The Model of a Modern School Administrator

Two years ago, Broward County school superintendent Robert Runcie resigned in disgrace after being indicted for committing perjury to a grand jury. Last week, Runcie was appointed CEO of Chiefs for Change, arguably America’s preeminent educational-leadership training organization. As the reputation of this organization is bound up with that of its leader, it’s worth taking a moment to review Runcie’s record.

Runcie had never been a teacher or a principal before being tapped to lead America’s sixth-largest school district. His signature initiative was the PROMISE program, intended to reduce school-based arrests. PROMISE did this by decriminalizing misdemeanors. Students could commit three free misdemeanors per year before warranting consultation with a school resource officer (SRO). According to one former SRO, the district instructed them to place some felony offenses under this program as well. The district also instructed principals to refuse to cooperate with law enforcement if the officers came to campus to arrest a suspected felon.

In lieu of law enforcement referral, students attended the offsite PROMISE program. Based on school district policy, a convicted murderer or rapist could reintegrate into Broward public schools after a relatively short stint via PROMISE. Family members of the victims of the Parkland school shooting say that former Broward County state’s attorney Michael Satz later told them that PROMISE amounted to systematic obstruction of justice. It reduced arrests by over 60 percent and made Superintendent Runcie a national education reform star.

Shortly after the Parkland shooting, families of victims raised the question of whether Runcie’s lenient approach to school safety enabled the shooter to slip through the cracks. Runcie called this “fake news.” Runcie claimed that the shooter “had nothing to do with PROMISE,” never committed any PROMISE-eligible offenses, and was never referred to the program. But he had committed such offenses, and he was referred. The records, however, were too sloppy to determine whether the shooter actually attended the program.

Victims’ families were also concerned that the school district had failed to effectively spend bond money on school safety improvements. At a school board meeting weeks after the tragedy, a student journalist pointed out that the district had spent only $ 5 million of the planned $100 million on school safety improvements. Runcie called this “fake news,” too. But it was entirely true.

The bond program was overseen by Leo Bobadilla, who had previously led an $800 million bond initiative in Houston. Shortly before the board voted to hire Bobadilla, rumors swirled that a forthcoming audit would demonstrate terrible mismanagement. Runcie knew about the audit, but told the board that it didn’t exist. The board hired Bobadilla. Days later, the audit was released, and former Houston school board member Anna Eastman concluded that the bond administrators likely knowingly circumvented state laws.

Runcie’s disastrous bond administration may have been more than a case of extreme incompetence. In a sworn deposition, former school board member Nora Rupert stated that she was told that the delays were the intentional result of a quid pro quo between Runcie and members of a consortium of local businesses. The district would slow-walk the projects, then go back to the taxpayers for more money, resulting in more money over a longer time horizon going to local businesses. In exchange, the consortium would lend Runcie its political support. One delayed safety improvement was a new fire alarm for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that, accounts suggest, would have had a delayed discretionary trigger. There’s a strong case that this improvement could have saved six lives on the third floor as the shooting unfolded. Ultimately, Runcie was indicted for perjury for matters relating to the administration of this bond.

Following the tragedy, Runcie executed a public affairs strategy that the South Florida Sun Sentinel described as “Hide, Spin, Deny, Threaten.” In that entry in its Pulitzer Prize winning series on the district’s failure before, during, and after the shooting, the Sentinel wrote: “Immediately after 17 people were murdered inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the school district launched a persistent effort to keep people from finding out what went wrong. For months, Broward schools delayed or withheld records, refused to publicly assess the role of employees, spread misinformation and even sought to jail reporters who published the truth.” On one occasion, expecting criticism of Runcie from Parkland parents at a public meeting, Runcie’s deputy told local black church leaders that the parents’ concerns were rooted in racism. Busloads of churchgoers attended the meeting and booed families of victims when they called for accountability.

April Schentrup, a former Broward school principal who lost her daughter Carmen in Parkland, said, “basic school safety measures were not in place … Even after the tragedy, [Runcie] spent most of his efforts spinning or hiding information from families of the victims and the community about what really happened.” Schentrup said that Runcie’s “lack of compassion towards the victims’ families and his refusal to investigate or make necessary changes” should have disqualified him from his new leadership role. Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter Alaina and serves on the Florida Board of Education, agrees. “Only an organization determined on assisting school districts to hide school safety issues, stonewalling parents, teachers and law enforcement would ask him to be their CEO.”

Upon learning of Runcie’s hiring, former Florida K-12 school chancellor Jacob Oliva, who now serves as Arkansas’s Secretary of Education, e-mailed Chiefs for Change to withdraw his affiliation and ask to have his name removed from its website. Time will tell whether other education leaders will follow suit. Affiliation with Chiefs for Change should, at this point, be a stain on the honor of any education leader – provided, of course, that they see a moral problem with a leader lying to the public, to parents of murdered children, and (allegedly) to a grand jury about his failures.