Florida state officials called emergency meeting with Palm Beach County Schools. Why?

State education officials demanded an emergency meeting with Superintendent Mike Burke and visited Palm Beach County school campuses after a statewide grand jury called out the district and others in its final report on school safety in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland. 

The officials did not raise specific safety concerns with any Palm Beach County campuses. 

Instead, the state's director of safe schools demanded an in-person meeting with Burke to discuss the district's "refusal or failure to follow the mandates of school-related safety laws" and what he called underreporting of crime on school campuses across the state.

Tim Hay gave more details when he said the district "wasted a significant amount of taxpayer dollars" by hiring a private company in 2019 to train safe schools officers — armed security guards who would patrol charter school campuses to comply with the state's guard-on-every-campus mandate. 

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That was a problem, the grand jury wrote, because commission leaders such as Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at the time that guards had to be trained by sheriff's offices, not private companies. 

The Palm Beach County district, among the few with an in-house police department, coordinated with Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw in 2019 to review the training program proposed by Boynton Beach security company Invictus. 

When Bradshaw found issues with the curriculum, such as instructors he said were not certified and students who had not passed the psychological exam, the district backed out of the deal. 

Invictus sued, and the district paid $75,000 in a settlement to the company in February. 

After sending the letter, Hay visited both district-operated public school campuses and charter schools on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1.

When he met with Burke that week, Burke said they discussed the fallout from the district's charter school guard training program, Hay's observations from his campus visits and how Palm Beach County district-run schools, and charter schools specifically, report safety incidents to the state. 

"It was a strong letter, and it certainly got my attention," Burke said of Hay's initial communication.

But he described the meeting as "pleasant," adding that Hay was "complimentary of some things, and there were other things he wanted to have evidence of."

Burke said he and other district leaders across the state expect reports from Hay on his trips to their respective counties in the coming weeks. The grand jury named Broward, Duval, Miami-Dade and Orange counties in its report along with Palm Beach. 

The superintendent did not give a report on his discussions with Hay at Wednesday's school board meeting, and he said there are no immediate changes to the district's safety policies as a result of the meeting. 

Hay could not be reached last week for comment. His office said he was traveling to districts to conduct similar campus visits and meetings. 

This story continues below.

DeSantis removes 4 school board members  in Broward

The sudden focus on school campus safety comes after the public release of a grand jury report that Gov. Ron DeSantis cited in his Aug. 26 removal of four Broward County School Board members.

The report, which was completed in 2021, reviewed school safety and the Broward County School Board's response to the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 people dead and 17 others injured.

DeSantis removed Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray and Laurie Rich Levinson from office, citing the recommendations of the statewide grand jury. He accused them of "incompetence, neglect of duty, and misuse of authority."

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"The final report of the Grand Jury found that a safety-related alarm that could have possibly saved lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School 'was and is such a low priority that it remains uninstalled at multiple schools,'" DeSantis' press office said in a statement regarding the board members' removals. 

In Palm Beach County, Burke was unequivocal in saying local school board members are not at risk of losing their jobs. 

"We have had successful referendums, and delivered on our promises. I would not see any reason why they would consider that," he said. "I don’t think we can compare Palm Beach to Broward in this instance." 

In the letter to the district dated Aug. 29, Hay did not suggest any Palm Beach County School Board members were being targeted for removal.

He said the district's plan to use a private security firm to train charter school guards put students at risk, even though all schools had a security officer at the start of the 2019-20 school year after the sheriff's office stepped in to train them when the district scrapped the contract with Invictus.

But Burke didn't take the letter on the chin. 

He responded in a letter the next day to acknowledge the concerns with hiring a private security firm to train officers but pushed back against other claims he said were not specific to Palm Beach County — such as the underreporting of crime on campus.

"Points identified in your letter, other than the bullets related to the District's hiring of a private security firm (Invictus), are themes found by the Statewide Grand Jury to have statewide applicability, but were not identified … as concerns in Palm Beach County," Burke wrote back 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 is concerned with how it gets data from schools across the state. Currently, schools use standardized reporting categories to classify incidents similar to law enforcement, including categories such as trespassing, drug sale and arson. 

School crime data is available online.

Burke said he has seen no evidence that Palm Beach County is underreporting crime, nor did the Department of Education provide any specific concerns during the meeting.

"If we’ve underreported something, it hasn’t been brought to my attention to date," Burke said. "No one has found evidence of that."

After the Friday meeting, district staff sent the state dozens of documents that show how Palm Beach County school administrators report safety incidents on campus and how the district communicates with charter schools.

Hay sent similar letters to at least four other school districts, including Broward, Duval, Orange and Miami-Dade counties, Florida Politics reported.

The five districts contacted by Hay's office are among the six largest in the state and serve a combined total of more than 1.1 million students. 

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering education at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com. Help support our work, subscribe today!