Education Week - January 16, 2019 - 18

A Slow, Painful Path
Forward in Parkland

If people are found
guilty of failures,
there should be
consequences."

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

system was live. The tape, it turned out, was actually on a 26-minute delay. Cruz was already a mile
away. Two minutes earlier, he'd entered a Subway
restaurant and ordered a drink.
With each new detail, the room inside the
BB&T center grew more still.
Finally, investigators said, one hour, 18 minutes, and 22 seconds after the rampage began,
Nikolas Cruz was arrested.
His voice quivering, Max Schachter, the commissioner whose son, Alex, was killed inside a firstfloor Stoneman Douglas classroom, asked to speak.
"I just want to say that ever since this happened, the only thing the 17 families have
wanted was to find out the truth and [see] some
accountability," Schachter told the investigators.
"Because of you, I think we're going to get that.
Thank you very much."
There was a short break, followed by a dramatic no-show from Scot Peterson, the armed
sheriff 's deputy at Stoneman Douglas who resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he
had hidden on campus rather than confront the
shooter.
Then Runcie addressed the commission.
Slowly, the emotion drained from the room.
During his prepared remarks, Runcie spoke
deliberately, telling the story of how he'd just finished awarding a new car to Broward County's
teacher of the year when he first heard there was
a shooting at Stoneman Douglas.
He offered condolences to victims' families and
apologized for not returning their children home.
And he gave a detailed rundown of the steps
Broward schools had taken since the attack.
But when questions came from commissioners,
the superintendent's responses often fell flat.
Since the tragedy, what had the district done
about creating safe areas in all classrooms?
"We're currently working with our security-risk
consultant to develop some protocols and practices around that and we intend to implement

LORI ALHADEFF
whose daughter Alyssa Alhadeff,
14, was killed at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School

leg, almost 40 minutes after he had been shot in
the third-floor hallway.
Borges had then listened intently as Runcie spoke.
After it was all over, he summed up his reaction
to the superintendent.
"It didn't happen to him," Borges said.
"It happened to us."

A New Reality

It didn't happen
to him. It happened
to us."
ROYER BORGES

guidance for schools this year," Runcie said.
What about discipline for district staff?
"I think there's been sufficient detail that I've
heard and seen this week that will enable us to
certainly draw some preliminary conclusions that
we can work to," the superintendent responded.
Then it came time for Petty, the commissioner
whose daughter, Alaina, was killed inside Stoneman Douglas, to question Runcie. The superintendent didn't acknowledge Petty's loss. When Petty
asked how many schools now have single points
of entry, Runcie was distracted and missed the
question.
"I'd have to get back to you with that number,"
he eventually offered.
By the end of the 90-minute session, Runcie
had made some specific commitments. He vowed
to introduce hard-corner and Code Red policies
at the district's first school board meeting in December. He also indicated that disciplinary action
against some Stoneman Douglas staff members
could come the following week.
But for the victims' families, it didn't seem to
really matter.
Borges, for example, had sat stone-faced while
investigators described emergency rescuers applying tourniquets to his barely responsive son's

whose son Anthony Borges, 15,
was shot five times at Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School

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

With fears around safety and shootings rising, school systems around the country now find
themselves under considerable pressure to act.
There have been pleas from parents. There
are new state laws. And the $2.7 billion per year
school security industry is hawking everything
from bulletproof white boards to high-tech facialrecognition systems.
Still, though, there's little evidence or consensus
around the best way to actually keep kids safe.
That's one of the reasons Runcie's supporters
say growing calls for his resignation-including
one from the Sun Sentinel editorial board-are
misguided.
The superintendent's track record of steady
improvement, plus his unwillingness to embrace
simplistic solutions to complex problems, are
reasons to the stay the course, said Marcell Haywood, a tech-company CEO and the education
co-chair with the Broward Workshop, a nonprofit
association of area business leaders.
"He is incredibly well-equipped to advancing the changes we need to see," Haywood said.
"Large organizations don't turn around on a
dime."
Runcie himself says he has no intention of
stepping aside. Though he's recently been offered
new opportunities, he said, there's far more still
to be done, including a nascent effort to push the
Florida legislature to establish another fund for
victims' families.
"I believe in God, and I believe you keep doing
as much good as you can, and in the long run,
things will be OK," Runcie said.
For the families of Parkland victims, meanwhile, recent weeks have brought stirrings of the
accountability and action they've long sought.
In his final days in office, Gov. Rick Scott appointed Andrew Pollack to the state board of education.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety
Commission approved its final report and recommendations-including controversial provisions
to encourage the arming of some teachers.
Several law-enforcement officers have resigned,
been suspended, or been reassigned for their conduct during the response to the shooting.
And Runcie has followed through on commitments he made before the commission in November. Drafts of new policies on emergency codes
and "safer spaces" are currently under review by
the Broward school board. Runcie also reassigned

four Stoneman Douglas administrators-including Jeff Morford, the assistant principal who reportedly disregarded warnings about Cruz.
Even those changes, though, show how slow and
painful Parkland's path forward is likely to be.
The ongoing board review has already taken
weeks-the district, after all, still has to follow its
policy for adopting policies.
And while victims' families generally hailed the
Stoneman Douglas staff reassignments as long
overdue, many teachers at the school were outraged. Hundreds of students walked out to protest the announcement. And Broward principals'
union President Lisa Maxwell vowed to fight the
moves, which she cast as disruptive to the fragile
healing process and crushing to the administrators now being blamed for their students' deaths.
"These people are suffering from PTSD, they're
not sleeping, their families are devastated," Maxwell testified at the school board's Dec. 4 meeting.
"These individuals ran toward bullets on that day.
No one asked them to do that. They did it as an
automatic response, because they love kids."
From her seat at the front of the room, Lori
Alhadeff quietly took it all in. Alhadeff's 14-yearold daughter, Alyssa, was killed inside Stoneman
Douglas.
The day after the massacre, she had been the
one bearing impassioned witness, pleading on
CNN for President Donald Trump to take action
to prevent more school shootings. In June, Alhadeff and her husband filed a notice of their intent to sue Broward schools, saying the district's
negligence made it responsible for Alyssa's death.
Now, though, Alhadeff represents Parkland on
the Broward County school board.
She was sworn in Nov. 20, after campaigning on
a platform of improving school safety and getting
answers to how a disturbed former student managed to walk into a school with an assault rifle
and allegedly murder 17 people.
During Alhadeff 's first official meeting as a
board member, the scope of her new role became
evident. She's now responsible for overseeing the
work of a superintendent who didn't come to visit
her in the seven days she sat shiva for her daughter. And for reining in cost overruns on roof repairs for Broward schools. And for balancing the
burden of her own grief and trauma and anger
against the burdens felt by the thousands of
Parkland parents, students, teachers, and administrators whose lives have been forever changed.
Winning the board seat was empowering, Alhadeff said. She sees herself as a bridge between
what needs to be done and the school district's
ability to actually make it happen.
But stepping into her new reality has also been
more difficult than she could ever explain.
"I'm human," Alhadeff said. "I lost a daughter."
The Education Week Research Library contributed
to this report.

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Education Week - January 16, 2019

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