School districts in Florida often under-report and sometimes over-report crimes and other problems on their campus, giving the public no clue about how safe any school is, members of a commission investigating the Parkland tragedy said Wednesday.
Stephen Foster Elementary in Gainesville reported 72 physical attacks of students last school year, while Miami-Dade County reported none for the entire school district. That same year, Pinellas County reported 410 batteries, while Palm Beach County, a district nearly twice as large, reported only 66.
“It defies common sense. It defies logic,” said Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Public Safety Commission, which is investigating the massacre that killed 17 people.
“There’s a problem. There’s no question there’s a problem. The question that is still unanswered and glaring is why,” Gualtieri said.
The commission concluded that while some administrators purposely under-report data to make their schools look safer, there also has been inconsistent training and differing views on how serious an incident needs to be before it’s reported to the state.
A fight that involves 20 students is supposed to be counted as one incident, but some districts incorrectly report it 20 times, leading to artificially high numbers, said Julie Collins, who works in the state Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools.
Collins said the data is “not a good measurement” of how safe a school is.
“High numbers could mean the place is totally law-and-order and writes everything up, or the place is having some control issues,” she said. “Low numbers could mean it’s the safest school in town or they’re sweeping things under the rug.”
That prompted commission members to ask why the state collects the data at all. Collins said states are required to collect it by the federal government, and it’s designed to help districts identify problems and seek grant funding
“This is not acceptable,” said Commission member Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed at Stoneman Douglas. “This helps no one, and the kids pay the price.”
The commission reviewed how well schools report incidents following a series of investigations by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The newspaper reported in June that Stoneman Douglas looked on paper to be one of the safest schools in the state during the 2016-17 school year, with no violent attacks, no bullying or harassment, and no trespassing. But a review of police and school district reports found those numbers to be false. Commission members say that may have contributed to why the school was unprepared when a former student trespassed on campus and opened fire.
The Sun Sentinel expanded its investigation and reported in December that underreporting is a statewide problem, with schools failing to report incidents that included kidnapping, weapons, sexual abuse and even murder.
Commission member Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the tragedy, read portions of the December story at Wednesday’s meeting, asking Collins if she could explain why schools failed to report certain crimes to the state. She said she didn’t know.
Even after the tragedy, when Stoneman Douglas administrators knew they were being closely watched, the school still failed to report all incidents. The 2017-18 report says no one trespassed on campus, despite the arrest of Zachary Cruz, brother of killer Nikolas Cruz, for that offense in March 2018. The Stoneman Douglas data shows only one theft and four fights.
“I can tell you by the videos on YouTube, there are fights there all the time,” Schachter said.
Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie instructed school principals last summer to accurately report data and has asked auditors to review how well they’re doing.
A statewide review by commission investigators determined a number of oddities. For example, Duval County reported 4,486 physical attacks, compared to only 298 in Palm Beach County, 128 in Broward and zero in Miami-Dade County. Commission members said there may be confusion about when an incident should be classified as a physical attack instead of a battery. Physical attacks are generally considered more minor attacks, officials said.
But Duval appeared to be one of the safest counties when it came to weapons, reporting only 23 for the entire year, compared to 134 for Palm Beach County and 123 in Broward. Miami-Dade was low in that category too, with 34. Miami-Dade schools told the Sun Sentinel in December that issues with their computer systems led to under-reporting.
The Legislature is considering a proposal that gives the state Department of Education the ability to impose fines and more oversight to schools that fail to accurately report data. Right now, there are no penalties for school districts that file false reports.
Jacob Oliva, chancellor for K-12 education, told the commission he also would look into ways to verify school districts are accurately reporting, including comparing what the data to police reports and discipline data.
“We can’t make informed decisions unless we have clear and consistent data,” Oliva said.
stravis@sun-sentinel.com, 561-243-6637 or Twitter @smtravis.