Education Week - January 16, 2019 - 17

district, stating the school's mass shooting would
be lumped together as one tragedy for insurance
purposes."
In an interview, Runcie wrestled through several attempts to find an appropriate response.
The district will continue to do everything it
can to support Schentrup, he started. He'd been
trying to reassure her that she didn't need to feel
responsible for immediately returning to work.
He'd gotten Schentrup's vacation time restored
and offered her a lengthy sabbatical, which she
later ended up taking. It's not worth arguing
about in public, he said.
At one point, the superintendent described how
he'd sought advice on the situation from David
Schonfeld, the director of the National Center for
School Crisis and Bereavement at the University
of Southern California.
"He goes, 'Look, when folks are going through
the kind of trauma and grief that Ms. Schentrup
is going through, sometimes you can literally sit
across the table, have a conversation with them,
and they may not actually hear what you're saying,' " Runcie recounted.
"You know, when he told me that, it kind of all
made sense to me," he said.
At the end of last school year, the district offered Schentrup a newly created position, as director of school safety and security. She accepted,
hoping to make meaningful change from within.
But the brief detente quickly crumbled.
A month into the job, Schentrup learned a memo
had gone to all school leaders, detailing new safety
procedures for all Broward schools. None of her new
colleagues had told her it was being developed. No
one had even informed her the memo was going out.
Schentrup took a leave of absence in September.
"It's hard enough losing a child this way," she said.
"It made it even harder to have to fight for common decency at work."
Runcie said he's still not sure what to do. He's
going to keep praying for Schentrup and all the victims' families.
He's been reading a book, the superintendent
said. It's called The Choice. It's the memoir of Edith
Eger, a Holocaust survivor who went on to become
a renowned trauma therapist.
"One of the reasons I started it, is I was thinking
about giving it to these families with a letter, for the
holidays," Runcie said.
One of his biggest regrets is not pushing harder
to meet directly with victims' families right after
the shooting. Twice, Runcie said, he checked with
local school leaders to see if such a meeting could
be arranged. On both occasions, he said, he was told
the families weren't ready. Reluctantly, he agreed to
give the families space.
His thoughts on that decision now?
"I should have followed my heart more," Runcie said.

"
shot geography teacher Scott Biegel and students
Anthony Borges, Joaquin Oliver, and Meadow
Pollack. Oliver dragged himself to a nearby bathroom, hoping to find refuge. But Stoneman Douglas administrators had recently ordered the door
locked to prevent students from vaping.
Three minutes and 16 seconds after the first
shot, the first verified Code Red was called.
Forty-one seconds after that, Cruz moved
into a third-floor teacher's lounge, where he assumed a sniper position. Hundreds of students
had evacuated other buildings on Stoneman
Douglas's campus, the result of erroneous reports of a gas leak. For more than two minutes,
Cruz attempted to shoot the students through
the lounge's windows. Only the presence of
hurricane glass, which fragmented the rounds,
prevented the massacre from becoming dramatically worse.
Six minutes and 16 seconds after firing his first
shot, Cruz exited the classroom building and fled
the campus, blending in with a group of students
heading past adjacent Westglades Middle School,
which had not been locked down.
Thirty-one minutes and 46 seconds after the first
shot, Stoneman Douglas administrators broadcast
that Cruz was headed to the classroom building's
second floor. But there was confusion between the
administrators and law enforcement as to whether
the surveillance footage on the school's camera

How many
children were
killed because
they could not
get into the hard
corners, or as a
result of not doing
that correctly in
the classrooms?"
MAX SCHACHTER
whose son Alex Schachter, 14,
was killed at Marjory Stoneman
Douglas High School

ONLINE COVERAGE: Read more
of our coverage on the deep rift
between the grieving Parkland
community and its school district.

www.edweek.org/go/
broken-trust

PAGE 18 >

FROM TOP: A police photo
of the rifle bag that
campus monitor Andrew
Medina saw Nikolas Cruz
carrying on to the Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High
School campus before
he opened fire with an
AR-15 assault rifle.

By the third day of the Stoneman Douglas
Public Safety Commission's hearings in November, the simmering anger and disbelief and
mistrust were palpable. The VIP lounge at the
BB&T Center was packed with police officers
and news media, victims' family members and
staff from Stoneman Douglas High.
Second by second, state investigators detailed
the events of Feb. 14. Everything was pegged to
the precise moment gunfire had erupted inside
the school.
Two minutes and 38 seconds before he fired
his first shot, Cruz exited the Uber and walked
through the gate Andrew Medina had left unlocked and unattended.
As the gunman entered the first-floor hallway
and shot Gina Montalto and three other students, David Taylor, the other campus monitor,
was seen on surveillance footage, running up the
opposite stairwell.
One minute and 31 seconds after the first shot,
Cruz was still shooting into first-floor classrooms,
more than 125 students were milling about on the
third floor, casually attempting to evacuate.
Two minutes and 54 seconds after the first
shot, Cruz entered the third-floor hallway and

Images courtesy of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission

'It Happened to Us'

Twenty-nine minutes after
authorities say he opened
fire inside the school,
Nikolas Cruz entered a
Subway restaurant nearly
a mile away and ordered
a drink, according to this
surveillance photo (top)
presented to the state
commission investigating
the shooting. Around
the same time, deputies
at Stoneman Douglas
(bottom) mistakenly
believed Cruz was still
inside the classroom
building where 17 people
were killed, the result
of a mix-up involving
the school's video
surveillance system.

EDUCATION WEEK | January 16, 2019 | www.edweek.org | 17

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Education Week - January 16, 2019

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