Education officials hold safety meeting with Palm Beach County schools
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State education officials demanded an emergency meeting with Superintendent Mike Burke and visited Palm Beach County school campuses after a statewide grand jury called districts and more. The Final Report on School Safety Since 2018 states: Shooting incident in Parkland.
officials did not raise Specific Safety Concerns for Palm Beach County Campuses.
Instead, the state’s Director of Safe Schools requested a face-to-face meeting with Burke, stating that the school district’s “refusal or failure to comply with school-related safety law orders” and Burke’s actions on school campuses statewide. demanded to discuss what he called the underreporting of crimes in
Tim Hay revealed the details in 2019 when he said the school district “wasted a lot of taxpayer dollars” by hiring a private company to train safe school officers. All Campus Obligations.
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The grand jury wrote because committee leaders, such as Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, said at the time that security guards must be trained by the sheriff’s office, not by private companies.
In 2019, one of the few Palm Beach County districts with an in-house police department worked with Palm Beach County Sheriff Rick Bradshaw to review a training program proposed by Boynton Beach security firm Invictus.
When Bradshaw discovered that there were problems with the curriculum, the school district withdrew the contract after instructors he said weren’t certified and students weren’t passing psychological tests.
Invictus sued and the district paid the company a $75,000 settlement in February.
After sending Letter, Hater visited both district-run public school campuses and charters School on August 31st and September 1st.
When I met with Burke that week, Burke discussed the impact from the district’s charter school guard training program, observations from Hay’s campus visits, and how the schools run by the Palm Beach County school district, particularly charter schools, were safety hazards. said they had discussed how to report to the state.
“It was a strong letter and it certainly caught my attention,” Burke said of Hay’s first correspondence.
However, he described the meeting as “enjoyable”, adding that Haye “complied some things and there were other things he wanted to get proof of.”
Burke said he and other district leaders across the state expect reports from Haye on trips to their respective counties in the coming weeks. Along with beaches, I named Broward, Duval, Miami-Dade, and Orange counties.
The superintendent did not report on his discussion with Hay at Wednesday’s school board meeting, and said there would be no immediate changes to the district’s safety policy as a result of the meeting.
could not reach the hay last week for comments. His office said he was traveling to the district to conduct similar campus visits and meetings.
This story continues below.
DeSantis Fires Four Broward School Board Members
The sudden focus on school campus safety comes after the release of a grand jury report cited by Gov. Ron DeSantis in his August 26 dismissal of four members of the Broward County Board of Education. After being
The report, completed in 2021, will: Reviewed school safety and the Broward County Board of Education’s response to the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 dead and 17 injured.
DeSantis has fired Patricia Goode, Donna Cohn, Anne Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson from office, citing the recommendations of a statewide grand jury. He accused them of “incompetence, dereliction of duty and abuse of authority”.
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“The grand jury’s final report found that the safety-related alarm that may have saved the life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was and remains a very low priority and has been removed at multiple schools. “We have discovered that there is,” said a DeSantis spokesperson. In a statement on the dismissal of a board member.
In Palm Beach County, Burke clarified that members of the local school board are not in danger of losing their jobs.
“We had a successful referendum and delivered on our promises. I see no reason for them to consider it,” he said. “I don’t think you can compare Palm Beach to Broward in this case.”
In a letter to the school district dated Aug. 29, Hay did not suggest that members of the Palm Beach County Board of Education were subject to dismissal.
He said the district’s plan to use a private security company to train security guards at charter schools put students at risk, even though all schools had security guards at the beginning of the 2019-20 school year. He said that After the Sheriff’s Office stepped in to train them when the district canceled their contract with Invictus.
But Burke didn’t take the letter to his chin.
In a letter the next day, he acknowledged his concerns about hiring a private security firm to train officers, but said they weren’t unique to Palm Beach County, such as the underreporting of crime on campus. I objected to the claim.
“The points you identified in your letter, with the exception of the bullet point relating to the school district’s hiring of a private security firm (Invictus), are subject matter determined by a statewide grand jury to be applicable statewide. But it was not identified…as a concern in Palm Beach County,” Burke replied to Hay.
Are Palm Beach County Schools Underreporting Crime on Campus?
Asked about the issue of criminal activity on campus, Burke said Hay’s office was interested in how to get data from schools across the state. Schools now use standardized reporting categories to categorize incidents similar to those of law enforcement, including categories such as trespassing, drug trafficking, and arson.
School crime data is available online.
Burke said We saw no evidence that Palm Beach County was underreporting crime, and the Department of Education did not raise any specific concerns during the meeting.
“If we underreported something, it never came to my attention to this day. “No one has found evidence of that.”
After Friday’s meeting, school district staff will demonstrate how Palm Beach County school administrators report safety issues on campus and how the district communicates with charter schools. I sent dozens of documents to the state.
Hay sent similar letters to at least four other school districts, including Broward, Duval, Orange and Miami-Dade counties, Florida Politics reported.
The five school districts that Hay’s office contacted are among the six largest in the state, and collectively serve more than 1.1 million students.
Katherine Kokal is an educational journalist at The Palm Beach Post. Her contact is her kkokal@pbpost.com. Please help support our work. Subscribe now!
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