With two top administrators set to stop work in April, Monroe County School District Superintendent Mark Porter on Tuesday vetted a "leadership transition plan" with the School Board.</p><p>Essentially the board suspended established hiring policies and job descriptions to allow Porter to hire interim replacements for Director of Finance and Performance Ken Gentile and Director of Operations Michael Kinneer.</p><p>Porter said any interim staff would serve for no longer than four months.</p><p>He announced that Gentile's and Kinneer's contracts would not be renewed following a damning preliminary financial and operational audit from the Florida Auditor General's Office.</p><p>Gentile's three-year deal worth $126,000 per year expires on April 18, while Kinneer was originally set to end his $120,000 annual contract on June 30, but opted to give 30-days termination notice effective April 5.</p><p>"Under the present circumstances," Porter told board members, "I believe it will be necessary to proceed in a two-part manner to fulfill some leadership positions.</p><p>"The first will be to fill interims positions...to be followed by permanent replacements. In seeking permanent replacements for these positions, we will be following a full set of procedures and protocols."</p><p>Adult Ed</p><p>A former Monroe County School District employee, fired along with his wife in 2010 amid a district-wide financial scandal, laid into School Board members Tuesday.</p><p>David Gootee, a former adult education cosmetology instructor, was provoked by the board voting to adopt the state Department of Administrative Hearings decision to dismiss an appeal of the terminations.</p><p>"You all are about to put on the agenda the destruction of my family, which you've really done pretty good at the last couple of years. It's wrong," Gootee said.</p><p>In 2010, then-Superintendent Joseph Burke fired Gootee and his wife Marissa contending they violated district ethics policy by submitting duplicate timecards and being paid twice for the same work.</p><p>The Gootees came under scrutiny following former Adult Education Director Monique Acevedo's arrest and subsequent felony conviction for stealing more than $400,000 in district funds, including cash fees collected for adult ed classes.</p><p>"It's despicable," Gootee told board members at their Tuesday session in Key West. "It's political revenge, pure and simple."