Why Meadow Died Quotes

Some people might consider leaving a girl alone with a boy whom teachers considered profoundly dangerous, if not potentially murderous, to be child abuse. But in schools across the country, this is what passes for “social justice.

Because so much bullying and violence happens in our schools for the simple reason that school administrators refuse to enforce the rules. They refuse to enforce them because that’s what’s in their own professional interest under these politically correct discipline policies. Kids need adults to enforce rules. Behavior doesn’t magically get better when you decide to not punish mischief. What happens is that things get worse for students and teachers but look better on paper for bureaucrats and activists. This leads to a thousand tragedies a day that you’ll never hear about. And it lets troubled kids just slip through the cracks.

You, the woman; I, the man; this, the world: And each is the work of all. There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many beautiful arms around us and the things we know. See how those stars tramp over the heavens on their sticks Of ancient light: with what simplicity that blue Takes eternity into the quiet cave of God, where Ceasar And Socrates, like primitive paintings on a wall, Look, with idiot eyes, on the world where we two are. You, the sought for; I, the seeker; this, the search: And each is the mission of all. For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter. How smoothly, like the sleep of a flower, love, The grassy wind moves over night's tense meadow: See how the great wooden eyes of the forrest Stare upon the architecture of our innocence. You, the village; I, the stranger; this, the road: And each is the work of all. Then, not that man do more, or stop pity; but that he be Wider in living; that all his cities fly a clean flag... We have been alone too long, love; it is terribly late For the pierced feet on the water and we must not die now. Have you ever wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken? Have you seen the homeless in the open grave of God's hand? Do you want to aquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war? There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger; The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing Over the walkers in the village; and there are Many desperate arms about us and the things we know.

And anything that the boys could carry, they made off with. Combs, lamps, silly little things, even bridal wreaths, everything went. As if we'd had years of life ahead of us. They looted to take their minds off their troubles, to make it look as if they had years before them. Everybody likes that feeling. As far as they were concerned, gunfire was nothing but noise. That's why wars can keep going. Even the people who make them, who fight in them, don't really get the picture. Even with a bullet in their gut, they'd go on picking up old shoes that 'might come in handy.' The way a sheep, lying on its side in a meadow, will keep on grazing with its dying breath. Most people don't die until the last moment; others start twenty years in advance, sometimes more. Those are the unfortunates.

This is on us. This is society. This is what America has come to. My generation just decided that we all wanted McMansions, so we maxed out our credit cards and doubled down on the rat race, thinking we could have it all. But someone always pays. And it’s the kids who are paying because we’re not paying any attention to them. Not really. We send them off to day care, to summer camp. We buy a house near the picture-perfect school: the best school in Florida! Then we congratulate ourselves on being great parents. But do we ever actually go to the school? Do we take any interest in what happens there? No! We let activists and bureaucrats force policies down teachers’ throats to make the school look better on paper. Then, if we even notice, we applaud ourselves for sending our kid to the safest school in Florida!

Two months ago, Lauren Carmichael’s husband and son were murdered in a home invasion. She was conveniently working late that night. Sheldon Kaufman’s sister died two weeks later, casualty of a convenience store robbery. Just a day after that, Meadow Brand’s father was stabbed to death in what’s being reported as a mugging gone wrong.” Why don’t you just kill your wife? Sheldon had asked Tony back at the golf course. Because I don’t love my wife. “Christ,” I breathed. “It’s not just any souls they need. Family members. Blood relations, maybe. Someone they have a personal bond with.” “An intimate sacrifice,” Bentley said.

Members of his own herd had left him to die. Already he saw that Rockwing’s words were true. Heaviness and emptiness rolled through him at the same time. Morningleaf looked back toward Dawn Meadow, Sun Herd’s main grazing land, and scowled. “He’s a featherhead, but Star, why were you out here alone? It’s not safe.

September 13 “His heavens shall drop down dew.” Deuteronomy 33:28 WHAT the dew in the East is to the world of nature, that is the influence of the Spirit in the realm of grace. How greatly do I need it! Without the Spirit of God I am a dry and withered thing. I droop, I fade, I die. How sweetly does this dew refresh me! When once favoured with it I feel happy, lively, vigorous, elevated. I want nothing more. The Holy Spirit brings me life, and all that life requires. All else without the dew of the Spirit is less than nothing to me: I hear, I read, I pray, I sing, I go to the table of communion, and I find no blessing there until the Holy Ghost visits me. But when he bedews me, every means of grace is sweet and profitable. What a promise is this for me! “His heavens shall drop down dew.” I shall be visited with grace. I shall not be left to my natural drought, or to the world’s burning heat, or to the sirocco of Satanic temptation. Oh, that I may at this very hour feel the gentle, silent, saturating dew of the Lord! Why should I not? He who has made me to live as the grass lives in the meadow, will treat me as he treats the grass: he will refresh me from above. Grass cannot call for dew as I do. Surely, the Lord who visits the unpraying plant will answer to his pleading child.

