Transcripts For CSPAN2 Andrew Pollack Why Meadow Died 20240713

Good afternoon. Im sarah perry, director partnerships here at the Family Research council and it is my very great privilege to introduce todays lecture and a coauthor of the book upon which it is based, why meadow died the people and polices that created parklands shooter and endanger americas students. As a reminder to those of you in the audience we will be taking questions during the last 1520 minutes and we will let you know when opening it up. The lecture will be archived in our Speaker Series library at frc. Org speakers. When completed we encourage you to share it on your social media platforms. Bill wrote tonight is the untold almost unbelievable true story about the world corruption rot by politically correct policies and willful blindness made the most avoidable School Shooting in history somehow inevitable. Broward county, florida was ground zero for a new approach to School Discipline prompted by radical leftist organizations and enforced by an Obama Department of education Dear Colleague letter. These groups paddled a false school to prison pipeline narrative claiming teachers and principals were massively systematically racist and could not be trusted to enforce rules with consequences. So instead they argued for healing circles and Restorative Justice. As as a consequence these polics enabled a psychopathic criminal to maintain a clean akron check and purchase a firearm used to murder 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The Obama Administration forced his leniency policies into hundreds of school serving millions of students by way of a letter which threatened a loss of federal funding if schools were to offend racially disparate in their suspension rates. Maxine is quite visible, senior fellow for education at the newark citybased Manhattan Institute. Is a former Program Manager of the Education Policy Studies Department of the American Enterprise institute and has a ba from yale university. Andrew pollack is an unlikely political activist, an entrepreneur and this is meant with experience in scrap metal and real estate but everything changed when his daughter meadow was murdered on february 14 of last year. In a dedicate his life to making schools safe again. He said a nonprofit, americans for childrens lives and school safety, or class which is geared towards ensuring the families of victims get answers and justice. To begin, ladies and gentlemen, andrew pollack. [applause] hey, everyone. Id like to thank everyone for coming and im going to tell you a little about my story which is kind of rough for me to do but im going to do it for you. I was never into politics before this happened. Actually the first time i voted was in 2016. So when i looked on the want to know was why my daughter that it was murdered at the school, how i could bring my daughter, i moved from long island to it uppermiddleclass neighborhood in broward and i felt like every other parent that the school is safe and i didnt really look into really what was going on at the schools, which something i live with to this day not knowing what was going on at the schools. So february 14 was valentines day. I was with my wife on a picnic, and thats what i got the call from my son. I said it wasnt going to the speech every can but it really kills me, so my son told me there was a shooting at the school and i didnt think anything of it. I just thought it was maybe one incident or something happened with a police officer, was an accidental misfire. But as they started regressing, it started getting worse and the calls kept coming in, and then they couldnt we couldnt find meadow all day long so we went from hospital to my wife worked at the hospital so we had to look, i had her going from room to room in the hospital looking for my daughter, and we couldnt find her that day. She wasnt in the operating room, and we gave up our search your chemistry and about 4 00 in the afternoon and thats when we regrouped at home. And i knew personally when we couldnt reach her by 6 00, that my daughter was murdered. And i tell everybody that, i used the word murdered because thats what she was. A lot of people tell me she passed, she died. I dont like it sugarcoated. She was murdered at that school. So within the next couple of days the media jumped on this event, and even the superintendent, robert, was already bring you the nra, blaming guns. The sheriff blaming guns. At your touch, i just want to tie why the sheriff, the sheriff, what youre talking about this Restorative Justice program of leniency, not reporting crimes, these sheriffs our elected officials and benefits him to join these type of policies because his crime stats will look much better when he goes and runs and runs his commercial for sheriff when he can say he reduced crimes by 30 . But in actuality they are just not arresting. Through our investigation the Sheriffs Department was at his murderers house 45 times without an arrest. The sheriff makes a point to say he judged a success rate by the kids he kept out of jail. So if thats the way if you would been arrested once he would have, background would have been dinged and when they tipped off the fbi it would have came up, that he was a problem kid, but he had no background, no issues. So as time started going on, i needed to honor my daughter and i wanted to find out everything that went wrong. And believe me, its in this book. It took a book youre not an article that we were first could put together. A book to show the magnitude of failures. And i owed it to my daughter to honor her. My daughter would want me to hold every single one accountable. And thats what im doing. Im wrecking everybody that got their hand in this. And its been a long after we had to do. A lot of people dont know about. We had to get a government elected in florida, ron desantis. Ron ran on accountability and he stuck to his promise to an annuity is going to do it and i put my heart and soul into that guys campaign. What did ron do the first week in office . He removed the piece of garbage sheriff israel from office, and thats what that guy is. He actually, you guys dont know this but i know about it because i live it, my daughter is dead because of it. He changed the policy in active shooters to, his deputies may go into the building. It used to read deputies shall enter a building. He changed his, he changed it on, what is it, the protocol, may go in. So of course what happened . Five deputies show up and none of them go into the building. They could hear the shots going off on their body cameras, one is taking his time on his body can walk to the back of his car to put a vest on when my daughter is getting murdered. You hear the shots in the background. Kids are getting shot and hes pulling up, putting