Key West The Newspaper

Kathy:

Congratulations! I understand that Thursday, February 26, 2015 will be the 5th anniversary of your suit against the Monroe County School District for wrongful termination. For many, it is a timely reminder of what you did and the importance thereof. For others, it is an opportunity to inform the new and uninitiated about the significance of standing up for what you believe.

They say that justice delayed is justice denied and a good argument can be made for that. Fortunately for you, you engaged the services of a quality attorney who has stood by you this last five years and continues to keep your case alive and before the courts. The lassitude of the Monroe County courts has unfortunately caused your case to languish unneccesarily and we all look forward to its revival.

People forget that it was you who stood up and blew the whistle on Randy Acevedo, his wife Monique and the general assortment of financial irregularities in the School District. Monique remains in jail for her transgressions, though Randy was removed from office and has served his probation. You have done an admirable job in rebuilding your life after the School District “rewarded” you by firing you for going public with what you knew about financial mismanagement. Instead of protecting you as a “whistleblower” as required by law, the School Board was so anxious to put the Acevedo affair in its rearview mirror that it dragged you into the morass as well.

I am pleased that you did not allow the School Board to run roughshod over you and that you stood up for your rights. It is obvious that the Board’s strategy is delay, delay and more delay. Tragically, the court system has played into that strategy and it has taken tremendous courage on your part not to say “enough”. If the District believed that it had a winning case, one would think that it would be anxious to have its day in court and get the matter behind them. That, of course, would be the most economical effort as well.

The only advantage to the District’s strategy of delay is that, with each passing day, the amount owed to you in back pay and interest grows. Superintendent Porter claims that he is concerned about the few hundred dollars in legal costs to blunt Stuart Kessler, while he has no problem spending thousands, tens of thousands, to engage in a protracted battle with you, and a losing battle at that.

Again, congratulations on your tenacity and perseverance in the face of tremendous adversity.

Larry