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School superintendent Romano tells board she won't tolerate interference

 
Lori Romano says she will leave the district if she doesn’t have full support of the School Board.
Lori Romano says she will leave the district if she doesn’t have full support of the School Board.
Published Oct. 8, 2015

BROOKSVILLE — Hernando County school superintendent Lori Romano accused School Board member Susan Duval of micromanagement on Tuesday — and she was just getting started.

"I feel threatened by this," Romano told Duval during an informal board meeting, referring to an email Duval sent her last week. "The last sentence of this is, 'I'd like your thoughts,' and when you didn't get those thoughts, you went to the media."

"I think you are inciting," she concluded.

In the email, Duval had questioned the role of Sheriff's Office Sgt. Cinda Lillibridge, who has been working in the district's safety and security office since mid August.

Lillibridge started there just weeks after the board had rejected a plan to pay a Sheriff's Office lieutenant to run the department as part of the program that stations deputies in the district's high schools and middle schools.

"The board had seemed to be very clear about not having a deputy at safety and security," Duval wrote.

Romano used her response at the meeting to define what she considers the proper work boundaries between administrators and board members and suggested that she would not remain with the district if those boundaries are crossed.

"I told you I had devoted myself totally to this work and sacrificed my family, but I told you that I needed full board support," she said. "I cannot continue and go forward and function this way."

Duval was concerned, she wrote in the email, that Lillibridge's assignment was a "back-door maneuver" to get around the board's wishes. And if Lillibridge came to the district because new safety and security manager Bill Hall was not qualified, Duval wrote, "then we have even bigger problems to deal with."

Hall, previously the district's fire inspector, had been hired after the contract of his predecessor as manager, Mario Littman, was not renewed last summer.

Hall does not have a law enforcement background, but that is not required in the job description posted on the district's website.

"I don't even want to dignify this email with a response, quite frankly," Romano said at the meeting. But "for the record, Mr. Hall is qualified."

Sheriff Al Nienhuis had offered Lillibridge's services, he said last week, to help the district transition into the new school year in Littman's absence, and to update safety plans for the district's schools. His office also paid Lillibridge's $74,000-a-year salary for her time at the district, which is now coming to an end.

The move was "absolutely not" an attempt to get a foot in the door at the district, Nienhuis said.

The safety plans were so out of date, Romano said at Tuesday's meeting, that they still listed the school superintendent as Bryan Blavatt, who left the district more than two years ago. (Littman said the plans had been reviewed every year, and did not always need updating.)

Duval's questioning, Romano said, showed a lack of trust in her administration.

And, she said, "I don't like the assumption that we are always doing something wrong … the focus is always on a gotcha."

Duval said that she did not contact the media and that she had tried to speak to Romano before the meeting, but that Romano did not return a text. Also, she said, her questions were legitimate because of the board's clear direction about not wanting a Sheriff's Office employee at the safety and security office.

"This was not a gotcha," Duval said.

Contact Dan DeWitt at ddewitt@tampabay.com. Follow @ddewitttimes.