The Fight to #Fixit
Before my daughter was murdered, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to what was going on in my kids’ schools. Maybe you are like I was. That’s why I wrote this book—so you could learn from what happened, and figure out what’s going on in your schools, and take action to keep your kids safe.
I hope that your school board members and district leaders aren’t as morally challenged as the ones in Broward County. But I hope what you’ve seen is that bad policies create a corrupt culture. If people get rewarded for sweeping things under the rug and tell themselves that they’re doing it because of social justice, then schools will get more dangerous. Even when kids get murdered, education bureaucrats will treat parents with contempt for asking why. This politically correct cancer started here in Broward and spread to school districts across America.
It’s little wonder that Superintendent Robert Runcie and Sheriff Scott Israel instantly pointed a finger at the National Rifle Association. Because all the attention for months after the massacre was devoted to the gun control debate, they might have succeeded in avoiding accountability. But me, I wasn’t going to let anyone off the hook.
People have called me pro-gun. I’m not pro-gun. I’m not anti-gun. I’m just pro-accountability. I think that if people do their jobs, then things like this won’t happen. I think that the way our country is supposed to work is that we hold our local officials accountable. And if they fail, we get new and better people into office who can #Fixit. This shouldn’t be a conservative position. It’s an American position. And I think that if Americans saw what really happened here in Broward, we wouldn’t have become divided against each other by another culture war debate. We would have united in disgust over Broward’s leaders and moved forward with a bipartisan consensus on school safety.
But that’s not what happened. So, I made it my mission to expose everything and hold everyone accountable. By mid-summer, my investigation was mostly complete and I turned all my attention, my energy, my life toward trying to bring some accountability to Broward schools by electing Richard Mendelson to the school board. I didn’t have time to grieve because I was in a battle every day for justice and for change. That’s what the last part of this book, “The Fight to #Fixit,” is about. I don’t think America has ever seen a school board race anything like what we did. And I hope that our story can inspire parents across the country to step up and take action to keep their children safe.
—Andy