The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on Friday suspended four members of the Broward county school board, acting on a recommendation in a report from a grand jury investigating the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in which 17 people were killed.
In a statement accompanying his executive order, DeSantis said: “It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance.”
The suspensions were the second high-profile move this week against public officials governing schools that were the sites of mass shootings. On Wednesday the public schools police chief of Uvalde, Texas, was fired over the Robb elementary shooting in May in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.
In the Florida case, 14 students and three staff members were killed on 14 February 2018. The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, pleaded guilty and is on trial to determine whether he should face the death penalty.
The grand jury began meeting 15 months after the shooting. In a 122-page report released last Friday, it recommended the suspensions of Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson, the school board chair. A former board member, Rosalind Osgood, was also targeted, but she has since been elected to the state senate.
Murray and Levinson were due to leave office at the end of the year. Korn qualified this week for a November runoff. Good’s term was to expire in 2024.
DeSantis will himself run for re-election in November, against Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor who is now a Democratic congressman. DeSantis is widely believed to have his eye on a prize grander than the governor’s mansion: the White House, as the Republican nominee in 2024.
When the report was released, Levinson condemned a “political hatchet job” she said was orchestrated by DeSantis.
“It is nasty partisan politics,” Levinson said. “He should be ashamed of himself.”
DeSantis is a Republican, but Broward is a Democratic stronghold. DeSantis fired the Broward sheriff, Scott Israel, after taking office in January 2019, saying his lack of leadership contributed to the Stoneman Douglas shooting.
Levinson pointed to victims’ parents who stood with DeSantis when he announced its formation and said the grand jury was supposed to focus on what caused the shooting.
“It is disgusting on the backs of these families to have a bait-and-switch grand jury,” she said. “The majority of the report has nothing to do with Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”
Korn said that “while I respect the grand jury process, I stand on my record”.
The school board has nine members. Two, Debra Hixon and Lori Alhadeff, were elected after Hixon’s husband, Chris, and Alhadeff’s daughter Alyssa were killed at Stoneman Douglas.
Stand with Parkland, a group that represents most victims’ families, said the grand jury report “proves what we already suspected – acts of incompetence, negligence and cover-up and a School Board [that] is unwilling to face the facts”.
The president of Stand with Parkland, Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina was killed, had called on DeSantis to remove the four board members.
On Friday, DeSantis said: “We are grateful to the members of the jury who have dedicated countless hours to this mission, and we hope this suspension brings the Parkland community another step towards justice. This action is in the best interest of the residents and students of Broward county and all citizens of Florida.”
The Broward public schools superintendent at the time of the shooting, Robert Runcie, resigned last year after being indicted for lying to the grand jury. He has pleaded not guilty.
The grand jury said Runcie and the board members made “uninformed or even misinformed decisions” and were guilty of “incompetent management and lack of meaningful oversight”, leading to cost overruns and delays in a school safety and education program approved by voters in 2014.
Announcing the suspensions, DeSantis quoted from the report to say “students continue to be educated in unsafe, aging, decrepit, moldy buildings that were supposed to have been renovated years ago”.
He said: “These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement, across the district.”
Four new members were named.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
