- September 24, 2024
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Sally Hunt’s abbreviated term on the Flagler County School Board has seen its share of controversy and disputes. She has also provided the key vote in the board’s major and most controversial decisions during the past two years.
Hunt resigned her seat on Sept. 20 in an email to Board Chair Will Furry.
Hunt defeated Jill Woolbright for the District 1 seat in 2022. She was expected to align with Colleen Conklin and Cheryl Massaro on disputed issues. And on her first day on the board on Nov. 22, 2022, she did just that, voting with Conklin and Massaro to make Conklin the board’s vice chair over fellow board newcomer Furry, who was supported by the third new board member, Christy Chong.
However, one year later, Hunt voted with Furry and Chong to elect Furry as board chair.
Hunt was the deciding vote to not extend former Superintendent Cathy Mittlestadt’s contract and to fire longtime board attorney Kristy Gavin. She joined Furry and Chong to form both majorities.
She also voted with Furry and Chong earlier this year to close the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club’s pool and gym memberships and reserve the pool for student use.
But she voted with Conklin and Massaro to defeat a resolution to adopt a guardian program for the purpose of stopping a possible active assailant. The program would have allowed trained school employees to carry a concealed weapon on school campuses.
Hunt said she was in favor of a guardian program in some form but was not comfortable with the concealed carry option “where our staff, our parents and our students walk around campus not knowing who has a deadly weapon with them. I find that very unsettling. I think a lot of people find that very unsettling.”
She also sided with Conklin and Massaro in her final vote as a School Board member to require an electrocardiogram screening for student athletes one time during their four years in high school.
Hunt was involved in a controversy a few months into her term when she asked former Flagler Palm Coast High School Principal Dusty Sims in February, 2023, if he would be interested in replacing Mittelstadt as superintendent. This was more than a month before the board began discussions on whether to extend Mittelstadt’s contract.
The following month, text messages revealed that she and then Wadsworth Elementary School Principal Paul Peacock tried to maneuver together to hasten a vote on Mittelstadt’s contract at a Feb. 22, 2023 board workshop.
Hunt was upset with Gavin for her handling of public records requests for those text messages. In an email she sent to an attorney working with the School Board early this year, she listed 10 examples of just cause to fire Gavin. Gavin’s handling of the public records requests led the list.
“Attorney Gavin shared more of my text messages than needed – all except those containing student names – and at no point worked to protect my rights as a board member,” Hunt wrote.
When Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club members appealed to the board during a workshop to keep the gym and pool open, Hunt said she no longer felt safe in the workshop room with only one point of entry and exit. She asked for a deputy to be assigned to the room during workshops. In recent months she stopped attending workshops in person but took part in discussions via phone.
Massaro criticized Hunt for not attending workshops in person and for skipping school district events, including high school graduations. As early as last year, Hunt said her family was planning to move and she would resign her seat before the end of her term.
In her resignation letter, she said, “While I have been disheartened by and departing because of the manipulation of truth and the lies that continue to be shared and accepted regarding targeted Board members and the District as a whole, I am so proud of what the Board has accomplished in just under two years.”
