Part 1: $600,000 for a student's death

This is the first in a series of articles covering the people and events that led to the death of Hillsborough County Public Schools’ student Jenny Caballero in October of 2012.

On Tuesday $600,000 deriving from your county tax dollars will be re-appropriated to pay the Caballero family for the drowning death of their daughter in October 2012 at Rodgers middle School. It is item 9.03 on the agenda and all but certain that the School Board will decide to pay the Caballero family $600,000. Superintendent Elia gets paid almost half this amount every year, but don’t worry the Superintendent will still get her full paycheck.  Despite Superintendent Elia’s failure to do anything for 9 months after student Isabella Herrera choked on a bus in January of 2012. Despite her failure to even disclose it to the board for 9 months, the Superintendent has not received any direct consequence for her failures that arguably led to the second death of Jenny Caballero. In fact she recently received glowing reviews from most of the school board including Stacy White, Carol Kurdell, Doretha Edgecomb, and Candy Olson.

Despite a pattern of unsatisfactory performance on the part of Superintendent Elia and her management staff downtown, they instead blamed just about everyone else for this tragedy including Principal Sharon Tumicki and Assistant Principal Shawn Livingston. All lower echelon school based staff. Most, like Principal Sharon Tumicki, probably felt that they had little choice but to accept whatever the District offered them or be fired, like Shawn Livingston was when he refused to accept the Administration’s backward offer after they accused of him of incompetence and willful neglect of duty rather than taking a close look at themselves.

Principal Sharon Tumicki became former Principal Sharon Tumicki as she was demoted to assistant principal and is no longer even at Rodgers Middle School. The gym teacher took early retirement. Five aides also either took retirement, or resigned or were fired.

But Assistant Principal Shawn Livingston fought the bizarre allegations and in October he was exonerated when the school board realized a year later that there was not enough evidence to support those accusations. Shawn Livingston received the back pay and benefits for the remainder of his one-year contract but he had to endure a well publicized fight with the school District..

But imagine how those others must feel now that shawn Livingston was exonerated. They were intimidated in to accepting what the administration offered. To refuse meant that, like Shawn Livingston, they would have been fired and then fighting a lawsuit while unemployed with no income and enduring the publicity. That is essentially being found guilty until you prove your innocence, but that is the way the system works- or should we say doesn’t work- for the little guy. They probably could all have been exonerated also if they had the luxury of standing their ground with Shawn Livingston but at what cost?