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Principal Stenner Returning to West Boca High?

Update: The proposed Stenner settlement agreement is at bottom.

Principal Mark Stenner of West Boca High

The Palm Beach Post reports that West Boca High Principal Mark Stenner is expected to face a 10-day suspension as a result of the plagiarism in his graduation speeches.
It appears that Stenner will return to West Boca High. We’ve heard from many readers about the situation. Mostly they’re angry, they compare it to how the school treats students who commit plagiarism, and call for him to be fired. One parent of a current student wrote:

Mr. Stenner has shown no remorse for his plagiarism, and in fact, only contempt that he should be questioned. A principal should be held to the highest standard. Placing him back at the school is the worst possible decision. He has no moral authority left.

Another wrote this:

As a parent of a student at WBHS I am appalled at the slap on the wrist given this principal. If it were a student who was guilty of this, imagine the repercussions to the student. How can he have any credibility standing up in front of the student body after this? Every time he talks everyone will be Googling to find out who he copied this time.
If this were the only problem at WBHS it would be one thing. But the fact is WBHS is an underperforming school in a district and area that deserves better. Over my child’s time at WBHS I have observed first hand just how hollow the education received here is. While there are a few good teachers who stand out, by and large this administration has fostered a culture of mediocrity, tolerating indifferent and incompetent teachers. Many of the students who do well there do so because their parents pay for private tutors to do the job that the school is supposed to do.
Students succeed in spite of WBHS not because of it. Our kids deserve better than a principal who would plagiarize speeches and they deserve a school that prepares them for college and their life beyond.

Note that we’re not sure about calling West Boca High “underperforming.” The school has done well in state rankings.
We’ve also heard from school staff. Some would be happy to see him go and others love the guy and think he’s a great principal.
Stenner’s status is on the school board agenda for Wednesday:

Agenda Item Details
Meeting Jul 22, 2015
SPECIAL MEETING immediately following Workshop in the Board Room Category
Chairman Adds Items for Good Cause
Subject Item Added: LD1 Type Information, Procedural
Item Added:
LD1 Settlement Agreement and General Release with Mark Stenner
Good Cause Statement:
Good cause exists for the adding of this item as it is in the best interest of the School District and its students, and will allow Mr. Stenner to focus on his work as an employee of the School District.

Settlement agreement
[gview file=”https://westbocanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/LD1-Release-Stenner-072015.pdf”]

Foundation Scholarships to Local Students

All photos by Carlos Aristizabal
The Eda and Cliff Viner Community Scholars Foundation awarded 18 four-year scholarships to local students this week. This first Annual Award Ceremony took place at Boca West Country Club on Sunday, June 14th.

Floor: Maia Groman, Congressman Deutch, Nusrat Noor, Amanda Hirschman. Sitting: Adina Hoffman, Lauren Brito, Wenda Fils-Aime, Eda Viner, Natalia Leal, Fernanda Rodriguez, and Teagan Murphy. Standing: Lucas de Carvalho, Maribel Dupont-Bedolla, Raquel Dunn, Megan Rahnama, Shaaz Feldman, Cliff Viner, Isaac Azoalos, Travis Young, Javier Gomez, and Brett Wolff.

“We are offering not only financial assistance,” says Foundation Co-Founder Cliff Viner. “But we are also providing a comprehensive mentor program to keep students on-track, so they can graduate and then go on to fulfill the promise they’ve all shown.”
The students awarded these scholarships came from: Atlantic Community High School, Boca Raton Community High School, Donna Klein Jewish Academy, Olympic Heights Community High School, Spanish River Community High School, Weinbaum Yeshiva, and West Boca Community High School.

Eda Viner, Congressman Deutch, Wenda Fils-Aime (scholarship recipient), Ruthe N. Francis, Assistant Principal Atlantic Community High School, and Cliff Viner

The Award Ceremony featured U.S. Congressman Ted Deutch (a West Boca resident) as the speaker. Foundation Co-Founders, Eda and Cliff Viner, presented the awards.
“The purpose of this program is to work with the most dedicated and talented students, some of whom don’t have the financial means to fulfill their potential.” says Eda Viner, Foundation Co-Founder. “This will not only assist students and their families, but also greatly benefit our own community.”
The program accepts applications from students who achieved at least a 3.50 unweighted GPA, performed substantial community service, and were from families that required significant financial assistance. This scholarship will be a “last dollar” scholarship to cover tuition not already covered by financial aid, and will provide assistance with room and board as well as daily living expenses.

