Parental influence

Parents of special needs children do not have the final say on their child’s educational plan, but they have a significant say. They have a seat at the table — alongside teachers, social workers and therapists — in deciding the placement and services their children will get.

Parents who are educated, involved and especially vocal can have more influence than others, experts said. They have the right to file legal challenges against the district on behalf of their children — a costly and time-consuming complication school officials try to avoid.

Cruz’s mother, Lynda, who is now dead, lobbied staffers at both Cross Creek and Stoneman Douglas to have Nikolas transferred, sources said.

Plans were put into motion to transfer Cruz out of Cross Creek while Jessica Decarlo, a special education coordinator at Stoneman Douglas who was a member of Cruz’s planning team, went on maternity leave in October 2015.

Emails show Cruz’s mother met with other staff while Decarlo was out. She had just returned from leave when a meeting was held of Cruz’s educational team in December 2016 cementing the transfer. Decarlo declined to talk to the Sun Sentinel.

Superintendent Robert Runcie declined to comment on the transfer of Cruz to Stoneman Douglas and referred questions to his public relations staff.

The district has said little about how it handled Cruz and instead has pointed to federal laws that require students with disabilities to be educated in the “least restrictive” environment possible.

“Cross Creek is the most restrictive school placement offered by [Broward public schools], as only students with disabilities are enrolled there,” district spokeswoman Nadine Drew wrote in an email to the Sun Sentinel this week.

Whenever a Cross Creek student demonstrates improved behavior and academics, their educational planning team is required to review whether the student would be able to learn alongside nondisabled students, the district explained.

“The decision to transfer a student into a mainstream school is made thoughtfully and according to specific performance measurements,” Drew said.

A source familiar with his schooling, who asked not to be identified, said Cross Creek staff closed a behavior plan that was in place for him, having found he’d met his goals. A new one was not instituted at Stoneman Douglas. Such plans ensure that everyone involved with a student knows what triggers his negative behaviors and how his positive behaviors can be reinforced.

Dottie Provenzano, retired special education coordinator with Broward County schools, talked with staff members at Stoneman Douglas and Cross Creek about Cruz and said she concluded that they didn’t put a proper behavior plan in place for him to attend Douglas full time or to monitor and support him properly once he was there.

“We’ve got to remember, Nik was not a bad boy. Nik was a sick boy. He was mentally ill,” Provenzano said.

His obsession with guns and violence was welldocumented in his June 2015 assessment. Given that, if school officials were going to move him to Stoneman Douglas, they should have been “ironclad about the decision” and had “tons of supports in place” for him, Provenzano said

And at those early warning signs of trouble, they should have contacted Cross Creek to take him back, she said.

School officials failed to draw up a “behavioral intervention plan” for Cruz at Stoneman Douglas, as is critical for such a student.