Melissa S. Razdrih
Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed two new members to Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (FDSB) Board of Trustees.
FDSB Board of Trustees is responsible for the strategic oversight of FDSB. According to the FDSB website:
“FSDB operates under the leadership and direction of its Board of Trustees, pursuant to Section 1002.36, Florida Statutes.”
Seven members comprise the board, all appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the state Senate. At least one member must be blind or visually impaired and another deaf or hard of hearing.
Each member must be a Florida resident.
On Friday, the Governor appointed Matthew Kramer and Pamela Siguler.
Kramer, a resident of St. Augustine, is an executive therapeutic specialist with Gilead Science, a prominent pharmaceutical group.
Gilead Science has subsidiaries Kite Pharma, Gilead Sciences International Ltd and more. They are worth upward of $22B, according to the company’s profile on Google, and have a global presence.
According to a news release:
“Kramer and his wife are board members at Growing Together Behavioral Center, a school for children with autism and developmental disabilities in Jacksonville. He and his wife are parents of deaf, blind, and hard-of-hearing children.”
Kramer’s medical and personal experience makes him uniquely qualified for the term of his stay on the FDSB Board of Trustees.
Siguler hails from Ponte Vedra Beach. She is a retired educator who specialized in working with deaf and blind students throughout her career, which consisted of teaching at schools in Massachusetts and Virginia.
Siguler has served on other boards including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville and Boston College Council for Women. The latter of which she has been a board member since 2017.
She is also involved with Teach for America Jacksonville.
To add to those impressive credentials, she has a master’s degree in deaf/blind multi-handicapped education from Boston College.
Like others on the FDSB Board, they will serve a four-year term.
