District rejects findings, clears school officials

An outside investigator described numerous failures by administrators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High that may have contributed to the 2018 shooting, but the Broward School District rejected the findings and cleared the employees.

A committee of district administrators decided May 7 there was no just cause to discipline Ty Thompson, who was principal of the Parkland school at the time of the shooting, or Assistant Principal Denise Reed. Both were reassigned last year.

Jeff Morford, another assistant principal who has since retired, was cleared of most allegations against him but was given a letter of reprimand for mishandling a 2016 threat assessment of the student who killed 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018.

The committee’s decisions were in stark contrast to the findings made by lawyer

Jennifer Ruiz in investigations the South Florida Sun Sentinel obtained Friday via a public records request. The district paid Ruiz’s firm, Miami-based Cole, Scott & Kissane, $301,000 to conduct the review.

Ruiz accused Thompson of failing to adequately supervise his employees.

“The evidence shows that Mr. Thompson delegated away many of his own responsibilities or duties to his assistant principals, but failed to implement any type of system to oversee compliance,” she wrote.

Reed and Morford botched the killer’s threat assessment, and Morford ignored warning signs and gave testimony that lacked credibility, she wrote.

The report echoed many of the findings of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, a state body that probed what led to the shooting.

The report doesn’t say why the seven members on the Professional Standards Committee decided against disciplining the employees.

A statement from the office of Kathy Koch, chief communications officer for the district, said Ruiz’s role was to research and present facts, and that was done “comprehensively and thoroughly.” But it was up to the committee to find if there was cause for discipline.

“The committee concluded there was not just cause,” the statement said.

None of the three administrators could be reached for comment Friday. Their representative, Lisa Maxwell, blasted Ruiz’s findings.

“The investigator had no idea of how any of the processes actually work,” said Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association. “All she did was try to be a rubber stamp for the statewide commission, and she failed miserably.”

Maxwell described Ruiz as a “lawyer from Miami with no background in investigations, absolutely zero understanding of how schools operate.”

Ruiz couldn’t be reached Friday, despite attempts by phone and email.

Ruiz completed investigations of two other former Stoneman Douglas employees last fall, Assistant Principal Winfred Porter and Security Specialist Kelvin Greenleaf. She found no cause to discipline Greenleaf but determined Porter, who oversaw security at the school, failed to ensure staff knew when and how to call an emergency Code Red to lock down a school. The Professional Standards Committee also overturned that recommendation and cleared Porter.

The only employees to face any severe discipline were two low-paid security monitors whose contracts were not renewed in June 2018.

“The school district has been very reluctant to show that anything was done wrong,” said Tony Montalto, president of Stand with Parkland, a school safety advocacy group. “When we juxtapose 17 people were murdered on the school grounds and another 17 were shot, but nobody did anything wrong.”

Mont alto’ s daughter Gina, 14, was one of the 17 killed.

Ruiz’s review was particularly critical of how administrators handled the threat assessment of killer Nikolas Cruz. The assessments are designed to determine whether students are at risk of endangering themselves or others.

The assessment was conducted in September 2016 after receiving reports that Cruz was suicidal, drinking gasoline and had a gun. Reed initiated the review, using an outdated threat assessment form, and later handed it off to Morford, who had never conducted one before and had no idea how to do it, the report said.

“Upon learning that Mr. Morford was not familiar with the threat assessment process and was incompetent in leading the threat assessment, [Reed] too, failed to properly conduct a threat assessment in accordance” with district policy, Ruiz said.

Reed failed to collect information about Cruz’s behavior and attendance, failed to monitor him after the review to ensure the plan was followed and failed to complete all the proper paperwork, the investigation said.

Morford failed to attend required threat assessment training and lied on his resume, saying he had conducted the assessments before, Ruiz wrote.

Morford did remove Cruz from ROTC and ban him from bringing a backpack to school. But he also ignored warnings and “fell incredibly short of his duty” to guard against potential threats, Ruiz wrote.