He filed the supplemental analysis for the water authority the following Thursday and submitted it by the deadline, which was three days earlier than required, because submitting before the deadline gave the board no procedural reason to defer consideration. He had learned this over 31 years of working with public agencies: the timeline is itself an argument, and arriving early closes the argument before it begins.
The board received it and convened a review panel. The review panel engaged an independent engineering firm to assess the findings. The independent firm's assessment, delivered six weeks later, confirmed the original findings with one modification: the peak flow coefficient was not just incorrect in the 1987 assessment, but had been revised internally in a 1994 document that had not been incorporated into the system's maintenance plan. Two errors, not one.
The board thanked the independent firm. The board authorized remedial work to begin the following fiscal year. Winston did not say "I told you so," because there is no version of that sentence that is useful in a professional context. He said, "Good." He began the design phase.
Claire Hawthorne, the pediatric occupational therapist in the white Subaru, filed a brief supporting statement with Teresa Mbeki's complaint, which the filing attorney had requested after reading Claire's name in the police report as a civilian witness. Claire had described in four paragraphs what she had observed from her driver's seat: Winston's compliance, his calm, his production of documentation, and the moment Amara arrived and spoke.
She wrote in her fourth paragraph: "I have been a school pickup parent at Westbrook Elementary for two years. I have seen Mr. Beaumont in this pickup line many times. He is a pickup parent. There is nothing else to say about his presence in that line, because a pickup parent in the designated pickup area at the correct pickup time is a pickup parent, and that is all." She signed it and emailed it to Teresa Mbeki's office. Teresa attached it to the complaint as Exhibit D, after the three footage recordings and Deborah Osei's written account.
Pruitt's suspension of 21 days without pay stood. His supervisor's supervisor reviewed the case and initiated a formal review of the school zone patrol assignment process, the criteria for selecting officers, and the training requirements for officers whose duties involved interactions with children and families.
The school's principal, Dr. Leonora Castano, sat on the working group that was convened for that review, which was the first time a school administrator had been included in a review of the assignment process for school zone patrols, and which she considered a meaningful change.
She said at the working group's first meeting, "If we are going to have officers in front of schools, those officers need to have been trained in what being in front of a school requires of a person."
The working group's chair said, "Define what that requires."