Do you think your dad—” “Not yet, and no. But the sheriff and some state troopers were over. I heard some stuff. They think the body’s been in there at least ten or fifteen years.” Excited as she was by all the action, it also made her sad. “Can you believe that? Not knowing where your kid has been for the last fifteen years. Not knowing if she’s still alive or dead.” When Laura Lynn and Marcus exchanged a look, she frowned. “What?” “Do you know how many kids die around here? Or go missing?” When Mandy shook her head, Marcus continued. “A lot. Like, a lot a lot.” “How?” she asked. “Why?” “Lots of reasons,” Laura Lynn said. “Cancer. Running away. Murder. There are lots of stories like that. Kids going crazy and sent to insane asylums.” Marcus sat straighter in his chair. “I don’t believe all of them. Jake used to try to freak me out by telling me if I didn’t clean my room, all the kids from the mental hospital would escape and eat me alive.” He glanced to the side and shook his head. “What an asshat.” “Who’s Jake?” Mandy asked. “My older brother. He’s in college now.” Marcus started in on his sandwich, talking through a mouthful of food. “But he said his friend’s brother died that way. Some rare disease or something. Totally incurable.” “That’s pretty weird,” Mandy said. “Maybe that’s what happened to the girl in the septic tank,” Laura Lynn offered. “Maybe she went crazy and fell in.” “And what?” Marcus asked. “Her parents just closed it up and forgot about her? I doubt it.” “Then it was probably murder,” Mandy said. Another thrill went through her, but a twinge of fear followed this one. “We should look into it. Do our own investigation.” Laura Lynn and Marcus both looked down at their plates. Marcus was the first to answer. “I don’t know about that.” “What?” Mandy felt confused. She had figured at least Marcus would be into the idea, even if Laura Lynn wasn’t. “Aren’t you a computer genius? You could help me solve the case! We’d be heroes.” “It’s not worth it.” When he looked up again, he was deadly serious. “A lot of people have gone missing over the years, Mandy. Not just kids. It’s better to just keep your head down. Don’t cause any trouble.” Mandy blanched. When she looked at Laura Lynn for support, she saw her friend nodding in agreement. Mandy sat back in her chair with a huff, the turkey and cheese sandwich untouched. So much for showing Bear she could take care of herself by solving this on her own. 9 Bear pulled his truck next to McKinnon’s cruiser and put it in park. He hopped out and met her around the side of her car. “A graveyard? This is about to get real interesting, or real weird.” “Let’s hope it gets interesting,” McKinnon said. The slam of her door echoed through the surrounding trees, and the two of them trudged their way up a set of steps to the cemetery. Bear had passed it a few times as he’d driven around town. It was the biggest within a twenty-mile radius, but it wasn’t huge. The gravestones were crammed near each other, filling the entire plot of land to the brim. There was a short wrought-iron fence around the perimeter and a plaque that read “April Meadows Cemetery” in block letters. A few trees were scattered around, along with a couple of larger headstones, but most of the markers were small and modest. The paths were skinny and winding, as though they had been an afterthought. “What’re we doing here?” Bear

Give a warning. Issue a consequence. Be labeled a racist.

shouldn’t be this way. I don’t think Democrat parents care any less than Republican parents. I have to take some hope by looking at Kim Krawczyk, a Democrat who doesn’t fall for the politically correct nonsense that she knows is wrecking American education. I have to believe that there are many people out there who are like her. I have to believe that it’s the politically correct politicians and media who have made it this way. We should be able to put the interest of students and teachers above the self-satisfaction of distant bureaucrats and social justice activists and come together on things that ninety-nine percent of Americans agree about. But it’s the politically correct one percent that has the most power over our schools right now.

We can’t just push troubled students into classrooms where they won’t get the help they need and celebrate ourselves for being “inclusive.” The idea that all students with disabilities must be taught in the “least restrictive environment” ends up just becoming a way for school district bureaucrats to save money and congratulate themselves for being politically correct even as they do things to students that teachers know are wrong.

I really think we’ve lost the ability to look. Because if you start pulling on that thread, if you start asking, ‘What’s actually happening in my child’s school?’ then you have to start asking all sorts of questions. Why did I stick a tablet into his hand to keep him quiet as a toddler rather than give him a stick and tell him to play outside? Why did I never volunteer at the school? Should I have spent those extra hours that I worked or drank with friends with my kids instead? Looking into our schools would mean looking into our souls. And I don’t think anyone wants to hold up that mirror.

