The Escambia Public School District reported to the Florida Department of Education that it had 17 sex offenses in the 2009-10 school year. Of those incidents, only three –one at PHS, two at Northview — were reported to law enforcement, according to Florida DOE.
Even though FDOE instructs schools that “Sexual activity between students should be reported to law enforcement immediately so investigation can be conducted regarding illegal conduct,” Escambia County schools don’t. In fact, they have the worst record for reporting sex offenses to law enforcement than any other county in Northwest Florida.
We put in a public record request to the District to find out what were the 14 sexual offenses that school officials felt didn’t require reporting to law enforcement. We agreed to have the name of the student and school redacted.
The District refused today to release the information, claiming that by doing so they may violate federal law because the public might be able to trace the offenses back to the children involved.
Deputy Superintendent Norm Ross could not explain why these sex offenses weren’t reported to law enforcement. He insisted that they would have and District Attorney Donna Waters showed us the school board policy that stated sex offenses should be reported to law enforcement. Yet neither could tell us why they hadn’t been reported.
The best explanation was that the offenses might be between consenting 17 years olds, which, according to the attorney, is not a crime. But what shoots holes in that argument is that five of the offenses involved middle schools and one an elementary school.
We have asked the District to review the incident reports and reconsider whether they can release the information. We are prepared to go to court to get the information.