a vest on and doesnt go in the building. Another deputy hides behind a a wall, doesnt go in. He was nine feet from the door, to open the door where the killer was and doesnt go into the building. And let everybody die. So theres just so many failures that happened, so ron desantis, he removed the sheriff. That was very important to me. Next thing wrong does ron does for accountability is he opens up a grand jury investigation into the school board. Because they are so unethical, the people, im so damaged from living in broward. I hate to categorize democrats, but i dont care no more, know what i mean . They hurt me more than anyone imaginable. Whenever you than talking about the president , day in and day out, thats nothing compared with the democrats in broward did to me and my family. None of them accept accountability. The sheriff was removed. Hes actually running again in Broward County in 2020. And businesses businesses are opening up fundraisers for this failed share. Thats the type of people in broward, how an ethyl they and what to do, whether due to the families. What i see, you know what you mean . The superintendent, okay, families went to the School Board Meeting and they wanted accountability, ask the superintendent about these Restorative Justice policies that he brought to broward and what did he say to the families . He called it reprehensible that they would question him and they were called racists for wanting accountability for their dead children. This is what the superintendent and the community did. The school board, a few of them came around. I ran a School Board Race i can honestly tell you, i did everything humanly possible to try t and fix this county of broward, and its just not repairable. I ran a School Board Race to get rid of these policies, to fix the schools. And who fought me at every single early voting is the broward Teachers Union. Teachers, you know what i mean . I wanted to make it safer for the teachers. We wanted the School Districts have become the teachers safer. Broward Teachers Union bought us like it was the civil war, the north against the south. Thats what i had to deal with. And had an army of people from all over the country to help run the School Board Race but i couldnt do it. I couldnt get it done. Whats ironic is, because of these programs, this Restorative Justice programs in broward, we wanted to change it but they fought us. So now about a month ago i want you to know that other Teachers Union was at the School Board Meeting complaining to the district that all the teachers are getting beat up, the teachers are getting assaulted, and we need to have a change in broward. Help me with the stats, max. Could you say the stats . This is the stats, so 2000 teachers were interviewed in broward, okay . Could you just say the stats . [inaudible] [inaudible] so what, it even gets crazier, and i keep categorizing democrats because at the end of it, the day, theyre all a democrat at the end and i had to deal with them. So this is the Teachers Union that podcast, right . This is a present out of the Teachers Union is at the School Board Meeting complaining that her teachers are getting beat up, right . I want you do know that week they have a fundraiser for the sheriff, okay, at a business, and you do think is at the fundraiser supporting the sheriff . Broward Teachers Union president. If you could believe it. This is just whats going on with these teachers and really its really the Public School systems that it had, at attack right now. California just passed a bill f it was following education, gavin newsom signed into law that its illegal to suspend a disruptive student. I dont even know how i could make sense, even if a democrat, it cant make sense to put your kid in a school with a could say whatever they want to the teacher. They get back in with you want. No consequence. Those are the same policies that led to my daughter getting murdered. And theyre still in broward. This broward, the School District still has these policies so when my daughter without the school when the policies was they were allowed four misdemeanors per school year without ever getting introduced to the judicial system or Law Enforcement. So one of them was, which is i dont know how a parent could be you dont know these things. I did know them but im living with it now. They were actually, so i dont know the legal amount. Say its just, lets call it an ounce, if you have more than an ounce it would be a felony. So in Broward County if you have 30 bags of weed in the school and you are distributing and its less than that fell in amount, they dont consider it a crime. It would be just into one of those healing circles where they put on the teacher. Lets put them in a healing circle, this child, and try and put it bit you on for them and thats going to cure it. This i know as fact because they make the police out to be the enemy, these bureaucrats that run these schools. I know its a fact because my buddies ar are in law enforcemet at the schools. They have a special School Police unit who gave me those records of multiple children with, you know, just drugs, ten bags of weed, 15 bags of weed and it wont let them arrest the kids. They put them into that healing circle that we spoke about. I dont know, im just, and what bothered me this week, too, was, so this book is the truth with in this book regardless of the media, everyone knows, the people i got the attention in parkland with a gun people that wanted to say it was about a scary gun. It was the nra and if it was that come i would be a peer tell you thats what it was like i said, i was going to find it everything why and how my daughter got killed. And it was all these leniency programs of these kids, like they had the first kid before school, he was a dangerous, that i found that the they first came and he wasnt not in with a backpack, a thats a dangerous t was. He threatened to shoot the school of come wasnt arrested. He threatens student lives, never arrested. At one point his Mental Health workers wrote a letter to a psychiatrist that they were worried they couldnt find a hatchet. There was a hatchet missing in his garage and he did know what they should do with him. But those same mental case counselors that were overseeing him, eight months later they recommended him to be mainstream into the School District with my daughter, the same people, that was his care. From middle school he was infatuated with guns. In the book you can read the record we got. He said he wanted to kill, they had to tie his desk down in middle school. And then at the end of the day when they mainstream to back in high school, the first class they putting in was jrotc whether todd about a shoot and they gave him an air rifle. Thats whats going on in the schools. So what brings me