I’ve been over every inch of what happened. The NRA had nothing to do with it. This happened in a Democrat county with a Democrat sheriff, a Democrat superintendent, and a Democrat school board, implementing Democrat ideas on criminal justice, Democrat ideas on special education, and Democrat ideas on school discipline. And after Democrat voters gave all these Democrats a resounding vote of confidence in the school board election, the Democrat teachers union president, Anna Fusco, wrote in a Facebook group about our campaign for accountability: “Now you can all shut up!” Meanwhile, at the national level, Democrat organizers swooped in and weaponized my daughter’s murder for their Democrat agenda and to fund-raise to elect more Democrats.

After the murder of my daughter and sixteen others, there should have been a deep look into what went wrong like there was after Columbine. There should have been a constructive debate about how to keep schools safe. And there should have been a lot of soul-searching. Instead, the media exploited this tragedy as an opportunity to pit Americans against one another for higher ratings. They made it all into a Twitter showdown between a few teenagers and the Republican Party over a policy issue that didn’t have anything to do with what happened. Short of banning guns altogether, nothing in the gun control agenda would have prevented 18–1958 from getting a gun because he looked totally clean on paper. But rather than try to figure out why a student who everyone was saying had committed plenty of crimes had nothing on his record, the media treated the question as a threat to their agenda and marginalized it as a “right-wing” thing.

Again, though, I’m not saying this to be partisan. These are facts. And they have to be said because while I used to think school safety could be a nonpartisan issue, I am not so sure anymore. I only ever wanted to talk about school safety. I never wanted to say anything either way about guns. But because I didn’t want to only focus on guns, the politically correct media labeled me as being on the “other side of the gun debate.” As I hope this book has shown you, there are so many school safety problems that have nothing to do with guns. But if these people think that any school safety idea that isn’t about gun control is pro-gun, then I just don’t see how Democrats can ever be for school safety.

The morning after the shooting, Kenny watched the first press conference at MSD. Superintendent Runcie said: Students have been reaching out to me, reaching out to staff, probably board members and others saying that now, now is the time for this country to have a real conversation on sensible gun control laws in this country. So, our students are asking for that conversation. And I hope that we can get it done in this generation, but if we don’t, they will.1 Kenny yelled at the TV, “Can’t you just fucking wait until the bodies are buried?” Kenny didn’t have strong opinions on gun control, and no one in his family owned a gun. But the morning after a mass murder seemed way too soon to make any kind of political argument. He only grew angrier when Runcie called on the Florida Legislature to allocate more funding to mental health. Later in the press conference, Sheriff Israel admitted, “There are some bodies that are still in the school. It’s a process.” That’s when something inside of Kenny flipped. The bodies of children who had been murdered under Runcie’s leadership were still lying on the schoolhouse floor directly behind him, and he had already started politicking.

In 2009, President Obama tapped Duncan to be the U.S. secretary of education, and in 2011, the Broward County School Board, seeing that Duncan was one of Runcie’s references, selected a man who had never been a teacher or a principal to lead the sixth-largest school district in America, with 270,000 students and 15,000 teachers in 234 schools and an annual operating budget of $3.8 billion.

Following the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, the Florida Legislature proposed providing the Broward County school district with an additional $55 million for school safety.4 But, according to the Sun Sentinel, Superintendent Runcie and the school board “hated the idea because control over the money would have gone to a separate taxing district board.” School board member Ann Murray declared, “I’m not willing to give up any authority to anyone.” Her colleague Robin Bartleman worried that the state money could interfere with the soon-to-be-launched PROMISE program. Superintendent Runcie wrote a letter to the legislature saying that he didn’t want the additional money and explaining that he was already moving ahead on a host of school safety initiatives (which he never implemented).5 A

After scouring the school district’s website, Kenny learned that there was a bond oversight committee. He visited the committee’s website and printed out all of its reports as well as every relevant document he could find from Florida TaxWatch. After over twenty hours wrestling with the documents, Kenny reached a conclusion he thought had to be a mistake: In the first four years of the SMART bond, the district had spent $5 million out of the $100 million allocated to safety projects. Only 5 percent of the money it had available to make the schools safer!

Kenny replied. “I don’t want conservative coverage. There’s been enough of that already. They’re just repeating talking points, not investigating. I’m hoping that if I can get the families on board and they’re the ones asking for answers, mainstream reporters will actually have to investigate.

