District might have to resubmit violence numbers

State and local officials worry that school administrators aren't properly recording school violence in Hernando County after some statistics were inflated or placed in the wrong category.

Following Hernando Today's reporting of county school violence statistics, school officials claim that numbers reported to the state are inaccurate because school administrators were using different definitions to establish sexual battery while others recorded the number of students involved in fights rather than the number of fights themselves.

According to the reports, Hernando High School recorded 47 fights, more than double in comparison to other schools in the district, while West Hernando Middle School topped the violence list with 18 battery incidents - a decrease of 24 incidents, or 57.1 percent, from the 42 recorded the year prior.
In the category of sexual battery, Fox Chapel Middle School recorded nine - a decline of four compared to the 13 recorded the previous year.

Jim Knight, director of student services, said he had Margaret Schoelles, principal of Fox Chapel Middle School, investigate the recorded number of sexual batteries.

Schoelles, who was not principal of the school at that time, said she discovered that administrators were using a different definition under the student code of conduct to record sexual batteries when they should've been listed as sexual harassment.

While the state defines batteries as an attempted or actual forced sexual act upon another student, the student code also included sexual gestures or even comments made in notes.
"These incidents were coded correctly - but the definitions weren't aligned with the state's definitions," Schoelles said. "Obviously, that's something that needs to occur."
Schoelles said she would likely also look into the 13 sexual battery incidents recorded the 2007-08 school year as well to discover if they need to be addressed.

One problem is that for the past few years the state has been changing how it defines incidents for school violence, she said. Until the 2007-08 school year, definitions hadn't been expanded on, and violence incidents weren't broken out into specific categories.

Knight said another red flag about recorded violence was how Hernando High counted students involved in fighting rather than incidents of fighting. Last year the school's fighting numbers increased by 23 incidents, or 104.3 percent, from 24 in 2007-08 to 47 in 2008-09.

"I don't think our people are really going back like we did with Fox Chapel and look at these reports to see if they really meet the criteria before submitting it," Knight said. "Obviously, you only get out of these statistics what you put in and the time to really be looking at this isn't after it comes out in the paper."

Knight said he would be reviewing the reporting criteria with school administrators to ensure the data is being reported correctly. He won't be the only one.

Cheryl Etters, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education, reiterated state officials would be looking into whether school data should be resubmitted to the state so that accurate data is recorded on the state's DOE Web site.

For more information about school data, go to the Florida Department of Education Web site at www.fldoe.org/eias/eiaspubs/fsir.asp