also to say is when this first happened, i really wanted to be the last parent that could say they lost a child in a school, but i saw that i couldnt achieve that. That was out of my hands. There were more School Shootings. With santa fe, charlotte, some in colorado, and kids were getting killed. So i couldnt the last parent. But now i can honestly say i want to be the last parent they could say they di didnt know wt is going on in these schools, okay . And thats whats important for me to get this message out. I dont want to hear it from a parent, i cant believe like it was bullied, i cant believe like you guys are broken, i cant believe the iphone was told again for their selling truck that i cant leave my kid has to sit there and twiddle his arms wide to teach us to deal another kid for 20 minutes. All these things are going on and its no excuse for parents now to take it. Politicians can only do so much. The president , his administration did so much for me, and schools across america, but it doesnt matter what the president does. He doesnt get any credit. He had this Federal School commission. He rescinded those obama era policies which meant a lot to me. They put ten months of research into it, but what does that mean . Broward county for my daughter was murdered, its the greatest, its like, its the greatest thing since cut bread, this policy, of not disciplined kids and giving them chance after chance. Other School Districts still a going to deal with it, so politicians can only do so much and its on the parents now. I tell it to them, listen, parents, you take to get to the school bus. You dragged into the school. You put them in that environment. You cant look for politicians to help you. They cant do it at a local level when it comes to School Districts. The only people that can do anything now for the Public School system is parents and grandparents, or else its really doomed, the Public School system. Its just going to more segregation i see coming, people that could afford it will send their kids to private school, Charter Schools are booming. You cant get into a charter school. We have just got to help tickets on the parents and grandparents, and i hope everyone would read my book, bring it to school, give it to a teacher, give it to a principal and use it as a manual now that thats what it is that i dont even say its a book. Its a manual for parents to see what happened in broward, if theyre interested in knowing the truth. And all week long i tried to get on Mainstream Media channels to show them the truth, and they were not interested. I guess to their viewers its not important to liberal viewers to put the kids and a safe environment and to know whats going on. And i tried, believe me. Cnn, they canceled on me. Msnbc, i never back from. Abc, i shot a video for, and still waiting for, i think they wasted my time cbs, i did a video. It wasnt important enough, children safety, to be on one of their live shows that they put me on a digital one and then they try to put me against, they used my clip and question another of the lost a kid to see if he would go against what i said. Thats what cbs did. These other channels, their despicable and th and this shoue embarrassed of themselves of not wanting the truth to get out. Only parents that watch fox that are going to know the truth because i couldve had between d. C. And new york and i couldve slept there. Ever wanted to know the truth and they woke me on every single show. They did everything to get their listeners to really know the truth, and max is a fax guy. Hes an educational policy country i did know anything about this stuff but i felt the need to educate parents and get the word out. So thank you for coming and we will answer some questions and max can speak, write . Thank you. [applause] thank you all for coming. As andy said its been a somewhat mixed thing saying the receptions of this book thus far. It was somewhat that phenomenon that led me going down to parkland meeting him, getting involved and kind of joining him on his mission to try to get why his daughter was murdered and make something good come out of it. Because in the very beginning, a day, two days later, two groups of students came forward. One group immediately pointed its think at the nra and republicans and call for background checks. Another group said we all knew that he was going to do this. He threatened to kill a. He threatened to rape us. He threatened to shoot at the school. We knew it was him before it was done, and this is verifiable. They sent snapchat backandforth wiles having come visit this kid . Those kids didnt get very much attention. They were featured for a couple days and they went away. I from my perch in d. C. As a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute look at this and i thought all these kids are saying he committed these coloniefelonies in school and ht arrested, and Broward County became nationally famous for its policy to decrease arrests. In fact, it became the model for the nation to fix the school to prison pipeline by lowering suspension, expulsions and arrests. So maybe these policies had something to do with how to reconcile these obscured text. I wrote an article posing the question and it became polarized. Some conservative media took it as an answer that it wasnt the gun. It was these obama era leaning policy. More of a question and answer. Liberal media, Mainstream Media will end quote decided that was a conservative thing. So it didnt to be investigated. It should be attacked. And i dont, im not overstating this because the superintendent after this news cycle started coming up kind from conservative media responded by saying that this is fake news because the shooter was never referred to the promised Diversion Program nor did the committee promised eligible offense while in high school. So anybody who can read or understand the meaning of english knows that those last three words were there for a reason, mainstream reporting drop those last three words and were quite content to move on having highlight some kids were jelly and republicans in bashing the nra. A couple months after to answer the question because it didnt particularly like being called nra shall, i want to be a Serious Research and figure out the truth. I came down to parkland had no intention of meeting andy. I do want to talk to some teachers, students, made write an article. He found out i was in town and he texted me. Because anybody who he ever heard was trying to find something, he got in contact with. We would not have met on my the court it was all because he texted me because you heard i was in town. Kind of explained to and what i was doing, why was doing it, and he texted me a few days later, i gave him some questions to take to the state commission where he finds out