Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended 4 school board members after a Parkland shooting grand jury investigation

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, bashed Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's record in California. Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

• Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended school board members following a grand jury investigation.
• The investigation looked into the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
• Fourteen children and three educators were murdered at the school on February 14, 2018.

Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended four school board members following a grand jury investigation into the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

On Friday, following the recommendations of a grand jury, DeSantis filed an executive order suspending Patricia Good, Donna Korn, Ann Murray, and Laurie Rich Levinson from the Broward County School Board. 

Fourteen children and three educators were murdered at the school on February 14, 2018. 

The members of the grand jury recommended the board be suspended due to the misuse of authority related to the shooting, incompetence, and neglect of duty, according to The Hill.

In a press release announcing the suspensions, DeSantis referenced parts of the jury's report, which found that four years after the shooting a safety-related alarm that might have saved lives at the school "was and is such a low priority that it remains uninstalled at multiple schools."

"It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance," DeSantis said in the release.

The report also said "students continue to be educated in unsafe, aging, decrepit, moldy buildings that were supposed to have been renovated years ago," according to the government's statement.

"These are inexcusable actions by school board members who have shown a pattern of emboldening unacceptable behavior, including fraud and mismanagement, across the district," DeSantis said.

The governor appointed four new members to the board to replace those who were suspended: Torey Alston, Manual "Nandy" Serrano, Kevin Tynan, and Ryan Reiter, a US Marine Corps Veteran.

The Twentieth Statewide Grand Jury was formed by the Florida Supreme Court in February 2019 in response to the shooting at the high school a year prior. The jury was asked to examine issues including whether public entities and school officials committed fraud and deceit by mismanaging funds devoted to school safety and whether school  officials violated state law by systematically underreporting incidents of criminal activity to the Department of Education.