Transfer of four MSD staffers is misdirecting the real blame

I’m a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Although almost 10 months have passed since the shooting on

Feb.14, all of us who are part of the MSD family are still trying to figure out how to navigate through our grief. Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie and his team at the Broward County School District have made that process even harder. They have ripped four more members away from us, in an attempt to place blame where it does not belong. It has become clear that the priority in this county is not the students or the teachers, but propagating the self-worth of district employees with an inflated sense of importance.

In order to appease a vocal minority, Runcie has made the determination that four members of our family, who did everything they possibly could to protect students and staff on the day of the massacre, would be “temporarily reassigned.” We were told (by a district representative – NOT by Runcie, who apparently lacked the courage to tell us his decision himself ) that this is not a punishment. We all know that isn’t true; the district needs to look as though someone is being held responsible. But any shortcomings at the school level were not the fault of the administration or the security team; rather, they were a direct result of the lax culture created by the school district. This is merely Runcie’s thinly veiled attempt to place blame where it clearly doesn’t belong in order to deflect negative attention away from himself.

One example of district failure is Andrew Medina, one of the two members of the school’s security team who were fired after the shooting. He was disciplined last year for sexually harassing two students (one of whom was Meadow Pollock, one of the victims of the shooting); a disciplinary committee recommended that he be fired, but according to a Sun Sentinel article from June 18, “Runcie, or his designee, overruled the committee’s recommendation to fire Medina and reduced the discipline to a three-day suspension.” In other words, a grown man sexually harassed two underage girls and Runcie decided that he should be put back into the school where the harassment occurred. Medina was finally fired because he failed to confront the shooter or call a lockdown, but had it not been for Runcie, he would have been gone long before that.

In the recent meetings of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, it was reported that students had shared concerns about the shooter with administrators, but that those concerns were dismissed. It would have been inappropriate (and a violation of privacy laws) for administrators to share information about student discipline with other students, but that doesn’t mean that nothing was being done. Clearly, administration was doing what they could to deal with the issues, because the shooter was expelled from the school as a result of his threatening behavior. What more could administration have done?

It was also reported to the commission that the teachers and administrators at Stoneman Douglas failed to establish safe procedures, such as taping off “hard corners” in classrooms where students would be safe in the event of a shooting. Teachers were, in fact, instructed to establish hard corners, and as far as I know all the teachers shared this information with their students, whether they actually taped off the corners or not. My question, however, is that if this was something that had been recommended for students’ safety, why had Runcie not pushed that information out to administrators at all the schools in the district? He has the power, and the responsibility, to establish procedures that would keep us all safe, and failed to do so.

Runcie says that he cares about the students of Broward County, and about the teachers employed by the district. However, very little emotional support has been given to the students of Stoneman Douglas, who suffered unspeakable tragedy on his watch. They are being provided with only minimal on-campus counseling, and in order to seek counseling outside of what is provided by the district they must use their own health insurance or pay out of pocket. In regard to support for the teachers, the Stoneman Douglas Alumni Association has provided more opportunities for emotional healing than the district has.

Although hindsight is always 20-20, the events of Feb. 14 are the fault of only one person: the shooter. To blame others, who did the best they could in an impossible situation, is not only unfair but is a reflection of everything that is wrong within the district. It is time for the citizens of Broward County to make their voices heard and demand that those who are

actually responsible for the failed policies of the district are held accountable.

Katherine Posada is an English teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.