After trashing a middle-school bathroom in 2013, Mr. Cruz received a three-day referral to a newly created diversion program called Promise designed to help kids who had committed misdemeanors avoid arrest and stay out of the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

He didn’t show. At that point, school policy dictated that he should have been hauled before Judge Elijah Williams of the Broward County Delinquency Division, and yet there is no record that it ever happened, according to Timothy Sternberg, a former assistant principal who helped run Promise from 2014-17.

“There’s negligence here because no one ever followed up,” Mr. Sternberg told the Washington Times.........To Read More......