Cliff Viner, Fernanda Rodriguez (scholarship recipient), and Eda Viner

Eda Viner is a realtor with Sotheby’s. Her husband Cliff is a businessman, investor and hedge fund manager. He was the general partner of the Florida Panthers ownership group until they sold the franchise in 2013. He is a member of the B’nai Torah congregation in West Boca. He has a substantial history of philanthropy as well as bipartisan campaign contributions.

Slow Burn Going Out Hot: Little Shop

We’ve been fans of Slow Burn Theatre Company since we first noticed them at West Boca High. Happily for them (and sadly for us) they’re moving on up to a deluxe performing arts center on the east side of Broward.
Their last show at West Boca High is Little Shop of Horrors, which is more of a mainstream hit than their usual stuff. We saw it opening night (Saturday) and really enjoyed it.
For starters we should note that the show is relatively family friendly. There are a couple swear words and some content that may be troubling for some kids, but there is no gore like in the PG-13 movie version.

Slow Burn’s performance of Little Shop is wonderful. There were four of us and we all enjoyed it. We’ve heard from other friends who were also delighted.
For this writer the highlight was Amy Miller Brennan’s voice in the female lead as Audrey. The show is designed to highlight her character’s voice and she knocked it out of the park, especially on Suddenly Seymour.

Matthew Korinko as Mr. Mushnick and Mike Westrich as Seymour

Mike Westrich and Matthew Korinko were both great. Westrich has the male lead as Seymour and Korinko has the biggest supporting on-stage role as Seymour.

Shane Tanner as Orin the Dentist, with Elisa Danielle as Chiffon in the background

Shane Tanner was a crowd-pleaser playing the sadistic dentist and several other minor parts. The other major character in the show was Audrey II, aka Twoey, one heck of an unusual plant with a taste for human blood. The larger version of Twoey later in the show was performed physically by Rick Peña in his dual role as both puppeteer and costume designer. Twoey was voiced offstage by Geoffrey Short. Our only regret was that he didn’t get to sing Mean Green Mother from Outer Space, a song from the movie that was not in the Broadway show.
Little Shop of Horrors will play Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through June 28th. It’s your last chance to catch this great performance company on the rise here in West Boca. Don’t miss it.
Meanwhile the West Boca High team won’t miss a beat. They’re bringing in the Marquee Theater Company which will start in September. The first season will include Aida, Songs for a New World, Jekyll & Hyde and Footloose.

Here’s our video from just before the start of the show last night:

School Bus Driver Gone Wild?

From a reader:
I’ve addressed the situation with the school’s transportation department as well as the Principal of the school. I talked to Faye Ingraham at Transportation Services and told her the situation, she said there wasn’t much they could do but recommend a training course for the driver and maybe even traffic violator schools considering his aggressive driving. She wanted me to send an Email of the incident, so I obliged and forwarded it to the Principal as well.
It’s been a few days and I haven’t heard back from the Principal. The staff at the school was nonchalant about what happened as well. Not sure my story is pertinent to any readers but it might be nice to make public the phone number for drivers to call if they have issues with bus drivers on the road.
For what it’s worth the phone number to contact Transportation Services is 561-738-9203. The person to speak to is Faye Ingraham. For a reference, we are in the south area and any callers should write down the number that is on the back of the bus so she can reference who was driving that day.

