April Griffin’s Campaign is as perplexing as her deposition

Anyone can go to the Supervisor of Elections and look up their local candidates. Here is a link to it. When you get there note that April Griffin is first shown running for County Commissioner District 7. In fact it shows that she collected $19,860 in contributions before she changed her mind and decided to try to ‘keep her day job’ as a school board member.

So then you scroll down to the School Board Member District 6 campaign and there she is again but with zero campaign contributions shown. Could she still be debating pulling from this campaign also? It must have been difficult returning that $19,860 when she bailed out of the County Commissioner District 7 campaign. Perhaps she is hedging her bet of doing the same thing again here. Decisiveness and commitment do not appear to be her strong suit but something sorely needed at the school board.

It may have been during her Deposition in the Herrera lawsuit that she had an epiphany and realized that she was actually supposed to be doing more than allowing Superintendent Elia to spoon feed information to her and the other school board members like a bunch of hapless septuplets.

You can read April Griffin’s deposition here. These depositions are a treasure trove of information. A behind the scenes look and how completely dysfunctional your school board.

Pay particular attention to Page 17 where April describes how virtually all information the board receives is filtered through Superintendent Elia.

April: We hire our superintendent and our attorney. And the superintendent hires the employees. And they report directly to her. And then she reports to the board.

Note that the date of this deposition is October 29, 2013 AND Superintendent “MaMa” Ellen Elia is present at April Griffin’s deposition (top of Page 5). You can’t help but wonder if this is intended to intimidate April like a domineering parent might glare at their child to silently remind them to sit up straight and act right.

Of course the School Board General Counsel Tom Gonzalez is also present.

Recall that only 2 and a half months earlier on July 16, 2013 an open mic at a school board meeting revealed both Elia and Tom Gonzalez making what many would consider hostile comments about April Griffin and yet here they both are at April Griffin’s deposition quietly watching as April gives her testimony. Many would think this is completely unacceptable

Worst still is that the school board attorney Jim Porter is NOT present, although he is mentioned on page 21.

Also pay particular attention to the bottom of page 21 where April describes the role of the new school board attorney as “Just help us in our board meetings and meet with us individually as needed to give us advice on issues that we want to have advice on.” and “…work with Mr. Gonzalez as our general counsel.” Mr. Gonzales is still the general counsel for BOTH the Superintendent AND the School Board according to April. Now how would that work if there was a conflict of interest between the Superintendent AND the school board, such as if a student died on a bus and-hypothetically- one party did not want it known and one party did want to know?

Just across the pond, Pinellas County schools have separate attorneys for the school Board and the Superintendent to prevent conflicts of interest.

 After what happened you would think that even April Griffin would realize what a problem this representation could be, but apparently not. It is still business as usual and April Griffin expects you to re-elect her to this dysfunctional school board- but it is time for a change!