Kenny called school board chairwoman Nora Rupert, who was Runcie’s most vocal critic. She had previously confirmed that Kenny’s analysis regarding the district’s bond initiative was on track. Now she confirmed that, in fact, the discipline matrix doesn’t require administrators to refer students to law enforcement for felonies. Combine that discretion with the general push to reduce arrests, and it started to make sense to Kenny how a policy intended to decriminalize misdemeanors had also led to a 30 percent reduction in felony arrests.

Maria Colavito, a retired special education support facilitator at MSD who dealt with the shooter during his junior year, told Kenny that he was on the right track. She told Kenny that she once asked School Resource Officer Scot Peterson why 18–1958 had not been arrested and Peterson replied, “It’s this PROMISE program stuff. My hands are tied.

Dennis Michael Lynch, a conservative blogger and the producer of several straight-to-DVD documentaries about illegal immigration, was working on a documentary about the shooting and advising Andy on how to navigate the media. When Andy told Dennis about Kenny’s report, Dennis interviewed him. A few days after that interview, on March 27, Dennis ran an article previewing Kenny’s report.17 But Kenny wasn’t flattered; he freaked out. He had figured that the interview would be part of a documentary that would air a year later. Now a scoop on his report had been published on a conservative clickbait website that, he reflected, “looked like it could give you a computer virus.” Kenny had wanted to write a serious report that would attract meaningful media attention. But now anyone who Googled him might see him as a partisan teenage attention-seeker.

Kenny made a couple of calls and then called Kim back and told her that the former director of school safety had recommended that the new alarm include what’s called an “active trigger” mechanism. When the alarm is activated, it doesn’t go off instantly; it sends a signal to the office and gives staff time to decide whether the alarm should go off. “Because what if, instead of a fire, it’s a gunman?” Kim said, her voice flat. For all his research and interviews, Kenny had never asked any of the survivors to recount the event. Kim explained that not all of the teachers on the third floor had recognized the sound of gunshots. When the fire alarm went off, several teachers sent their students into the hallway, thinking it was just a drill. Everyone who died on the third floor was shot in the hallway. If the new fire alarm had been installed, then maybe someone in the central office could have stopped the alarm from sounding, and everyone on the third floor—including Meadow—would have survived.

The board would have to end the meeting early, so Kenny’s speaking time would be cut to three minutes and there would be no time for the survivors to speak. Kenny knew he couldn’t explain his findings in three minutes, so when he stepped forward, he abandoned his script. I had intended to talk about the investigation today. The problem is that my remarks will be a little different than originally intended. You see, certain members of this board and the superintendent have tried by every means possible to subvert our message. For weeks, we have had additional speakers scheduled. Just an hour ago, I received word that all of our seven additional speakers would be cut and my time would be cut in half. A board and superintendent who insist on their commitment to transparency have decided to deny a voice to survivors and families of the victims who intended to speak tonight. This is no surprise after the fiasco I was involved in yesterday, though. It was requested that I meet with the superintendent and families of victims to discuss my report. When I arrived, I was denied the right to have an attorney present, I was refused the opportunity to record the meeting, and I was told that this was because the superintendent wouldn’t have any representation of his own. The meeting was stacked with ten district officials in addition to the superintendent. We spoke for a total of two hours. You can call me a skeptic, but I have a hard time believing that a superintendent and ten district officials who represent two hundred thirty-four schools, fifteen thousand teachers, and two hundred seventy thousand students had the time to meet with a nineteen-year-old for two hours if they didn’t believe that I was holding onto something crucial.… Something doesn’t smell quite right in Broward, and this school district is the epicenter. Luckily, our report will be going live on The Hill and other national media outlets at around 6 p.m. today, and it will make clear the failures of the school system, and in particular the superintendent, in protecting our schools. Thank you.19 The audience erupted in applause.

At that meeting they also voted to not allow money from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act’s Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program to fund armed guards for Broward schools. The reason why, they said, was that they didn’t want to arm teachers. That was bullshit. The Guardian Program explicitly excluded teachers from participating. It was about allowing highly trained veterans or security staff to carry a gun to protect students. A new law was passed because of a failure on their watch, and then they used a politically correct talking point as an excuse to avoid complying with it.

If our school leaders focus less on professional convenience and more on the students in front of them, America’s schools will become safer at every level.

Venezuela had total gun control. That’s how the government and the colectivos were able to terrorize the citizens.

Shortly before the shooting, I had written a series of articles about the disastrous effects of “education reform” in Washington, D.C. schools. What I saw unfold there had convinced me that the leaders of a movement that purported to “put students first” were far more concerned about their reputations within an elite bubble than about what actually happens to students in schools.

