Board eyes presentation by shooting victim’s dad
LANSDALE >> A data dashboard developed by the father of a school shooting victim could help North Penn, and school districts across Pennsylvania, become safer.
A district committee heard June 28 from Max Schachter, founder and CEO of “Safe Schools For Alex,” a nonprofit meant to prevent shootings like the one that claimed the life of his son.
“This dashboard is the first step toward creating a positive learning environment for all students,” said Schachter.
In 2020 district staff set up a publicly available “data dashboard” meant to track COVID-19 case data across all district schools, and in February 2021 unveiled a similar school safety dashboard meant to present stats on school safety incidents the district is required to report to the
state. A similar dashboard, showing reported data from across the state, has been developed by Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018.
“Alex was one of the 17 innocent victims that were murdered in the Parkland school shooting, on Valentine’s Day 2018,” Schachter said, showing a collage of photos of his son.
“Alex was in the ninth grade, and only 14 years old, when a murderer walked into Alex’s high school, with an AR-15 and a rifle bag, and no one stopped him. And he went ahead and murdered 14 children and three staff members, in just three minutes and 51 seconds,” he said.
After that shooting, Schachter told the committee, then-Florida governor Rick Scott set up a commission to investigate the shooting and make recommendations, and Schachter was part of that commission, which investigated the interactions between the shooter, law enforcement, and school staff.
“I can say, three years post-the shooting, students in Florida are 180 degrees safer than where they were prior to the shooting,” he said.
One of the reasons for that increased safety is the “Safe Schools for Alex” dashboard, which gathers data that can be hard to find on various state government websites, into a sortable set of charts and graphs showing raw numbers and rates of incidents, from citations to fights and more.
“If you want to have a really safe school, you’ve got to address the culture and climate that’s in the school. Florida gets it right now, because we had this horrible tragedy here,” he said.
“But as I travel across the country, I see a tremendous amount of complacency. I appreciate your attention, and North Penn’s attention. I can tell you guys are prioritizing safety and security, but prior to the shooting in Parkland, there was a lot of complacency,” Schachter said.
For three consecutive years prior to the shooting, Schachter told the board, “they reported zero bullying, zero physical attacks, zero sexual assaults, and zero threats and intimidation” cases under reporting standards at the time.
“Even if you report zero to the state, that doesn’t mean that there is no violence going on in your school. That doesn’t erase everything that’s happened,” he said.
So far, the data dashboards available at https:// www.safeschoolsforalex.org/school-safety-dashboard/ have been populated with reported data from Florida, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, and each can be filtered to show data statewide, by district, or by school, with search fields where users can plug in specific school names. A key difference from the district dashboard and state reporting systems already in place, Schachter said, is the ability to compare with others across the state.
“Each school, when you look it up, has a different PDF. It’s very, very difficult to compare schools, to really understand the context.
You’ve got your school district information, but how does North Penn know if their numbers are high or low, or good or bad?” he said.
Searching for North Penn High School on the database shows the school ranked 280th out of 429 high schools across the state with 10.2 reported incidents per 100 students. Total discipline incidents are rated low compared to the rest of the state, but code of conduct incidents are rated high, and “very high” ratings are noted for property incidents, drug and public order incidents, and violent incidents.
“We’re hoping that parents all over the sate will use this site, to get more information. We’re hoping that school administrators and school board members will use this site as well,” Schachter said.
Committee chairman Jonathan Kassa said the dashboard can also point viewers to schools or districts that are underreporting for certain categories, which Florida addressed post-Parkland.
“It’s my understanding that in Pennsylvania, there are no ramifications for underreporting. So that accountability is lacking, which it seems you coursecorrected in Florida,” he said.
Board member Cathy Wesley asked if the various misconduct and fighting categories included on the dashboard are identical state to state, and Schachter said they vary depending on how those states collect and report their data.
“That’s why I always look at fighting first, because fighting in a school is the best indicator you have to violence in a school,” he said.
Using the data dashboard to show reported fighting incidents in Montgomery County, the Norristown Area School District tops the list with 2.43 incidents per 100 students, followed by the Pottstown School District with 1.40. North Penn falls sixth on the list with 0.28 incidents per 1,000 students, but a higher raw number, with a total of 1,113 fighting incidents reported for Norristown, compared to 513 for Pottstown and 775 for North Penn.
“I hope that parents and school board members, and departments of education, would be looking at this data, and it would prompt a conversation with the principal, and maybe surge resources into that school to find out how we can make things safer,” Schachter said.
Other data points worth noting, Schachter added: breaking down North Penn’s raw numbers of incident reports indicate a total of 360 code of conduct violations, 62 possession or use or sale of tobacco or vaping, 36 for fighting, 35 for possession or use of controlled substances, 32 for minor altercations, 30 each for “failure of disorderly person to disperse upon official order” and for bullying, and 29 for threats against school officials or students.
Sorting fighting incidents per 100 students statewide, North Penn does not make the top ten, but other area districts do: the Southeast Delco school district ranks fourth with 3.07 fighting incidents per 100 students, the Chester-Upland School District just behind with 3.01, then at spots seven through nine are the William Penn, Norristown Area and Reading school districts with 2.85, 2.43 and 2.15 reported incidents per 100 respectively.
“This is where we were three years ago, when nobody was looking at this data. I suppose that’s probably where Pennsylvania is now,” Schachter said.
“If you want to reduce violence, and create a safe school, you’ve got to be honest, and got to be accurate. In Florida, we’ve come a long way, and I think schools are doing a good job, and beginning to do the best they can,” he said.
Student liaison Sahana Prasad asked how the dashboard could be impacted by schools underreporting the data, and Schachter said that’s where parents and residents can use the data to identify irregularities. Kassa added that Schachter has been invited to speak to Pennsylvania’s legislature about school safety this fall, and he hopes to see North Penn begin building on the dashboard before then.
“You’re using data that’s already public, to spark conversations. And there could be very good reasons” for gaps or irregularities in the data, Kassa said.
“It’s all those goose eggs that should be just as worrisome as those at the top of the list, because there are far too many goose eggs in Pennsylvania for us to assume those reports are accurate. And that’s where we’re trying to raise those standards,” he said.