The firing of Robert Metty, who raised questions about the Department of Education's handling of school vouchers, reveals a culture of suppression at the agency.
Published March 11, 2004
Ten months after he blew the whistle on irregularities at the state Department of Education, Robert Metty was quietly dismissed last Friday by a chancellor who offered a less-than-subtle commentary. "One thing I look for is when the talk around the water cooler matches the vision of the organization," K-12 chancellor Jim Warford told the Palm Beach Post, "I know we're doing a good job."
Translation: Dissent will get you fired.
Metty's tale is worth retelling, because it speaks to the palpable paranoia in an agency that brands virtually every critic as an enemy and every criticism as an attack. His firing is also worth legislative inquiry, because Metty raised well-founded questions about whether DOE was ignoring state laws governing private school vouchers. The same Legislature that is supposed to be writing voucher accountability measures this year might want to ask whether Metty's firing indicates the department is not interested in taking that job seriously.
Metty, a former school guidance counselor and an advocate of vouchers, was picked to oversee voucher programs. But he quickly found that his bosses really didn't want him to work too hard at it. When he questioned why the state had no master list for students and schools that were getting voucher dollars, much less a financial or educational accounting of the programs, he was told to drop his approach. Then, one day in April, he saw a colleague with a pair of scissors, cutting the time stamps off school voucher records that had been received by fax. The records were requested by a newspaper, the Post, and slicing off the date would allow DOE to lie about whether the records had previously existed.
Metty turned in his colleague and told the truth when asked by reporters about shoddy voucher record-keeping and oversight. He was at first transferred and then, once the news had passed, fired. It is hard to miss the fact that the colleague who was tampering with those public records, William Greiner, is still employed at DOE.
The firing might be easier to overlook if it weren't so illustrative of the agency's oppressive culture of political fealty. Education Commissioner Jim Horne, a former state senator, has run his office much like a political campaign, where staying on message often doesn't allow for facts that contradict. As it turns out, the message that Metty was trying to get to his bosses was that the voucher programs lacked any meaningful oversight. Had Horne been willing to listen, he might have spared his agency the embarrassment of the numerous criminal, administrative and legislative investigations that ultimately arrived at the same conclusion.
As lawmakers digest the results of those investigations, though, it is unclear whether Horne and Board of Education Chairman Phil Handy have learned much. Handy recently likened the problems to "hiccups" and complained to a Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce audience that "we're under attack." Presumably, the "attack" is being led by such education traitors as the state's chief financial officer, the state Senate, the Catholic Church, and the Florida Association of Academic Non-Public Schools - all of whom are calling for tougher regulatory standards for voucher schools.
Gov. Jeb Bush came to office proclaiming that "the best and brightest ideas do not come from the state capital," but his education bureaucrats now thank that only they know best. At the water cooler in the Turlington building, people are told when and how much to drink. Inside and outside the capital, those who dare to question are summarily dismissed. Just ask Robert Metty.