TAPPER: There are teachers at the school [who] had been told [by school administrators], “If you see Cruz come on campus with a backpack, let me know.” Does that not indicate that there is something seriously awry with the PROMISE program if these teachers are being told, “Watch out for this kid,” and you don’t know about it?

I can’t tell you how many times people told me that I was ignorant and didn’t know what I was talking about because I didn’t blame the NRA for everything. Because I didn’t blame the type of gun that 18–1958 used. I couldn’t do that, because blaming the gun let everyone and everything off the hook. There was more incompetence here than seemed humanly possible.

When a student with a deeply disturbed behavioral history threatens to shoot up a school, that is generally—to put it mildly—a sign that he is not well suited for that environment. But no action was taken. The incident was not even added to Cruz’s official records. On paper, Cruz appeared to have been a model student in the spring semester of 2016.

Reflecting on it, one longtime MSD teacher said, “As long as I have been here, whatever an ESE parent wants, they get. No one ever challenges an ESE parent or kid because it’s not worth the risk of litigation.” Regarding discipline, the teacher added, “Why bother? The parent will just say it wasn’t the kid’s fault.

On paper, Cruz’s first semester at MSD was a great success. Although she knew it wasn’t true, with only one disciplinary incident officially recorded, Bone could not write anything to the contrary on his IEP update at the end of the year. She did not return to MSD the next school year. She moved out of Broward County altogether.

Cruz appeared to be a law-abiding citizen on his eighteenth birthday, giving him the right to buy a gun. But there was another way for the authorities to prohibit him from doing so. If Cruz had been involuntarily institutionalized under Florida’s Baker Act, then he would have undergone intensive psychiatric evaluation. If a psychiatrist had deemed Cruz to be a danger to himself or others, that doctor could have recommended that a judge adjudicate Cruz as mentally defective and unfit to own a firearm.

Even before the merger, Cross Creek staff were already facing pressures stemming from changes in federal, state, and district policy. The ever-growing emphasis on standardized testing disconcerted students and teachers alike. Broward eliminated teacher tenure, shifting teachers to one-year contracts and evaluating them by test scores, which, given Cross Creek’s student population, made absolutely no sense. Former Cross Creek teacher Joe Parsons said, “Imagine how we teachers felt, let alone the students, about testing. It was highly toxic. Do you want to test a psychotic, schizophrenic, manic depressive, or otherwise emotionally and behaviorally disabled student, or a class of them? What is a fair test? What is a fair score?”23

is difficult to believe that Cross Creek’s decision to not only mainstream a student with a history of disturbing behavior and murderous ideations and an obsession with guns, but also let him practice shooting with air guns as soon as he stepped foot on a traditional school was simply an instance of negligence. Instead, we believe it was either a conscious or subconscious response to explicit or implicit pressure to make Cross Creek appear orderly and successful.

Bone voiced her concerns to MSD’s assistant principal for ESE, Denise Reed, on November 6, 2015. Bone told us that she does not believe that Reed had read Cruz’s IEP. Bone told Reed that Cruz was dangerous and it would be a grave mistake to mainstream him full time. Bone recalled that Reed told her to “stay in your lane” because these decisions were not hers to make.

On December 14, 2015, Cruz’s IEP team decided to allow him to attend MSD full time. Cruz had made progress in the intensive therapeutic setting of Cross Creek, where well-trained professionals could watch him like a hawk. But when he transitioned to MSD, his old “behavior management” plan was discontinued and no new plan was created. Teachers were left uninformed about who this student was, what to watch for, and how to support him. Looking back on the transition, Bone lamented, “They just threw him to the wolves.

Cruz’s first day as a full-time MSD student was January 11, 2016. On February 5, 2016, a woman called the Broward sheriff’s office to report an Instagram post in which Cruz showed off a gun and wrote, “I am going to get this gun and shoot up the school.” The officer who responded to the call, Edward Eason, informed the woman that Cruz’s Instagram post “was protected by the First Amendment right of free speech.”1 When the woman asked Eason whether there would be any way to prevent Cruz from buying a gun when he turned eighteen, the officer told her that his right to purchase a firearm was protected by the Second Amendment and nothing could be done. Eason was wrong on both counts. Threatening to shoot up a school is a felony that, if successfully prosecuted, could have prohibited Cruz from buying a firearm. (And even if Cruz was not convicted, an arrest could have gone a long way toward law enforcement taking future reports about Cruz seriously.) But Eason declined even to write a police report about the call, a decision for which he later received a three-day suspension. He did, however, according to his logs, notify MSD’s school resource officer, Scot Peterson.