The school district said it planned to “assure the PTA County Council that our agreements with the Sheriff’s Office are routinely reviewed and, when appropriate, revised or updated.”
Harding added, “I know our PTA has some concerns, but I also look forward to filling them in on the wonderful relationship we have with our Sheriff’s Office.”
Board chairman Allen Altman and vice chairwoman Cynthia Armstrong did not respond to requests for comment.
Willis, of the county council PTA, said her organization supports the positive relationships school resource officers can have with students. But the details of the Sheriff’s Office data-driven program were “unacceptable and scary,” she said.
“It needs to start being addressed now, in the next week or two,” she said.
Jennifer Martinez, president of the Florida PTA, said her organization “opposes the data mining of educational records or student data for open-ended purposes.”
She added that a team was looking into the Sheriff’s Office program and is ready to help the county council with any of its advocacy efforts.
Other Pasco County parents said they were concerned as well.
“I love police,” said Tammy Ingram, who lives in the county with her three school-aged children. “But I’m kind of hurt about this.”
After reading the Times report, Ingram reached out to the Sheriff’s Office, hoping to find out if her older children were on the list. She was told the records were confidential and could not be released to her, according to a copy of the response reviewed by the Times.
The response both surprised and angered her, she said. “These should be public records to the parents. We should know.”
The Sheriff’s Office said about five parents had asked for the records and that it provided them when the parents verified their identities. But Ingram wasn’t asked for verification, she said, even after saying she was her children’s mother twice.
Another parent told the Times he had been unable to obtain any records showing whether his child was on the sheriff’s list or how the determination was made.
Barbara Petersen, an expert on Florida’s public records law and president emeritus of the state’s First Amendment Foundation, said parents should have access to their own children’s records.
“If I were a parent, I’d be outraged,” Petersen said. “I’d be suing the sheriff. That the sheriff is not giving information on their child, it is morally reprehensible.”
Meanwhile, more than a dozen Pasco teachers and school support staff have taken their own public stand against the program.
Several of the group’s members who spoke to the Times work at Veterans Elementary. And even though the Sheriff’s Office does not mine data from elementary schools, they say they were still disturbed such an effort is taking place in the district.
“We don’t see anything good coming out of it,” said Jordan Vaca, an exceptional student education teacher.
“What’s frustrating is that the leaders in the school district don’t seem to have a problem with this,” teacher Johora Warren added. “They just trust the Sheriff’s Office.”
Some of the teachers said they would have met several of the department’s criteria for being labeled a potential future criminal. Vaca said he sometimes had below average grades in school, problems with attendance and traumatic experiences in his childhood.
“It made me think,” he said. “If I was in school now, would I be on this list?”
In an online call to action, the group wrote the program is built on data biased against children of color and that millions of dollars are given to the Sheriff’s Office annually, while resources for mental health and education are cut.
“I’m bitter because we are paying $2.3 million to the Sheriff’s Office to do this while my caseload was doubled,” said Caitlin Al-Mutawa, a speech-language pathologist who helps children with communication disorders.
The group worked with the national civil rights advocacy organization, Color of Change, to create an online petition to demand Browning delete the Sheriff’s Office database. The petition spread on Twitter and Facebook and was featured in a video on TikTok.
The teachers intend to raise their concerns about the program at the next public school board meeting on Tuesday.
• • •
The full letter from the Pasco County Council PTA to the school district:
I wanted to reach out to you regarding the article that was published on November 19, 2020 by the Tampa Bay Times. The Pasco County Council of PTAs finds the article regarding use of our student’s educational data and child service’s data alarming. In the article, like our school board members and superintendent, the PCCPTA was unaware of the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office manual. The practices condoned and verbiage described does not reflect the community policing advocated for by PCCPTA.
The PTA opposes the wholesale data-mining of educational records or online profiles for unspecified and open-ended purposes. The association recognizes educational agencies and institutions as the nexus between parents seeking access to their child’s data and the service providers that collect the data within a school setting. In managing this relationship, educational agencies should balance parental rights with educationally sound data uses, like personalized and adaptive learning.
For example, we have supported and recognized the importance of the relationship between our SROs and school communities. As highlighted in the article, we support tutoring and mentoring efforts utilizing early warning systems that use student and family data. To our knowledge these efforts are in collaboration with the School District and DCF and have an outcome intended to improve student learning.
The allegations of targeting families justified by utilizing any piece of educational data by former deputies is unacceptable, given law enforcement unit records are not subject to privacy protections. The manual described in the article allows for this alleged practice due to student data-mining in an open-ended purpose.
The PCCPTA requests our DCF offices and our School Board:
· to review their student data agreements and manuals involving use of student data by all agencies with the Sheriff’s Office and to ensure student data is used for educational purposes only and that best practices reflected.
· Investigate the allegations of use of student data to target families using student data for any reason other than positive
· Review policies and practices regarding SROs with the Sheriff’s Office to ensure positive discipline practices.
· Improve communication on how each organization has agreed to use student educational data.
PCCPTA knows that our School Board and Superintendent views every student’s potential to be a productive member of our community, not in terms highlighted in the Sheriff’s Office manual. Now that we know, PCCPTA calls on our School Board and Superintendent to ensure any agency utilizing our student data will improve student learning in their policies and practices.
I’d love an opportunity to discuss this matter with you further and offer any assistance needed to protect Pasco County’s children.
Thank you,
Alicia Willis, President
Pasco County Council PTA
• • •
Can I check if my child is on the list?
It’s unclear. The Sheriff’s Office said it does not inform students or their parents if they’ve been added to its list of potential future criminals.
The Sheriff’s Office declined our request for the list, citing laws protecting the privacy of students, kids in the juvenile justice system and victims of crimes.
But experts said many of those laws don’t apply to parents requesting their own kids’ records, and federal law gives families the right to access student records on their children.
The Sheriff’s Office analyzes the data for more than 30,000 students in most of the middle and high schools in the county. (Pasco Middle School, Pasco High School, Gulf Middle School, Gulf High School and Harry Schwettman Education Center have school resource officers from other law enforcement agencies, so their students’ data is not included.)
The school district said it does not have the list that is created by the Sheriff’s Office. It said it already informs parents when their children are considered at-risk academically.
You can try to make a records request for all records related to your child to the Sheriff’s Office by phone (813-996-6982), fax (813-235-6119), mail (8700 Citizens Drive, New Port Richey, FL 34654) or through its online records portal (pascosheriff.com/records-and-reports.html).
Let us know what happens. Send an email to tips@tampabay.com or reach out directly to reporter Neil Bedi at nbedi@tampabay.com or reporter Kathleen McGrory at kmcgrory@tampabay.com.
[This story was originally published by Tampa Bay Times.]