Sunday, September 27, 2009

Immediately after President Jill Landesberg-Boyle gave her speech to the Florida Keys Community College board of trustees last Monday -- that is, her "I do not wish to contribute in any way to any continuing unhappiness" speech ("I would not characterize it as a resignation," said the board's attorney) -- we walked up to her, embraced her in condolence and whispered in her ear: "So it's agreeable on both sides, then, is it?"

She reared back. "I was screwed!" she said.

An inimitable response from a president, now terminally on sabbatical (a year in which to "refrain from tillage," in Hebrew law) that comes after three rocky years as the board's choice to lead FKCC into the future.

She blames the board for undermining her and she inferred as much in Monday's speech, although one had to listen for it. And when one heard it, undercutting would seem the more appropriate word.

"In the summer of '06," began Landesberg-Boyle, "the board set out to find a new president." The person they chose, she admitted, was "young, inexperienced and learning." It wasn't long before she was visited by "legislators, pillars of the community, to tell me their ideas of how the institution should be run. Much of it was positive. Some of it had a different agenda." (That could be a reference to Rep. Ron Saunders.)

It wasn't long, she said, before these visitations devolved into anonymous e-mails, blog notes and rumors spreading "up and down the Keys like wildfire." There was talk that she was "crazy, bipolar, unstable and paranoid."

It was particularly hurtful, she said, to be described as "abusive" and compared to Hitler. Meanwhile, elsewhere on campus, with all of the acrimony still blazing away, "extraordinary people were making impressive gains with incredible promise for an even brighter future tomorrow."

She learned from the experience that "the position of president is seen to have a great deal of power that you yourself may not recognize." It was a lesson she claims her son Josh, a Spider-Man fan, has already learned at the age of 8. "With great power comes great responsibility," says Spidey.

But the board itself has become a parallel problem to the flack she gets hit with at every point in her learning curve. "The trustees should be about policy, not administration," she said. "I respectfully urge the trustees to continue our monthly mediation meetings and to follow up on internal grievances."

After the speech we spoke with Justin Kawaler, a benefactor to the college responsible for donating $400,000 during Landesberg-Boyle's term as president. He had trouble, he told us, finding the right word for what the board of trustees was permitting the president to undergo. Inquisition was one way of putting it. Witch hunt was another. Kangaroo court another.

Kawaler had his own speech prepared for Monday night's board gathering in the lobby of the Tennessee Williams Theatre. It was preempted when Landesberg-Boyle turned the podium around so she could announce her departure to the crowd.According to his notes, here is what Kawaler would have said: "You as a board are assumed to act only in the interest of the organization that you are serving. You individually, and as a board, must act without regard to your personal agendas or because of outside pressure ... I ask you, when did this board schedule a public meeting such as this to hear her rebuttal? When was she given a chance in public to confront directly her accusers individually?"

Spencer Slate, it must be said, as chair of the board of trustees was not prepared to steam roll, undercut or screw anyone on Monday evening. Sticking to a sports analogy, he spoke his truth: "We were destined for the Super Bowl. We needed a quarterback. We needed change and a lot of practice work to win. But the team has crumbled after tonight. Maybe we're destined to be losers ... We have to decide if we coach like this from now on. I hope not. The owners -- the taxpayers -- and the fans -- the students -- are in total support of our quarterback. Winning takes teamwork. Dr. Boyle could have done that ... with our help."

Slate's words did not express the mood of the board as a whole, determined to play the board game as an end game. "I like the sports analogy," said board member Kim Bassett, "but a team is more than a quarterback." Ed Scales fell to infantilism, the urge to inflate by scaling down. "We're a little college at the end of a long string of islands ... I would ask that we unite around our little school and make it the best in Florida and the country." New board member and psychologist Dr. Antoinette Martin invoked the direst of scenarios: "A divided college is like a custody battle," she ventured. "Can the parents put aside their feelings in the best interest of the child?"

This family analogy, it being such a tiny island, is quite appropriate. The FKCC board has sufficient links to family interests outside the college -- and inside the college -- to ensure that any custody battle would rip the baby apart. The only dramatis personae to survive such a killing field are immutably mysterious individuals like Lydia Estenoz and Jim Hendrick, whose motives and maneuvers cannot be divined and who remain unscathed while every other character, including ourselves, the white-toga'd chorus, is bloodied.

Slate's point, that the owners and the fans can be in full support of a team while a board can go ahead and kneecap the quarterback, has been heard here so many times before. So many newly birthed institutions in the city and county, public and private, have gone through an eventual reconstitution or outright ejection of a charismatic founder. That's the name of the game.

But whether, as an outcome of that perceived power, a board has the right to treat its seats as plums to be offered to friends or benefactors is another kind of game, not managerial or even political but an ethical one.

Three times the phrase "put down our swords" was bandied about by the board after Landesberg-Boyle's speech. Yet it was Landesberg-Boyle who fell upon her sword.

Over at the board of trustees of the Monroe County School District, the same question still pulses in the air, invisibly. Solares Hill once put the question to school-board chair Andy Griffith, by phone, but never received a reply.

When is the school board going to fall on its sword?

Like the board of trustees at the community college, the school district's primary responsibility is fiduciary -- that which is held in trust. Its responsibility is not to help administer, as Landesberg-Boyle pointed out, although that will be its greatest temptation in a time of change.

To put the interest of the organization one serves first means to protect and conserve its assets and resources, not to yell "Fire!" when a situation has long since gotten out of control. Such is not simply a preference for board behavior. It is the rule.

So who falls on his or her sword for breaking it?

Good question ... except here in the Keys, where an answer is not obvious and the precedence picture looks pretty much appalling.

God speed, Dr. Boyle.

mhowell@keysnews.com