Safe Schools dashboard unveiled
LANSDALE » Parents, students and staff in the North Penn School District could soon have an easy way, with just a few clicks, to see just how safe the district is.
Staff have unveiled a first draft at a “Safe Schools data dashboard” that could help give the public a more clear picture of what’s happening in each district school.
“This is just a preview of what is possible, of what we are capable of, from a data dashboard standpoint,” said Assistant Superintendent Todd Bauer.
Since shortly after the arrival of COVID-19 in March 2020, district officials have set up and maintained a COVID “data dashboard” on the district’s website, displaying the latest case count data provided by Montgomery County, with drop-down options to filter the data by school.
During the school board’s safe schools committee meeting on Jan. 25, Bauer and district Coordinator of Safe School’s Chris Doerr unveiled a similar site, but with different data: school safety information the district is required to report to the state. As he spoke, Bauer shared the dashboard via Zoom videoconference, featuring a horizontal timeline showing the total numbers of incidents within the district and the state from 2011 through 2020, and totals staying relatively flat for the first eight years, jumping in 2019, then falling last year.
“It might be alarming to see that spike. I do think it is helpful to see the county and state have the same spike,” Bauer said, noting changes in state reporting requirements caused different types of incidents to be reported.
Drop-down menus on the dashboard detail what must be reported now: incidents involving local law enforcement, total arrests, out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, assaults, sexual misconduct, threats, and possession of weapons, controlled substances, tobacco/ vaping materials, and alcohol.
In addition to total numbers of incidents, the dashboard can also show averages per 1,000 students, and can filter the data by school, by year, by incident type, and can pull comparisons to county and state averages. All data used on the dashboard is already publicly available, Bauer said, and does not identify students involved in the incidents, and also does not include incidents that fall below state reporting requirements.
“This doesn’t necessarily include a cellphone referral, or someone doing something inappropriate in an elementary class, unless it rises to the level of a suspension,” he said.
Committee chairman Jonathan Kassa said he hoped the dashboard could help drive public conversations on school safety, and asked if staff could also develop a nonpublic version showing data the school board already sees in reports and executive sessions, but can’t be made public.
“That allows the board a lot more insight into sensitive information, as to what’s happening across our buildings,” Kassa said.
Board member Wanda Lewis-Campbell asked if the dashboard would include bullying incidents, and Bauer said it largely would not, only those incidents that rise to the level of suspensions.
“That is absolutely something we have data on, the number of incidents in a particular building, whether it was on the bus — it could be in the classroom, lunchroom, on the bus, we could drill down to that fine detail, absolutely,” Bauer said.
Board member Cathy Wesley asked how staff could use the safety dashboard data to set goals, and Bauer said that could be done when staff at each school develop their annual building plans heading into
each school year.
Dashboard data could be used to develop and target district behavioral threat assessment strategies, professional development courses, character education programs, and more. Safe schools committee student liaison Sahana Prasad asked what prompted the development of the dashboard, and Bauer said it was developed by staff to follow the board’s goals of being as transparent as possible.
Analyzing the data, and discussing next steps in public, could lead to future board policies, practices, and district programs meant to reduce the numbers.
“Ultimately, this is the first, very tiny step toward measuring what matters,” Kassa said.
North Penn’s full school board next meets at 6 p.m. Feb. 9 and the safe schools committee next meets at 6 p.m. Feb. 22; for more information visit www.NPenn. org.
“Ultimately, this is the first, very tiny step toward measuring what matters.” — Jonathan Kassa, North Penn School Board safe schools committee chairman