This is what I sent to Faye as well as Principal Mark Stenner. Feel free to share this for whatever reason:
Hello Faye,
I had the unfortunate experience of coming across one of your school bus drivers this afternoon, one that should not have been on the road; as you well know since we spoke on the phone earlier. Here is my summary of what happened as per your request.
This driver and I both left Mission Bay Plaza at the same time, he was in front of me and were both headed westbound. As we approached the first school zone I noticed he was tailgating anybody that was in front of him. He did manage to obey the school zone speed limits, however the aggressive driving took over immediately leaving the school zones. When he started to tailgate another women I pulled up alongside of him to see if he might have been texting/talking on a cell phone and may have been distracted. He was not and I noticed that there were no students on the bus. As we approached the school (West Boca Community High) approximately one mile east of the Fire Department on Glades Road this bus driver was going to cut off the driver behind me in order to merge into one lane. There were no other cars behind the driver so there was no reason that he couldn’t drop back and fall in behind this driver.
To my surprise him cutting off this driver behind me wasn’t his plans, this bus driver wasn’t going to be happy unless he passed me on the right (non-passing lane) as the lanes were merging into one. He was actually attempting to pass me on the shoulder where the lane he was in had actually ended. I was going 45 MPH so at that point he was well in excess of 45 MPH. When he finally realized that he wasn’t going to accomplish this ridiculous stunt he slowed down and tailgated me to the point I couldn’t even see his headlights.
At this point we were down to one lane and he still was halfway on the shoulder as if he still planned to attempt to pass me. I tapped my brakes to get him off my tailgate and he refused to stop trying to run me off the road by attempting to pass me on the right. At this point I blocked him to keep him from attempting to perform an extremely dangerous maneuver because at this point there were drivers behind him. This is when the bus driver stopped and pulled off the road. I got out of my vehicle to go see if there was something wrong with him. As I approached the bus he floored it, driving off into the grass and in doing so the bus hit my elbow which is now swollen and bruised.
At this point I called the police and made sure to know where he was going. We both ended up at the school where I waited for the Palm Beach Sheriffs to show up. Earlier in this ordeal when we had pulled over to the side of the road, the driver that was cut off pulled up alongside of me and explained he also saw the whole ordeal. This driver met up with me at the school to inform the Sheriffs of exactly what happened. His story mirrors mine and he was really worried.
This sort of driving is completely unacceptable to me and all other tax payers regardless of whether or not there were students on the bus. Many people that drive commercial vehicles have 1-800 numbers on their car/truck and can be used as grounds for termination for the most petty of complaints. This situation was far from petty and could have turned into an accident and the worst that can happen is this driver will be “recommended” to take a driver’s safety course? In this case the only number to contact is yours, provided to me by the school; a number that is not readily available to those on the road with these bus drivers.
I have contact information of the witness but I will not surrender it unless this situation is escalated for whatever reason. Nor will I do so without his permission. The bus driver’s name is Robert (that is the only information the school had) the bus# was 4021 and they told me also to include Code 09. Attached to this Email are a couple of aerial shots of the area where most of this occurred. Map #2 is Glades Road between Ponderosa Drive and Boca Falls Drive by the Fire Department just down the street from the school.

The Lord Mayor Visits West Boca High

Lord Mayor Duncan Sandys addresses West Boca High. Band members in background.

West Boca High had some prominent visitors this morning. The headliner was Duncan Sandys, the past Lord Mayor of Westminster, and great grandson of Winston Churchill. Sandys spoke to the members of the Vanguard (the school band) as well as some band parents and others in attendance.

Here’s a video of Sandys entering to music performed by the Vanguard:

As a patron of the London New Years Day Parade, Sandys delivered the formal invitation for the Vanguard to perform in the upcoming parade.
Here’s part of his speech:

And here’s our best shot of the Lord Mayor at the podium as he was speaking:

London’s New Year’s Day Parade has evolved into one of the world’s great street spectaculars with up to 10,000 performers from across continents, hundreds of thousands of spectators, and a ‘live’ TV audience of several hundred million.

During the portion of the event held in the theater, Sandys presented gifts to various people including the drum majors and band director Larry Shane.

There were some “big wigs” in attendance including city council member Robert S. Weinroth (far right in the picture below):

Oddly none of the elected officials who represent the West Boca High school district attended. We did not see County Commissioner Mary Lou Berger, our state House or Senate representative, nor congressman Deutch who lives across the street in Boca Falls. The only exception was school board member Frank Barbieri.
The event then moved into the school cafeteria where students mobbed Sandys.

The school’s Culinary academy provided key lime tarts and scones for the event. The scones were pretty good and the tarts were outstanding.

Some students were also interviewed by local media:

The Vanguard now has to work on raising money to fund the trip. It’s expected to cost a little more than $3000 per student and they’re hoping to raise $300,000, with an active group of band moms working to make it happen.