the state commission that has subpoena power still has not received the shooters disciplinary records, and he says max, thank you so much, you will be a great asset for helping but me find just as month daughters murdered. I didnt find what it wanted to write the first time when 80 said that i couldnt not come back. Being him and a person, the guy who is working with meadows death. A lot more people are going to talk to me and i start point out so much that mindboggling, its tiger and a realize this has to be a book. It cant be an article because there is something too much. Its as though everything thats going on in American Education all polluted to let this happen. I ended up taking a leave of absence from the Manhattan Institute because i couldnt not write this book and it needed to be a fulltime endeavor. Unfortunately, explaining the significance of the book requires explaining the shooters life. You saw this know know to write it, dont say spain, dont talk about it a as a doubleedge swod because it also shields attention away from what went wrong and why. Andy and i had to fight for every single biographical detail about his daughters murder in order to figure out why this story was the way it was in order to show that store, to try to make something good come out of it. From a policy perspective there are these two joint forces that were happening simultaneously and came together. One is this pressure to teach students with disabilities in the least restrictive environments, to be inclusive, which makes sense if its physical impairment, who is dyslexic. Its quite another thing when the disability is that hes emotionally and behaviorally disturbed, which is to say hes a crazy kid. You look at this kids records picky was kicked out of private prek. He had to be an artist when using prek and Elementary School. He could never last for more than a few months in Elementary School any normal classroom. They tried to put into Traditional Middle School because middle and high school it to choices in the public system, a Normal School or super max facility. They tried in the Normal School. His behavior become so that halfway through seventh grade year that he suspended every other day. As andy says hes fixated on guns. There are detailed records his teacher takes where he talks about a guns every day that hes in the class and is only in the class every other day because hes talking about guns. Hes pulling the fire alarm, throwing his desk, jumping out from behind kids. Everybody was terrified of them at the school. He required a skewed escort to walk from one class to another. Eventually required his mother to accompany the secret x court to walk among class to another. Teachers try to bar the door against him, and when h i spokeo one staff member, when they heard of the shooting and reduce income they didnt believe it. Not because they didnt think he could do it because i couldnt understand how he was ever sent to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. [inaudible] yes, west place as a middle school and it took of them a year to send into the Specialized School, a full year to do something that every single adult and kid in that school knew needed to be done because in order to respect the rights of a student with disabilities you have to go through this family voluminous checklist that provides all prudent human judgment, that makes everybody suffer. So they sen sent him to a Specialized School where asante said his behavior was so troublesome that a therapist, a psychiatrist sent a letter to his private psychiatrist at the end of the first school year. The next year he has a couple, months, october to may hes doing better as you would hope that if kids like him would do better when hes in a two to one student to adult class super sensitive sport run. He was exactly where he needed to be and he was making progress. And because he was making progress they decided lets send it to traditional school, and hes always talk about the military. Maybe once a career in the military, lets put them in jrotc. They put it in two classes, one semester. The staff there, and we know this effectively fact, all of it as he said that part of it is been a deposition didnt beat his records. So they didnt really know who is coming into the school from one individual try to object, read his records, jumped up and down saint this kid shouldnt come here. She was overruled. In high school the kind of record we found in middle school doesnt exist. We hear the same things that we heard about him in middle school but there is no documentary evidence of it because by this time the other pressure, the leanings pressure has fully set in with the Broward County School District. We hear these brought to the officer of day, he comes to school in full camera. He has the words i hate the inward written on his backpack. We hear he brings nights to school. We hear he carved swastikas into lunchroom tables. Hes only officially disciplined once in his first full semester as a fulltime student, and on the day his usual assistant principal is absent. Because if youre an assistant principal you are judged by how few suspensions are. You have an absolute bureaucratic administrative imperative to not record thinks and also not to arrest kids. So by the time he got into traditional high school, the system was so sick that there was nothing that could catch that pathogen, they kind of because what was it for just this politically correct cancer, these leniency policies combined with this disability policy that, you know, we hold an entirely morally responsible but the worst thing you can understand why they did what they did. We save if one single individual in the Broward County School District made one single responsible decision about him he couldve been avoided. But you cant call what happened a failure exactly because every irresponsible decision actually makes rational sense. The reason this matters outside of parkland as andy and sarah alluded to is parker became the model for the nation. Broward became the model for the nation, is incompetent superintendent Robert Runcie and abroad from chicago were used to do i. T. For arne duncan he became obamas sec def education. Never been a teacher, never been a principal, and i. T. Guy with a business degree leads the sixth largest School District in america with a 4 billion budget courtesy, and our opinion, largely because his was the secretary of education. And arne duncan was so impressed by what was happening in proud that he thought wow this is great, we should do this before. Look, they have suspensions done. They have a rest now and all across the country that are high rates of discipline for africanamerican students interested with end quote disabilities. And we know as progressive bureaucrats this is because they