MSD staff to be disciplined.
Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie says he will discipline staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “as early as next week” after a state investigation determined some administrators missed warning signs about the massacre.
Runcie, testifying before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission on Thursday, did not say who would be disciplined or what the discipline would be. He said he would first inform the families of the 17 people who died. Those families have been among the loudest voices urging him for months to hold school officials accountable.
“We were waiting on results from the commission so we could use the information we had to inform the actions we need to take,” Runcie said.
Two students said they reported unusual behavior about future gunman Nikolas Cruz in late 2016, according to a commission report.
One student thought they reported it to Assistant Principal Jeff Morford, while the other thought it was reported to Principal Ty Thompson. Commission investigators believe it was Morford.
The students said Cruz looked up firearms on a school computer in class, had posted on Instagram pictures of firearms and had brought a knife or bullets to school.
One of the students said Morford “told him he should Google the word autism.”
Commission member Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed at the school, was outraged by these reports.
“Students were comfortable telling administrators about their concerns, but they failed to do anything once they were made aware,” Petty said.
Now there may be a reluctance for students to report, because when they did, “it was so readily dismissed,” Petty said.
Morford and Thompson both denied ever being alerted by these students. Neither could be reached for comment Thursday evening.
Lisa Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association, said the administrators did nothing wrong.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that anyone on the administrative staff did anything that was less than heroic on the day of the shooting,” she said, adding that they adhered to the district’s policies and procedures before the massacre.
“I know there is a desire to see someone be punished because it’s going to take a long time before the perpetrator is punished, but to put the blame on the principal or assistant principal at the school is simply wrong,” Maxwell said.
Runcie told the commission he may have to wait for the commission’s interim report, which is due by the end of the year, to take final actions.
“These employees are certainly required to have due process so we will make sure we do that correctly,” Runcie said. “But there have been sufficient details I have heard and seen this week that would enable us to certainly draw some preliminary conclusions.”
The district generally does an internal investigation before disciplining an employee.
Investigators also revealed this week that security experts on two separate occasions in the past two years advised teachers and administrators to mark safe areas called “hard corners” in each classroom. These are areas located at an angle that would prevent anyone firing a gun through the classroom door from hitting anyone. However, the school failed to enact them, which led to more deaths, investigators said.
Administrators have also been criticized for a practice of keeping restrooms in the freshman building, where the shooting occurred, locked to prevent drug use. That practice prevented some students from finding a hiding place. Runcie said he couldn’t discipline anyone for that because there was no policy against it.
So far, only two Stoneman Douglas employees have been disciplined. Both were low-paid security monitors, Andrew Medina and David Taylor.
The district decided to not renew their contracts for 2018-19 after testimony by Medina showed that he was the first to see Cruz enter campus with a rifle bag. However, he didn’t confront Cruz or call for an emergency lockdown. Instead, he alerted Taylor, who hid in a closet during the shooting.
Runcie told commissioners the district has made a number of safety improvements at Stoneman Douglas and districtwide. These include adding 100 new cameras, extra fencing and new door locks and twice the security personnel. He said the district has expedited projects to put gates and fences at school campuses to limit access to one door.
However, that effort has already been delayed. In February, he said they’d be done by the end of the year, later pushing that back to late March 2019. Now he says it will be completed by the end of the school year, which would be June.
Commissioners often criticized Runcie, saying he seemed to lack a sense of urgency. They asked why he hadn’t required schools to have “hard corners” for students to hide in the event of a mass shooting.
Asked if the district had a policy requiring these, Runcie said, “We’re working with a security risk consultant to develop protocols and processes to implement guidelines for safer zones.”
Max Schachter, whose son Alex died in the massacre, voiced frustration at that response.
“I don’t know why it’s not done. It doesn’t make any sense. Kids died. Why not do it?” he said.
The superintendent said he would bring a policy to the school district in early December to mandate the practice.
Runcie started his comments by apologizing to families for the district’s role in the tragedy, something they said he’d been slow to do.
“I’m so, so sorry that you sent your kids to school that day like any other parent would expecting them to return, and somehow we failed to live up to that promise to you,” he said.