A shooting put one top school into a lockout. Why not two others closer to scene?

When a Friday afternoon shooting in Wynwood left one dead and another critical, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho came out to the street in a suit to stand with police officers outside his boutique school almost a mile away from the crime scene.

iPreparatory Academy, a high-performing magnet school at 1500 Biscayne Blvd., where Carvalho also serves as principal, was called into a lockout around dismissal time on Friday. A lockout, also known as a code yellow, means no one is allowed in or out, but operations are normal indoors.

Yet no lockouts were called at two schools much closer to where the shooting took place near Kush gastropub at 2003 North Miami Ave. They are Phillis Wheatley Elementary, located at 1801 NW First Pl., just a block outside the perimeter police set up to find the shooter, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar K-8 at 505 NW 20th St., a half mile west from Kush.

Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Edwin Lopez said Friday that the school resource officer at iPrep called a lockout as a precautionary measure. He said the school’s proximity to the shooting and traffic patterns were factored into the call.

“Since there wasn’t a threat to a school, no other schools were placed in [lockout],” Lopez said. “The SRO [school resource officer] took it upon himself to call in a [lockout] even though it wasn’t necessary.”

iPrep is often touted as the district’s model school, located on the School Board’s downtown campus. The A-rated kindergarten through 12th grade school is 24% white, 56% Hispanic and 15% black.

Compare that to B-rated Phillis Wheatley, which is 73% black and 25% Hispanic, and C-rated Dunbar K-8, which is 60% black and nearly 39% Hispanic.

Lopez said any employee at a school can call for a lockdown or lockout, a rule that changed after the 2018 Parkland shooting.

“There could be some subjectivity to it,” he said.

Asked about the racial differences between the schools, Lopez said, “We don’t look at it like that.”

Some parents at Phillis Wheatley Elementary were surprised to learn Monday that a school farther away was called into lockdown as police descended on the neighborhood around their child’s school Friday afternoon.

Marcus Powell, 37, said the police do a good job keeping his 5-year-old son’s school safe. He said the increased police activity meant he had to walk home to get his ID to pick up his son on Friday.

“They did the proper thing,” Powell said, but, “if it was in a white neighborhood, it would’ve been locked down.”

A 33-year-old mother named Teresa, who declined to give her last name, said she arrived Friday around 1:40 p.m. to pick up her younger daughter. A Miami officer outside the school told her the school could be going on code red, so she ought to pick up her 11-year-old daughter, too.

“i think if they thought it was a real emergency, they would’ve put it on code red,” Teresa said. “It kind of pisses me off.”

Tia Alexander, whose 5-year-old daughter and 10-year-old brother attend Phillis Wheatley, said nothing looked out of the ordinary on Friday.

“I feel like they should’ve been on lockdown because it was so close, but it was secure at the same time,” said Alexander, 25.

Anthony Scott first heard about Friday’s shooting on the radio. His two children, ages 6 and 8, go to Gibson Park after school until he can pick them up around 6 p.m.

“I wasn’t concerned, but if there’s a problem, the school is supposed to call [a lockdown] but they didn’t call one,” said Scott, 37. “I don’t understand why that happened.”

A woman rushing out of a gold Chrysler minivan was unfazed.

“It was secure. We didn’t have any issues,” she said. “I thought they would’ve called a lockdown. We were OK though.”

Phyllis Logan, 62, helps out her church members by helping them drop off their kids at school. She waited outside the school Monday morning in a red minivan.

“They should’ve locked this one down, too,” she said. “They should let us know really what’s going on.”

School Board member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, whose district includes all three schools, said she didn’t hear concerns from parents but did hear from some people in the community.

“I trust the judgment of those who are put in charge of our children,” she said by phone Monday. “The principal and probably the staff, if they didn’t feel the children were in imminent danger, that could be why they didn’t.”

This story was originally published February 10, 2020 at 12:36 PM.