are racist and they are able us, and now we know the solution from Broward County so this should be everywhere. So the Obama Administration took the suite a latency policies pioneered in broward and a tried and in this Dear Colleague letter thing to School Districts across the country, if you disparate rates of discipline by rates on tight race for just about anything else we will assume you are discriminating. If you treat the student differently, its as if students of different groups get disciplined at different rates. Then we will come after you and were going to threaten to take away your federal funding, going to investigate you until you agree to adopt all of these policies. So from 20142019, now according to one National Survey and think its a modest estimate, 42 of american schools to this Restorative Justice stuff. I think thats on the lower side of it. The reason why this matters is that kind of the tagline of the book which has been so its crazy through market but its entirely true, the parkland School Shooting is the most immortal of mass murder in history and the policy that made it inevitable are everywhere. They spread your kids school. Is it going to link to your kids getting murdered . Probably not. Does it increase the likelihood of Mass Shootings and it outside of school . Look at the dayton shooter or get killed us, a rate less. He never got arrested. With a deep problem with disaffected angry young men who need to be tagged, who deserve to be in the socalled school to prison pipeline, who should fail a background check because they are psychotic felons, but if we dont let juveniles get records of background checks are worthless, and this policy to reward school administrators, to not take action increases the odds of this happening but also destroys the environment for schools. The literature is entirely unambiguous echo it is been studied because some of your teachers have been polled a local event said this does not work. A National Poll came out the other week and 70 of teachers said they got these rates down a suspensions by underreporting, or 70 by higher tolerance for risk the 50 by underreporting. Everywhere i looked at student surveys you see i was suggested and say i dont feel safe, i dont feel respected, and these policies are spreading anywhere because they make the bureaucrats feel good and because its framed in terms of racial justice, which is to go back to a term andy find it but i think it is great, politically correct cancer that has infected our schools. It kind of turned against itself and is very difficult to cure because parents have limited control over it. It is set by this outside activists groups are pushing this agenda, bureaucrats who get rewarded for not doing their jobs, and parents dont really know when the kid gets bullied or beat up your fatal think to themselves this is because of a National Policy but this is because of local policy. They just think some rest of this happening to my kids at school. Our hope is this book wakes parents of, and the only thing that can actually change this is parents taking action at the local level, talking to teacher or School Resource officer, asking about what is going on. Is the stuff we describe it happen in Marjory Stoneman douglas happen in your Kids High School or middle school . If it is yet to take action, or teacher will not take action. Shes scared of retaliation. No politician it has to be on the parents. As andy said we failed in proud to do that. I think broward is irredeemable and deplorable, and hopefully this book can inform parents to take action in their schools to make the kids safe. Its very much analogous to the common core. I would rather hope that it is, which is to say that the Obama Administration spread it ever across america wit without pares knowledge teachers consent. One day parents are to wake up come somebody explain to the end is a grassroots rebellion against it. And its not quite overturn but always somewhat neutralize, and our hope is that when parents read this book they will know what to look for an they will do, know what they need to do. He will have the manual to keep their kids safe, and thats how we got to this place. As andy said, unfortunately, its still only one side of the political spectrum that seems have any interest in the facts. Hartline was according to the associate press the biggest story of 2018, but to them the big story was a couple teenagers yelling at republicans. The big story wasnt why these kids got murdered and what you need to do. Some people recognize that sun sentinel got the Pulitzer Prize for exposing a fracture of what we have in this book but i can tell you for a fact education reporters, producers of shows seem to regard the judgment of the Pulitzer Committee and far lower esteem or prioritize it far less than witch talking points to the stick to and what becomes inconvenience for what you have heard. The last thing i will say, and i get to questions, is this is very much like chernobyl, right . The hbo document of what led up to that massive meltdown in the Nuclear Power reactor in russia with a series of unbelievable incompetent decisions that all have to go together in order to be this meltdown. But each unbelievable decision makes total sense if youre a soviet apparatchik, and none of it wouldve been exposed if not for a couple of people who stood up and made sure of it. And soviet russia, because of the actions of the scientist who told a story to get the tapes out there, they fixed the nuclear reactors. They are safer and it remains to be seen whether or not we can get with American Education. Thank you. [applause] were going to take questions now for the next 15 minutes or so, but i want to start with the first question. Maybe its just sheer selfishness on my part but i will say a start parental activism is concerned, for those of you in the audience who have kids who are interested in whether or not policies like these are working interschool, for the first time, and i consider myself fairly conversant in education policy. I sat down and read the disciplinary handbook cover to cover as a direct result of this book. It really is about educating yourself on what is happening in your kids school before it is too late. Its very easy, and you will identify this to point the finger at the gun lobby. Edwin says the guns of the problems, its an easy, convenient solution. Are to other organizations that are outside the machinery of the Education Department that you think were involved in what happened here . I know there was. Im on twitter and the call me out all the time. Theres a couple of them that said aclu and they are just horrible group of people, and southern poverty law group, law center. I will tweet something and theyre all for these policies without, and theyre not