Jeb's Boy
Frank Brogan, Bush's man in academia, must defuse the FAU scandals. But where is he?
In 1988, just 11 years after his first day as a teacher, Martin County voters elected him superintendent. He retained his job in 1992 when no one ran against him. "I have lots of opposition," he joked. "It's just that nobody filed against me."
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Elected as a product of the classroom, Brogan quickly set himself apart from his former coworkers. While students would achieve test scores that topped the state during Brogan's reign, Martin County teachers' salaries fell compared to other counties. A representative for the Martin County teachers' union, would comment only if her name was not used. (She cited the connection between school teachers and Florida Atlantic's education training program.) "The joke around here," she says, "was that Frank Brogan was good at nothing but being a politician."
No school district in the state paid teachers less than Martin County when Florida voters elected Brogan Florida's education commissioner in 1995. And things didn't improve. In his statewide post, Brogan challenged the most coveted facet of the teaching profession: tenure. Sparring with the unions, Brogan settled for rules that made it easier for school districts to dismiss incompetent teachers, instead of doing away with rules that protected all veterans from being fired.
Similarly, Brogan instituted a statewide test that was a model for the FCAT, a program widely despised by teachers, who say such measures of student progress make their teaching overwhelmingly test driven. Brogan also began singling out deficient schools, which helped lead to Bush's ABC plan. It was another policy that quickly aroused the ire of educators, who complained that it served to condemn some schools to failure.
Still, supporters called his changes revolutionary and lauded his increased graduation standards. In 1998, Bush picked Brogan as his running mate in his bid for governor. Brogan used his new job in Tallahassee to aid his alma mater, and future employer, by helping to secure $22 million for Florida Atlantic's expansion projects.
Before Brogan's move to the Florida Atlantic presidency, some political pundits picked him as the next Republican gubernatorial candidate, in 2006, after Bush finishes his final term. Depending upon whom you ask, his move to Florida Atlantic may have helped that cause or ended it.
By leaving behind Bush during the lean years to come, with projected deficits and a struggle to pay for smaller class sizes, Brogan avoids the worst of times, says Matthew Corrigan, a political science professor at the University of North Florida. But Brogan may be jeopardizing his political career by losing name recognition. "Will voters remember his name?" Corrigan asks. "That's something I'm sure he's asked himself."
Dodging a bullet isn't Brogan's style, says Chris Dudlan, a political consultant with Southern Strategy Group in Tallahassee and Brogan's deputy chief of staff during his years as education commissioner. "I don't think he's got any political motivation at all," Dudlan says, repeating an opinion by many who have known him. "What he does, he doesn't do for politics."
Brogan repeatedly has said he doesn't see his new job as a stepping stone to the governor's office or to a run for the U.S. Senate. On his first day in office at FAU, he blinked rarely and cracked a smile while offering syrupy assurances that he would remain at the school. "I'm honestly sincere when I say how humbled I am and how dedicated I am to this job," he says.
His first order of business as a college president will be a monumental test. His challenge will be to defuse what's quickly becoming a major financial scandal.
Velvet ropes hang over the two stone stairways that wind up to the second floor of the Eleanor R. Baldwin House, the brand-new presidential palace on the Florida Atlantic campus. Carla Coleman, who's in charge of the FAU Foundation, stops just shy of the stairwells during a February 12 tour for New Times. "Here are the rules," she says firmly, her face puckered in seriousness. "No one has been allowed upstairs, so no pictures."
Coleman passes the stairways, through the reception hall currently set for an afternoon tea, and down a back hallway to an elevator that smells like a new Buick. The elevator opens onto the second half of this 14,000-square-foot mansion. There are four bedrooms on the second floor, with an open walkway between them overlooking the reception hall and its new chandeliers, which are worth $49,000. From the front windows, the mansion overlooks the east side of the Boca Raton campus, with its sterile, white, blocky buildings. The master suite, with wood and stone floors and the feel of a pricey condominium, will be Brogan's home when he stops commuting from his house in Tallahassee this summer.
Coleman explains that Brogan will not only make this his home but will also be expected to open it up for university functions. The foundation head walks through the three walk-in closets off the master suite that together would make a good-sized bedroom. "You need this because there's lots of black tie events in this town," she says.
It isn't until the end of the tour, as she stands next to the $17,000 marble and onyx mosaic of the university seal in the foyer, that Coleman addresses the palace's price tag. Under Coleman's direction, the university spent $3 million to build Baldwin House last year, at a time when tuition was rising for graduate and out-of-state students by as much as 10 percent per year and the university was canceling classes due to state budget cutbacks. This symbol of opulence, with a Turkish-style spire on top, has become a symbol of student discontent over tuition increases. At Florida Atlantic, in-state students pay $92 a credit, $10 more than University of Florida. To compensate, Florida Atlantic has the state's lowest minimum test scores for scholarships, giving money to students with SAT scores of 970. Meanwhile, U.S. News & World Report's rankings of colleges puts Florida Atlantic in the fourth-tier of schools that offer doctorates.
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