Stoneman Douglas’s latest reminder that we need maximum school choice
Excerpt: The Broward County school district will reassign three assistant principals and the security specialist from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School following a presentation that showed communication failures and untimely responses to the shooting that killed 17 and wounded 17 more on Valentine’s Day.
Assistant principals Jeff Morford, Winfred Porter, and Denise Reed along with security specialist Kelvin Greenleaf will be reassigned “to other BCPS administrative locations,” according to a district press release sent Monday afternoon.
The press release did not include why the officials were being reassigned but said the decision was made after the latest meeting of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission held two weeks ago. A second-by-second breakdown of law enforcement’s response presented at the meeting shows miscommunication among the administrators regarding surveillance video playback of Nikolas Cruz’s rampage through the freshman building.
Bottom Line: Only public sector employees can fail so miserably and remain employed. My goal isn’t to pile on or suggest that if these four individuals would’ve known that their failures would contribute to the problems, they wouldn’t have done everything they could to avoid it. I have no reason to doubt their intentions but that’s the thing. In the real world, aka the private sector, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that these individuals would still be employed. No employer could dare risk future failures that’d be so significant again. This is a microcosm of why it’s imperative for parents to have school choice.
After Stoneman Douglas and the systemic failures, we have the same Superintendent, same Sheriff and the closest thing to accountability is the officer on duty at the school who retired to a six-figure per year pension. That’s also not something that’d ever happen in the real world but that’s for another day. What frustrates me the most about these continued insulting decisions, is that all of these people seemingly forget who they work for, us. Every public sector employee is our employee. Yet poll the community of Stoneman Douglas families and ask if they feel good about reassigning those who contributed to the failures that day?
More than ever before, school choice is needed. It’s needed for a diversity of thought, diversity of opportunity, but mainly it’s needed for competition. Public schools are a monopoly for all but the wealthiest who can afford to opt out and have a choice. Bureaucrats draw artificial lines on maps and effectively decide how education will be for generations of children. This is what happens without real-world competition. Decision after insulting decision. At worst people die. At best how good do feel about these people educating your kids?
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