The new Broward County School Board construction chief has a nickname for Mark Dorsett, a manager in the district's maintenance department.
Deputy Superintendent Thomas Lindner calls Dorsett "Want Ad."
Why? Because Dorsett has so many relatives working at the School Board. One relative, his brother Philip, also works in the maintenance department with him. Then there's his wife, Barbara, who works in the board's equal employment division. Another brother, Anthony, is an assistant principal at Hallandale High School. Then you have other Dorsetts scattered throughout the board, all of them related:
-- Ashanda Dorsett, a teacher at Orangebrook Elementary
-- Dencil Dorsett, maintenance department
-- Denise Dorsett, teacher at Sunland Park Elementary
-- Leslie Dorsett, teacher at Miramar High
-- Kathy Dorsett, teacher at Gulfstream
Now that's a whole lot of Dorsetts. It's fairly reminiscent of the case of Lucille Green, who oversees the district's bus system. The patriarch of the Dorsett family is Thomas Dorsett, who retired as a School Board carpenter and is now a commissioner in West Park. Dorsett said he got his job at the School Board after
his son Mark got a job there. And he's not too fond of Lindner's nickname for his son.
"My whole family from my father on down has been in education," the commissioner told me. "He was a principal in the Bahamas, and he advised us as we were growing up that we should get into education. I don't know if there's any wrongdoing, but I think you need to be qualified for the jobs. If they aren't qualified, there is wrongdoing. I'm 100 percent sure that [my relatives] are qualified for their jobs."
The Dorsetts also have a high-ranking friend in Broward County School Board Chief Operating Officer Donnie Carter, who attended church for years with Thomas Dorsett.
I'm going to share more cases of large family ties at the School Board soon. At least the Dorsetts are spread out through the district (except for the trio in the maintenance department), and there is no indication of wrongdoing. Is Lindner's nickname for Mark Dorsett fair? Thomas Dorsett doesn't think so, but others wonder if real want ads are handled fairly when family members and insiders are involved.
-- Riviera Beach activist Fane Lozman, who you'll recall had his home seized and auctioned off to his own city by the feds, is trying his hand at muckraking.
And he's teeing off on another state attorney, Michael McAuliffe of Palm Beach County. Lozman writes in the Palm Beach Sun that McAuliffe is shirking his duty to clean up Riviera Beach, which, I can attest, is a pit of corruption to rival anything you'll find in Broward County (which is saying a lot). The piece gets a little self-referential when he complains about a lack of an arrest of two officers who manhandled Lozman at a City Commission meeting (I'm not sure an arrest is warranted in that case), but it brings up an interesting case involving the city's tiki hut and a provocative take on the politics involving race. Click here to read it. Below is the editorial cartoon that goes along with it:
