Kenneth Preston, a 19-year-old student journalist who attends high school in Broward County, Florida, has done an in-depth investigation of the superintendent and school board.
Preston’s thorough report, released on Tuesday, says that Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie and the school district failed to spend over $100 million of federal money intended for school safety upgrades.
Runcie once worked under former Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in the Chicago Public Schools system.
Preston’s report says that the school had been sitting on this money since 2014, and that only about 5 percent of it had been spent.
“The findings of our investigation is [sic] two-fold. First off, a $100 million which superintendent and the school board had access to. Since 2014, roughly 5 percent of that money has been spent,” Preston said in an in-depth interview with Sirius XM host David Webb.
Preston said that Runcie gave him a “long-winded runaround” about what happened to the money.
In addition, Preston has called into question the school district’s use of the PROMISE program.
This program was aligned with a 2014 Obama-era federal initiative, which aimed at ending the “school to prison pipeline” as well as racial disparities in discipline by focusing on counseling and “restorative justice” instead of using law enforcement to correct on-campus misbehavior.
Preston spoke at a Broward County School Board meeting on Tuesday, but said during his remarks that just before the meeting started, his allotted time to speak was cut to three minutes.
The seven panelists Preston had lined up were removed from the schedule.
On the day before the hearing, Preston said he was forced to attend a two-hour meeting with...
