The Escambia County Public School District is installing an anonymous tip line for students, parents and others to report online bullying, harassment and other school crimes. The current plan proposed by Superintendent Thomas is for the tips to go to the school principal who will investigate and determine whether the school resource officer should be notified.
Based on the Tate High School sexual assault and the shenanigans that happened last year at Warrington Middle School, we can not trust principals to properly deal with the incidents on their campus. The School Environmental Safety Incident Report showed that last year the school district reported very few of its most serious incidents to law enforcement.
Julie Collins for the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools made a presentation on SESIR (School Environmental Safety Incident Report) and Discipline Reporting to the Escambia County School Board at a special workshop in April. She talked about the level of offenses with the worst being Violent Acts Against Persons: Homicide, Sexual Battery, Robbery, Battery and Kidnapping. Collins explained that battery under SESIR is more serious than battery under the criminal code.
“It’s a severe beating where the person doesn’t defend himself,†said Collins. “You should think of it as aggravated battery.â€
In 2009-2010, Escambia schools had 208 incidents involving these types of severe beatings. Only 90 were reported to law enforcement–43 percent. Bay County 35 incidents – 100 percent reported to law; Okaloosa 20 -75 percent to the law; Santa Rosa 25 – 100 percent to the law; Walton 15 – 87 percent to law. Statewide school districts: 85 percent of the battery incidents were reported to the law.
We have had several reports from teachers about the pressure not to write referrals on incidents in the classroom. The district’s investigations at Warrington Middle also reported on teachers at that school being worried about their safety.
The superintendent denies that his administration is soft on crime or that there is any pressure not to deal with crime in the schools, but the numbers contradict those denials.
School safety should be a joint effort between the school district, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and Pensacola Police Department. The School Resource Officers are trained to investigate crimes. Any anonymous tips should be sent directly to the School Resource Officer as well as the school principal. The two can then meet and discuss the tip and the investigation.
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One other point, the District’s anonymous tip is not anonymous if the tip is made online. The District will track IP addresses. I strongly urge the district disable that function. Anonymous should mean anonymous.