interested in the facts. Like a lot of people, and its pretty sad because we have the facts number and the more they pushed these types of policies, the more theyre going to ruin Public Education. And the more segregation that will be in this country because, and is happening. I met with the department of education this week. They see the pattern of Charter Schools. They see the pattern of private schools and home school, okay . If parents dont do something now about it, Public Education is just going to keep going down. Like i tell parents, dont do what i did take it that your kid is going to be safe at the school. Its up to you to put them in the right environment, and they have no excuse to do that. Ill just add onto that a little bit. I mean, i think the argument that was made about the nra couldve been true if there were any policy relevant point you could point back to the nra. The nra lobby about the stuff, where the case something bush had a connection we would be here telling you that. But what is not to the nra, is true of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They use litigation. They use press releases. They use their allies in the media to basically operate a telling School Districts you will about our policies or else were going to see you or label you as racist. It matters absolute not what wih these policies due to student. It matters not what these policies due to black students. We know what did you two black students. They hurt them. But this is how the Southern Poverty Law Center makes money, this is what they do to the bureaucracy and the ideology of Public Education, that pattern, the pathos of pathology starts there and, in fact, index education bureaucrats. Andy alluded to this in his comments but but i want to spet a little bit more. There were a series of meetings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They were closeddoor meetings, the superintendent made sure that only one School Board Member was about to speak because if to mexico and would have to be Public Record in minutes would have to be taken. Thats called sunshine law. Sunshine laws, so there are these meetings, some of the parents are not happy with the School District for all sorts of reasons. A couple weeks later the superintendent hold another and become a Public Meeting at a neighboring high school, and has his deputy email at various activist groups and say we just had a series of closeddoor meetings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. We havent heard rhetoric that this was enforcement please come to the School District and supporter superintendent, right . We reached a point in Public Education where your kid can get murdered in school and if you ask why are you try to hold people accountable, you will be called a racist, and nobody will really care. That to my mind goes back to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the politically correct cancer that they infected the School System with. Im so, so, so sorry for your loss. Thank you for coming today and sharing your story. Im actually a former juvenile prosecutor from new york, and i dont know how things work in florida or other places, but they are really not doing, the bad get a favor either because at least in new york the juvenile system unlike the adult system is a site you rehabilitate them give them therapy and help them get better. So we dont, i wanted to make that point. And to get a lot of changes as a juvenile and an expunged record at the end or sealed record. So what would you suggest for parents who would you suggest that they send their kids to private school a Religious School . Can i assume those same crazy policies dont apply to the private schools . I would like to answer i in a couple phases. One is, i dont know, i dont hear School Shootings going on at private schools. You know what they mean . They dont deal with the emotionally disturbed kids. They dont have to deal with these policies. And i made a mistake, i have to live with it. I shouldve sent my daughter to a private. She would be alive, just telling you. If i read this book two years ago before this, my daughter would be a lie. But he didnt touch on another person that im kind of, hes on my target was, too, and he is the District Attorney in florida, in broward. Is actually trying a murder case against a murderer. His name is mike and his been there for 30 something years, maybe 40. Hes trying the case, but when i started doing my research into these policies, his signature is on this Restorative Justice document, right . So i do the righteous thing and i sat and meeting up with this District Attorney, and i want to know the facts. I want to take it in. So i set up a meeting with myself, my attorney and some other parents to give him a chance, you know, of accepting accountability for having a role in my daughter getting murdered. So what he told us was so despicable, and im going to kill you, and my lawyer, i had my lawyer with me and he says hes never heard public official Say Something like he had. So for all the years he knew they had this Restorative Justice program in, he knew that the School District was obstructing justice. Thank you didnt want to be the one to in it because he was scared they would call him a racist. And thats what he told the parents who lost, not loss, who had kids murdered at that school. So in my eyes this guy, hes one of, part of the problem at broward. And, of course, hes, the party he happens to belong to is the democratic party, another one, and im going to hold him accountable so youll see something in the news, i am for the Death Penalty but i cant let someone do that to my daughter and not be held accountable or accept responsibility. So parents, so thats whats going on broward, the da signed onto these things, because hes an elected official and he was worried they would call them a racist. But it was okay for the school to obstruct justice. He knew how bad the policies were. He knew what it was doing to these children, not setting them up for success. But parents dont, dont get into the political stuff. You had to stay out of it. You are responsible for your kid. These programs are going on. I do want to hear from any parent. I couldnt fix the school board and my daughter was murdered, and im not the average parent, okay . And average parent that has a kid, you could look into it and then make the right decision for your child, and thats what i would tell every parent, and this option can do whatever you got to do. I dont care what you got to do to afford it, or move. Thats your options. Thank you very much for being here and for your frankness. I feel like no words are appropriate except we do grieve with you, and it hurts to hear your story so we appreciate what youre doing and spreading the message. My question