School name an uncivil civics lesson

The Barakat High (tax) Evaders. Two bits. Four bits. Six bits, a dollar. Bribe all the refs and make your cronies hollar!

The School Board, however, passed on the newly convicted Barakat and named the $28.8 million Pembroke Pines high school after that city's late big-boss mayor. (Besides, there'll be plenty of other opportunities for Barakat, who thinks a federal income tax evasion conviction ought not affect his chairmanship of the county Democratic Party.)

The board also bypassed its own official school naming procedure to venerate Flanagan and grease the mayor's old machine.

So, to the surprise of all those kids thinking they'd be at Everglades High School next year, welcome to Chuck Flanagan High School. Imagine how silly all those parents and students must feel now after giving up an evening and driving to Cooper City last month for a public meeting -- ostensibly to name their new high school.
Democracy in action?

The gathering seemed so authentically democratic. A 24-person naming committee had whittled down the candidates. There were presentations, speeches, arguments. ``It's important that everyone gets their say,'' explained the unnamed school's designated principal.

Everyone got their say. There was even a vote. Very deceptive. A powerful illusion was created: school naming appeared to be a bona fide public process. Lots of input.

The sham even included counting the votes. In public. Big mistake. Everglades got more than twice as many votes as Charles Flanagan, whose name was once synonymous with landslide victories. Everyone left the April 25 meeting with the naive notion that the people had spoken. ``I'm so ecstatic,'' a 15-year-old Everglades student-to-be told The Herald.

Naive punk. He and those other ecstatic upstarts were in for a mean civics lesson, courtesy of the Broward County School Board. They learned that the vast and beautiful river of grass doesn't engender much sympathy in Broward's various governmental chambers.

Flanagan, meanwhile, embodied clout and power and politics. He knew how to govern a disparate, rootless, boomtown community. Flanagan, in his two decades as mayor, was as responsible as anyone in South Florida for leading developers deeper and deeper into those very Everglades.
That'll teach them

The real vote Tuesday was unanimous. Everglades High was thrown back like a scrawny fish. The board rejected the parents' and students' choice and added the high school to the public places named for the big-boss mayor, including the Pembroke Pines city hall. In 1993, his toadies tried to erase Pines war hero Don Fletcher's name from a city park and rename it for the mayor. But public opinion, for once, prevailed.

School Board member Diana Wasserman suggested that the school offer its 2,850 students a history course on Flanagan's accomplishments. Good idea. It would explain to the kids why they were stuffed into instantly crowded classrooms, deep in what, at the beginning of the Flanagan regime, was only the Everglades.

The School Board, so as not to appear too autocratic, allowed the kids to keep their chosen nickname. But ``Falcons'' no longer seems appropriate.

A school honoring the godfather of Everglades incursion deserves something better. Sprawlers. Blasters. Bulldozers. The Flanagan High Political Bosses.