for capital outlay purposes and maintain the current authority of school districts to determine the use of local capital outlay millage revenue.

–Provide sufficient per-student funding to place Florida in the upper quartile nationally.

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Email Christiaan DeFranco at chris@opcfla.com. Follow him on Twitter @cdefranco.