Four MSD staff are reassigned
Action comes after superintendent vowed disciplinary action
Administrators, security specialist moved because of shooting.
Three administrators and a security specialist have been reassigned in connection with the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School more than nine months ago.
The staff members are Assistant Principal Jeff Morford, Assistant Principal Winfred Porter Jr., Assistant Principal Denise Reed, and Security Specialist Kelvin Greenleaf.
The moves, announced Monday, come after Superintendent Robert Runcie recently told a state commission investigating the tragedy that he soon would take disciplinary action against some school employees.
The commission raised questions about whether some staff members took the proper steps to deal with former student Nikolas Cruz before he returned to the campus and killed 17 people on Feb. 14, as well as how they responded the massacre. Many were the same questions the media and parents had posed for months.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported Nov. 17 that despite many governmental failures leading to the massacre, just a few low-level employees have faced consequences. Runcie decided in June to renew the contracts of two low-paid security guards who were on duty when Cruz arrived on campus Feb. 14.
Since then, Jan Jordan, the captain formerly in charge of the Parkland division, resigned in response to criticism from the commission about her role leading the response to the shooting. Parkland Sgt. Brian Miller was placed on paid administrative duty pending the outcome of an internal review of his response to the shooting.
Reached Monday evening, Porter declined to comment, while the other three couldn’t be reached for comment.
The school district refused to say where the Stoneman Douglas administrators will be assigned and whether the moves are permanent.
“There is no additional information available regarding the investigation at this time,” district spokeswoman Kathy Koch said. “The school will continue to operate with a full administrative staff to support students and staff members.”
Lisa Maxwell, who represents the three administrators through the Broward Principals and Assistants Association, said they are being temporarily reassigned to district offices while an investigation is conducted. She said she doesn’t know who is doing the investigation and said the district is violating is employee discipline policy by not telling them why they are being investigated. Typically the district’s Special Investigative Unit, made up mostly of police detectives, conduct employee investigations. Maxwell said the administrators did nothing wrong.
“This is an attempt to hand over people to deflect attention and focus on criticism,” she said, adding that the district failed to provide proper training to administrators on how to deal with such an incident. “These are assistant principals who were there
that day and put their lives on the line and who have suffered, and as a result of this travesty, they’re being made to suffer again.”
The Stoneman Douglas Commission cited a number of failures by the school or district. Bathroom doors were locked due to drug problems, and that prevented students from being able to find a hiding place. The school hadn’t enacted “hard corners,” or classroom corners where students could hide during a shooting. The school’s “Code Red,” or active shooter procedures, also failed, the commission found.
But for the most part, a presentation the commission made this month avoided assigning blame to specific people, with the exception of Morford.
A student told commission investigators that he went with another student to Morford to report Cruz’s odd behavior, including researching guns on a school computer and remarking that he liked to “see people in pain.” According to the student, Morford told him he should Google the word “autism” and promised that he wouldn’t have to worry about Cruz because he was being withdrawn from the school. Morford denied the student’s account.
Porter, who was named the district’s assistant principal of the year a few days before the shooting, oversaw some of the school’s security measures. He brought a consultant into review security at the school in December 2017, but the measures didn’t get implemented before the shooting.
Reed is the assistant principal who oversees services for special needs services, another area where the district has been criticized. An independent report found the district mishandled Cruz’s education on at least two occasions, resulting in his getting no school counseling or services in the 14 months leading up to the shooting.
The full interim report from the commission is to be presented in January 2019. Some teachers say the administrators are being unfairly blamed. They plan a protest at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday in front of the school.
Language arts teacher Felicia Burgin said the administrators have worked tirelessly to provide support to teachers, giving up time with their own families.
“It seems like you’re trying to appease some people on [the Stoneman Douglas] commission and look what you’ve done. You’ve got a whole faculty that is stunned,” Burgin said. “We’ll now get new administrators that don’t know emotionally what we’re going through.”
Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine, a Parkland resident who has been critical of the district’s response to the massacre, said the district made a good move.
“The MSD Commission has revealed facts surrounding the tragedy that definitely warrant further investigation and possible disciplinary action. These reassignments, at a minimum, are prudent while the investigation unfolds,” he said. “Since the school’s inception, the community has always supported the students and teachers at MSD. We continue to do so, but in return, we want transparency, accountability and a safe learning environment for our students.”
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was killed in the massacre, called the move “seven months overdue.” He said many of the problems the commission outlined in a video presentation this month were ones families of victims had already raised.
“We have been communicating all of this for almost nine months, as soon as we learned everything,” Guttenberg said. “It was only after they couldn’t ignore the video that they took action.”
“None of it brings our children back,” Guttenberg said. “None of it.”