■ Many charter schools fail to arrange for armed guards,

Up to 29 charter schools in Broward County failed to make arrangements for state-required armed security officers, the chairman of the commission investigating the Parkland school shooting said Wednesday.

With the Broward school year beginning Wednesday, Sheriff Gregory Tony agreed to cover the charter schools on a temporary basis. He won’t continue the service long term without contracts, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission said.

The names of the 29 schools have not been released, but members of the commission told a representative of the Florida Department of Education that they wanted the names by Thursday morning, when the commission will meet again.

“We need the names,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during the commission’s meeting at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. “We have been more than patient.”

Broward schools Superintendent Robert Runcie is scheduled to testify to the commission Thursday morning, and commissioner Ryan Petty said he should be asked to account for the failure of the charter schools to provide proof of armed guards.

“If they can’t produce a contract or evidence, then he ought to, as the leader of the district, revoke their charters,” said Petty, whose 14-year-old daughter Alaina was killed in the attack. “Immediately.”

Judd added: “Or he should resign.”

In Palm Beach County, charter schools started the school year Monday with armed guardians or Sheriff ’s deputies. But charter school guardians there may not comply with state law because they were trained by a private company, not the Sheriff’s Office, commission members said.

In Broward County, the number and status of the charter schools without permanent guards was unclear.

Damien Kelly, director of the state’s Office of Safe Schools., said the list of 29 came from the Broward School District and includes all charter schools considered non-compliant because they haven’t given the district documentation showing they have armed security.

But Kelly said a representative of six of those schools approached him during a break Wednesday and said those schools have armed security officers and have provided documentation to the district.

The school district issued a statement Wednesday that said the 29 schools on the list were those that lacked permanent arrangements for guards.

“There were 29 charter schools on the list,” the district said. “If a charter school does not have a long-term guardian solution, it does not mean that they are not compliant. They may have had a safe school officer at the school today, which means that they were compliant today.”

Initially, Gualtieri said the deadline to comply was Friday, but Tony told the commission he’d give the schools more time.

“I’m as frustrated as anyone, but I’m not going to penalize the kids,” Tony said. “We will be knocking on the [charter school] doors and giving them a deadline. It won’t be this Friday.”

Gualtieri blasted the Broward charter schools, saying their inaction suggests “they can live with dead kids.”

Tony said he only learned there was shortage of guardians when he got a call from schools chief Runcie last Friday, five days before school started.

Neighboring Palm Beach County also was criticized for how it was managing the guardian program.

The School Board agreed last month to allocate up to $4 million to help charter schools pay for training and armed security to comply with the law. However, the training was done by a private company, at $3,000 per person, not the Sheriff’s Office where it’s being done elsewhere in the law.

“I find it completely appalling a district would farm out this work,” state Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, a member of the commission, said.

Gualtieri said he shared his concerns with Palm Beach County Superintendent Donald Fennoy, summarizing his response as “A court has not interpreted it, so you don’t get to tell us what to do.”

The school district did not respond to requests for comment.

Bradshaw has agreed to review the training of the private company to see if it complies. If not, he won’t sign off on it, and the schools would be out of compliance, Gualtieri said.

Max Schachter, a commission member whose14-year-old son Alex was killed in the Feb. 14, 2018, Parkland attack, said parents should demand that state-required security is provided.

“The parents of each one of the children going to those schools need to know those schools are not going to be protected if a murderer walks on campus after Friday,” he said. “They need to demand that that is fixed.”

Okaloosa County Sheriff Larry Ashley, another member of the commission, said that school districts that fail to comply with state security requirements imposed after the Parkland killings should be warned of their legal exposure if something happens.

“This commission needs to make some sort of statement in no uncertain terms to those school districts, school boards and superintendents that are still not in compliance that God forbid something happens at one of those schools they will be criminally and civilly liable for their lack of following state law,” he said.

Gualtieri said significant progress had been made in compliance by school districts with safety legislation passed in response to the 2018 shooting that took 17 lives.