centers on some of the difficulties it seems you have and the us versus them environment it seems between parents and bureaucrats, Public School officials. So do you have some practical advice on how to get results . I know you disappoint what happened in broward and other places, but 80 but i do of allo to Public Schools and so just some advice for parents or of the people that want to try to make changes to School Boards or two other areas of Public Education . Once they start asking questions it seems like you dont always even get honest answers, so how can people be more effective at advocating for these policies . When i get into this i wasnt nothing about politics. My message was, i want to make the schools safer, okay . I want to harden the school with more security of ones security at the school. I wanted teachers safer, students safer. After dealing with the people i dealt with, im proud to be republican because i dont really have the time or patience to deal with those type of peel. But parents, you know, ive got to tell you i did everything humanly possibly to fix Broward County, and i couldnt get it done. Like im going to answer you the participant, the average parent, i dont know if theyre going to fix their school board. Ing they could try. They could read my book and talk to the resource officers, talk to the teacher. But most teachers, most of them like in broward are spineless, you know . They get no money. They dont speak up for themselves. So i dont have tons of sympathy for them. Because when we ran the School Board Race, we ran better pay, get rid of these policies of discipline so you could have a better work atmosphere. They were nowhere to be seen, these people. I didnt see them. I saw four teachers out of 2,000 trying to help us. So the parents looked into it, and then youre going to have options, okay . Like you said 90 . Well, then 90 gotta look into it and make changes. They all gotta get together and make a difference, strength in numbers, or move. Charter school, home school or roll the dice. Thats what i say. You want to roll the dice every day, then they roll the dice. Ill just say one more thing which is that i think schools are only this way because participants let them parents let them be this way, and the only people that School Board Members hear from are organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, like the aclu, and its framed so nicely that how could you not . At the School Board Meeting where a group of parents and students came to ask questions about these policies, superintendent runcie looks at them and says, you know, i find it kind of ironic that folks are coming to lecture us on our discipline piece when just the other day i got a letter from the aclu, and they say im not going hard enough at this stuff, basically. Thats a very close paraphrase, not word for word. And if those are the only people you hear from, then those are the people you listen to. We just have to hope that most School Board Members, most superintendents arent, as andy says, as morally and mentally challenged as the ones in broward. And that if a group of parents come to the School Board Members and say this is unacceptable, our teachers are scared, this is bad for our kids, School Board Members for the most part just want to help run schools well but are only told what theyre told the, well, hopefully take action based off that. We have to hope. The School Board Members are elected. Yeah. You know, the parents could, you know, join together and make a difference. Like i said, we failed, but im not thats broward, you know . Theyre an animal in itself. But there are communities where parents could get together, and people will make a change within the school board. There are counties in florida where i have friends running, sheriffs that are friends, and they made the changes, okay . The schools dont participate in these programs. Theyre well aware of it. They dont put an ideology ahead of a childs education. And there are districts so, you know, parents, thats an option too. Move if you can. But where theres counties like this, you know, the options are limited. Hi. Megan boynton, a reporter with cronkite news. First, my deepest condolences to you and your family. Second, in arizona our new School Superintendent said we need more Mental Health counselors than School Security officers. What do you think about that . When it comes to security, its multitier, you know . In florida we put in a bill for more Mental Health care. Like max said, with the Mental Health when they group kids emotionally disturbed and label them special needs, i dont think any Mental Health counselor is going to help a kid like that in school. He should be put in a Different School because youre subjecting all the kids that want to learn to that disruptive kid, person. So Mental Health and also like, going to hit the democrats again. [laughter] so democrats talk about background checks day in and day out. You cant put the tv on without them talking about background checks. So theres laws in place, okay . If someone is mentally ill and violent, they need to be committed so they get a background check. Theres not too much to it, you know what i mean . Right . Thats all it is. You want mentally ill people that are dangerous off the street the, at least commit them for the full process so it goes on their backgrounds. And then a background check dont work. So background checks are useless if we dont enforce the laws to protect us as citizens. And thats background check, you know, for me, its just im just a father that lost a daughter. Im not a politician. But its easy with the Mental Health. And those kids that are disturbed like that, theyre in the Public Schools. So roll the dice, parents, if you want to send them. Or stand up and make a difference. Hi. Awe awe augustus [inaudible] and im so sorry for your loss, and i feel especially bad because what both of you gentlemen were saying today in terms of, you know, solutions to avoid this, i brought up in the year 2000. If you look up my name, youre not going to most of it has disappeared off of google. Contact at the nsa or [inaudible] basically, to the point of this, i ran for school in Montgomery County, maryland, which is in the news lately. Its usually in the news, and whether it be justices of the Supreme Court or whatever. The, i ran for school board in the year 2000, less than a year after columbine. I ran on, my platform was three issues. The first one, you know, usual waste, fraud and abuse even in a very rich system like Montgomery County which also has some of the best defense lawyers in the country. Defending the School System and torts that are committed. The second issue was the problem of drugs, prescription drugs, overmeld candidated overmedicated kids, ritalin, in the