With two members facing allegations of inappropriate touching, the Broward County School Board on Tuesday decided not to hire an outside investigator to look into the incidents.
The two board members are Dr. Allen Zeman and Brenda Fam. School board counsel Marylin Batista described the incidents at Tuesday’s board meeting, starting with the accusation against Zeman.
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WATCH HERE“A board member witnessed another board member slap an employee on the buttocks,” Batista said. “The next day that board member asked the employee if he was OK and if he would like to report it, the employee stated that he did not take it any sort of way and he had no interest in making a report or for anyone to make a report on his behalf.”
The allegation against Brenda Fam, who was not at the school board meeting Tuesday, involved a high school student.
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“The student had informed an employee that he, the student, had been touched on the behind by a board member on March 27th and that the student was embarrassed by the incident,” Batista said.
The public comments were almost uniformly against hiring an outside investigator, and the deal seemed to be sealed when Batista said, “Neither one of these two matters has a formal complaint, there are no complaints from alleged victims."
The board then voted to leave the issues up to the state ethics commission and decided not to spend money on an investigation.
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“We’ll hear from the ethics commission about what they think, I think they’ll come back quick with a vindication in my case and we’ll move on,” Zeman said after the meeting.
Zeman had recused himself from the board’s discussion and the vote but spoke to NBC6 afterward.
“What did I do? I walked behind a colleague, I meant to slap him on the back and I hit a little too low, and it was a colleague I’d known for a long time, it was not my shining moment, to be honest with you, I wish I hadn’t done it,” Zemand said.
He was asked if he felt embarrassed.
“I’m embarrassed by the attention, to be honest with you,” he said.
Voting for a motion by board member Torey Alston, the board decided to make all of its members take cultural sensitivity and sexual harassment training, and directed the superintendent to come up with a policy for future incidents.
“If something comes up, how do we handle that issue? What channels do we go through? And this is what the board, in policy will put in place to basically govern ourselves,” said board chair Lori Alhadeff.
