Sep 23, 2009 12:09 am US/Eastern
I-Team: Lawmakers Attack School Violence Reports
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Some of South Florida's top state lawmakers are calling for change in the way violence data is tracked and reported from our schools. The calls for change follow an exclusive, six-month long
I-Team investigation that uncovered wide discrepancies between the numbers of violent incidents reported by the state board of education and those actually reported by police.
I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock talked to lawmakers who want this problem fixed now.
In November, 2006, parents of South Dade High School students may have thought that a violent fight at their children's school was unusual.
After all, the State of Florida's website showed South Dade ranked tied for 18th out of 94 middle and high schools in Miami-Dade in the number of violent incidents in school year 2006-2007.
But the facts collected by police tell a different story. Add up the police reports on violent incidents for that school year and South Dade actually ranked second among all middle and high schools in Miami-Dade in the reported police incidents of violence that school year.
Florida State Representative Anitere Flores, a Republican who represents Miami was outraged by the
I-Team's findings.
"It's really not acceptable," Representative Flores said.
Flores chairs the House pre-K-12 appropriations committee in Tallahassee and is intimately familiar with education data and trends in Florida schools.
"At the state level we need to have accurate accounting in our schools," Flores said.
A six month investigation by the
CBS4 I-Team found wide discrepancies between the numbers of police reports of violence and numbers of violent incidents shown on Florida's Department of Education website. Those DOE numbers are collected through a program called SESIR. SESIR stands for School Environmental Safety Incident Report.
You can find a link to SESIR data including the data that is the focus of this investigation by
clicking here.
The I-Team discovered that in Miami-Dade and Broward County schools the difference between data reported in raw form from the districts and that reported in easily read form (SESIR and IRDAR or Incident and Resultant Disciplary Action Reports) had wide discrepancies.
As a result, many critics say parents are being deceived about what's really happening in our schools.
Florida State Senator Eleanor Sobel of Hollywood was surprised and troubled by the I-Team's initial findings. Senator Sobel talked with officials at Florida's Department of Education and said that because of the I-Team's findings, "the system needs to be revised in some way."
Sobel serves on the Florida State Senate's education committee. Before going to Tallahassee she was a school board member and a teacher.
"People want to know that their kids are in a safe learning environment," said Sobel.
The I-Team found wide discrepancies at more than one hundred South Florida schools.
For example: Deerfield Beach High, there were 121 total violent incidents reported by Florida's DOE on its website. But police report at least 136 violent incidents during the same time period. Homestead Senior High: There were 19 police reports of battery. But state data on the website shows only 2 incidents of battery.
Florida's DOE shows that South Dade High School had one drug possession in 2006-2007. But Miami-Dade schools police filed reports on 17 different drug cases, on different dates, on school grounds.
In all, the difference in numbers was stark.
Total drugs in Miami-Dade in 2006-07: DOE says there were 21 cases. But Miami-Dade Schools police filed reports on 177 drug cases for a difference of 156 cases.
Or add up all types of assaults and batteries (including simple assault, aggravated assault, simple battery and aggravated battery): Florida's DOE website shows 89 for all of Miami-Dade. In contrast, Miami-Dade Schools police filed reports on 928 for a difference of 839 incidents of assaults and batteries.
And then there are weapons. Miami-Dade Schools police filed reports on 152 different cases of weapons found on school property.
Florida DOE's website on the IRDAR break down of individual schools shows zero weapons in Miami-Dade in school year 2006-2007.
State officials now admit that that data is incorrect and they call it "an anomaly" and a "possible clerical error."
As for the other differences? Joe Davis, the Department of Education's Bureau Chief for Family and Community Outreach said it's like comparing apples and oranges.
"There are differences in the definitions in SESIR (data) and the law enforcement data," Davis said.
Davis and other state Education officials explain away the discrepancies as expected because of different definitions and different criteria. Critics say those differences serve to mislead the public about the truth about violence in our schools.
So CBS4 I-Team investigator Stephen Stock asked Davis about that.
"Isn't that explanation of different data meaning different things when it all covers violence in our schools misleading?" Stock asked.
"I would say I would hope you would be looking at this globally," Davis replied. "That you would look at SESIR data and you would look at law enforcement data and not lose sight of the fact that we would also want you as a parent to visit the school."
But the differences in the numbers we uncovered are so stark, so dramatic and raise so many questions that lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are calling for change.
I-Team investigator Stephen Stock asked State Representative Flores "What do you want to happen in response to our investigation?"
"We want our children safe in our schools," replied Rep. Flores. "This is the most important problem is this accounting problem. We need to have accurate numbers."
State Senator Eleanor Sobel, a Democrat agreed.
"I think we need to get to the bottom of this have a conversation about it," Senator Sobel said. "(We need to ) talk about reporting. Both groups (DOE and schools police) need to get together and come up with a viable means to make the parents feel more comfortable about what is happening in terms of safety in our public schools."
The I-Team has also just obtained more data that calls into question some of the answers coming from Department of Education officials in Tallahassee. The I-Team has obtained the raw data that Miami-Dade's School district officials say they sent to Florida's Education Department in Tallahassee for school year 2006-2007.
But this data doesn't match the state's violence numbers either.
In fact, it shows an even wider gap between the incidents reported by the district and what's shown on the state's website than the schools police data.
The I-Team is going through the data now, trying to determine how and why this is happening. When we get answers we'll bring them to you.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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