The Tribune Stole' My Words

Click here: Shooting Case Raises Questions About District's Credibility

Tribune says: "Instead of treating parents' questions with respect, they obfuscate or cavalierly dismiss them. "

I have been using the words "obfuscate" and "cavalier" to describe the HCDS since 1996.

*****************
Shooting Case Raises Questions About District's Credibility
The Tampa Tribune
Published: September 30, 2007

Video: Shooting Raises Questions For Parents
If Hillsborough County public school officials want parents to trust them with their children, they need to be responsive and honest. But in Temple Terrace, where many parents are worried about the safety of the area's high school, straight answers are hard to come by.
And this seems characteristic of a school district that all too often appears obsessed with avoiding blame and minimizing problems.
Consider the town hall meeting inTemple Terrace earlier this month.
School leaders brushed off valid questions about student safety, telling parents the area's schools are merely the victims of bad publicity and misperceptions. The handling of the shooting death of King High School student Dalshon Walton during an after-school fight was particularly revealing.
It has been nearly two years since the shooting, yet it continues to be a flashpoint for parents with safety concerns because the district has been so eager to dismiss this tragic event as irrelevant.
Officials have insisted Walton's death had nothing to do with the school because it occurred just off campus and the shooter wasn't a King student. That remains King Principal Carla Bruning's stance.
But investigators and prosecutors have amassed a voluminous file of documents and testimony that shows otherwise. And district officials who maintain there was no connection between the shooting and the school either are ignoring facts or are in denial.
We dug into the case, which is detailed in thousands of pages of public documents at the Hillsborough County State Attorney's office. We found strong evidence that Walton died as a result of a dispute between King students, which started in the school days earlier over a minor insult and erupted into the brawl at the McDonalds.
Testimony and investigators' reports say Otis Lorenzo Neal, who has since pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was summoned to the fight by a relative who was a King student involved in that ongoing quarrel.
In disturbing - but uncorroborated - testimony, a female King student said she saw the boy who brought Neal into the fight with a gun at school the same day.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Deputy Nathaniel Johnson, who is assigned to King, also testified he met with the same boy and his mother earlier that day because she was concerned trouble was brewing. Defying his mother and the deputy, the boy ended up at McDonald's.
The fight clearly was a case of a school dispute spilling onto private property.
Yet when asked why the school has always denied a connection, Bruning said she never knew the facts. Bruning says she was never briefed on the case and she never asked the details.
Sheriff's Major Harold Winsett, who oversees the school resource officer program, says that's not true - Bruning was told by the school deputy the extent to which King students were involved.
Even the school district's head of security, Dave Friedberg, says he has long known the facts of the case and that he and Bruning jointly made improvements in the school in response to those facts.
Friedberg says school officials may have said the shooting was not 'related' or 'connected' to King because incidents not on school property are not considered school-related. But Friedberg says he also understands parents would have a broader interpretation.
'Is it school related? No,' Friedberg said. 'Does it involve us? Yes.'
Friedberg, though, was not the one tasked with responding to the public about this incident. The school officials who did played word games.
Their conduct makes the district look as if it intended to mislead people. This undermines school officials' credibility and takes some shine from what appear to be laudable safety improvements at King.
The school has undergone security upgrades, adding a fence, surveillance equipment and an armed security officer.
The school's annual crime stats show there were just three fights at the school last year, compared to the 58 that occurred in the 2005-06 school year.
Yet school officials didn't come to the Temple Terrace town hall meeting armed with such facts, perhaps because that would have required them to acknowledge violence had been a concern.
Reasonable parents will understand that bad things happen despite educators' best efforts. And there is no evidence the school was in any way negligent in the shooting.
Yet being defensive seems to be school leaders' natural reflex. We've seen it in the way they've dealt with parents who have questioned the elementary math curriculum; in how they've handled parents who objected to abrupt boundary changes and now in how they answer questions about school safety.
Instead of treating parents' questions with respect, they obfuscate or cavalierly dismiss them. At the town hall meeting, a King student who says he was at the fight animatedly talked about running when he heard the shots. Bruning heartily laughed at his account.
But parents take such matters seriously. And when it comes to their children's safety, they want, and deserve, the unvarnished truth.
To see video of a King High School student talk about safety at his school, go to TBO.com. Click on Tampa Tribune and then Opinion."