School System. And gangs. Regardless of immigration status. The third issue was less than a year from columbine since everybody was talking about guns in that year, in that election year, 2000, was school safety. I had a plan, i had some suggestions which i made on all three of those issues. But after what happened, after i became the First School Board candidate in u. S. History to be endorsed by the nra, it nationalized [laughter] im serious. It nationalized the race, and i was called all kinds of it basically ruined my career, political career, though i kept coming back. But heres the point. I had kids in that school, in the Montgomery County School System like, you know, being a good nra member, taught em things like that. But basically, what im saying, do you all have any other heres the question suggestions other than what you already mentioned to sort of well, let me ask you this. In Montgomery County School System, what they were doing back then was they were and i think its still the policy to mainstream mentally ill, however defined, kids, disciplinary problems x. They had a stream of lawyers to cover up for, and you wont see it because theyre juveniles, their records are buried. You know, serious assaults, sexual assaults, regular, you know, beatup assaults. And then now, of course, its been in the news lately, you know, we got pedophiles and crazy people in the richest, one of the richest well, so is there anything else other than sort of red flag laws . I agree with you, the parents, parents here even in the public system, if you cant afford to leave the Public School system which my family and i couldnt and go to private schools or get out of town, then if youre stuck in a politically correct environment, are there any suggestions you can make to parents other than running for school board or working with local Law Enforcement or federal Law Enforcement to, you know, identify i would recommend home school. Thats where i would go. I wouldnt put my kids in an environment like that. You know, you touched on some what i learned also about the Mental Health and medication is my daughters murderer was on focalin, okay . And its an amphetamine. And novartis, i think, made it. And after the murder of my daughter, novartis changed the labeling. It reads now increases homicidal ideation. So, you know, if a killeds violent like if a kids violent, im not saying every kid. It works for 95 of the kids, probably, on it. But the vinyl the violent ones, emotionally disturbed, killing animals, there could be kids at these schools on that type of drug, emotional disturbed on that kind of drug. And it took my daughter to be murdered for me to find out. And you can fact check it if you want. They changed the label. So thats whats in the Public Schools also. [inaudible] we found that out after. We keep its an ongoing process because of my civil suit. So in our depositions of these people that failed my daughter, you know, just one by one ive been getting to em. Its hard to arrange for a deposition with, like, 30 attorneys involved. It takes months. So were going to have more. We have more records, and were going to expose em all, everyone thats responsible. Thank you. I have a question. In your with research with the school to prison pipeline and sort of racial quo that disciplinary concept, i mean, underlying that is the assumption that the teachers are racist in applying or the School Systems, schools themselves have been they dont operate on a casebycase basis in terms of fairness, and theres an underlying prejudice because you get this disparate number, these ratios, right . It doesnt seem that the teachers in Broward County are probably racist or in many in 97 of the School Districts in america or as a population in general theyre probably more liberal. If you look at the demographics of teachers. So, i mean, isnt this sort of, you know, just sort of a really terrible assumption . I mean, do we know anything about that . We know from Academic Studies that that argument is almost entirely false. Right . When you start to control for basic demographic background variables that would obviously affect behavior, the disparity shrinks dramatically. A student from a singleparent household twice as likely to get suspended. Some groups are more likely to come from singleparent households than others. Thats a lot of it. When a student is sent to a principals office, the principal does not treat them differently because academics have been able to get to that question, and you cant observe the question directly, but you can find ways to get at it. And we know that theres one study that, theres one study that suggests once you take into account prior student behavior, the entire Racial Disparity ceases to exist. Theres another study that looks at survey data in terms of fair disability, gap ceases to exist. Theres one study that, you know, finds that theres a slight differential in teacher referrals to the office on the order of if an africanamerican student were to have all black teachers versus all white teachers, we would be 12 less likely to be sent to the office. So its not zero, but its not the explanation. Unfortunately, this kind of this political correctness, and were seeing it ever more clearly in places like the new york times, right . Everything is racism. Racism is the explanation for everything. And then we, as these progressive idealogue media people, bureaucrats, government officials have to fix racism. And it feel it is really great to call somebody else a racist and be the person who fixes them. And thats most of where its coming from. And, unfortunately, its a profoundly strong force in the people who have the levers of power. You know, i dont really think andrew and i see it a little differently, not too differently. I dont think this is a 50 50 issue. I think this is a 97 3 issue, and it just so happens 97 think like this 3 think like this. If we show the other 97 whats going on, they can hopefully find some way to counteract this blot. Unfortunately, were going to have to wrap what up for the day, although this is a conversation that could most certainly keep going. A great thanks to our two guests today. Thank you so much, andy pollack and max eden. We thank you for your time today. As a reminder for those of you who will be watching this online, we encourage you to two to this archived lecture, share it on whatever platform is available to you so that the message of this book and the information in it can get out to the broadest audience possible. And buy the book on amazon. You will find yourselves tremendously enlightened. And hopefully, activated to go out and be consumers of information in your own childrens school. Its available on amazon. Thanks again to andy pollack and max eden told. [applause] [inaudible conversations]