Incident Reporting
The District provides the OSSA with serious incident reports on a daily basis. These reports comprise information regarding the incidents of violence that occur during the school day. They include information about student victims, offenders, staff members and the schools of origin. The following are the types of incidents reported under Section 1310-A of the PA Public School Code:
Relating to acts of violence
| Relating to aggravated indecent assault
|
Criminal homicide
| Relating to indecent assault
|
Relating to simple assault
| Relating to arson and related offenses |
Relating to aggravated assault
| Relating to robbery |
Relating to rape | Relating to robbery of motor vehicle |
Relating to statutory sexual assault | Relating to possession of a weapon |
Relating to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse | Relating to possession, use or sale of controlled substances on school property |
Relating to sexual assault | Relating to possession, use or sale of alcohol or tobacco by any person on school property
|
Each school entity in Pennsylvania is required to submit an annual incident report to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE). The District uses their Student Information System (SIS) through the Office of Information Technology and Data Management to gather this information and submit it to PDE.
OSSA would note that the District utilizes incident codes that use different definitions than those utilized by OSSA and PDE, which rely on the definitions of those crimes as included in the Title 18 Crimes and Offenses of the PA Consolidated Statutes. Many of the District's codes are also combined (e.g., the District's code "Assault on Student" includes both aggravated and simple assaults, which are separate offenses under the PDE reporting system). Disorderly conduct includes several offenses, including intending to cause public (including school) inconvenience or alarm; engaging in fighting, threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior, or making unreasonable noise, or using obscene language or gesture; or creating a hazardous or physically offensive condition by an act which serves no legitimate purpose. The District also categorizes Title 18 offenses related to a sexual incident under a "Morals Offense" category. OSSA would note that this deviations in coding language can result in challenges in determining the actual number and type of incidents occurring in the District.
Number of Incidents Reported to OSSA
Over the course of the 2021-22 school year, there were 3361 reports submitted to the OSSA associated with Section 1310-A of the PA Public School Code. A total of 3191 reports were made in the 2022-23 school year. The following are aggregate District incident counts of those categories.
The map below provides a more in-depth view of the number of incidents occurring within the individual schools in the 2021-23 school years. It also provides a glimpse of the number of police dispatches for crimes made in the catchment areas of each of the schools. More information regarding crime incidents in Philadelphia can be found at Crime Incidents - OpenDataPhilly.
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Incident Number Distinctions
As noted in previous Annual Reports, there is often a wide discrepancy between the number of incidents reported to the District, to PDE, and ultimately, to OSSA. This may be due in part to how incidents are coded within the District's system; the language of Section 1310-A as written and how the District interprets which information it is allowed to share by law; administrative inconsistencies or data entry errors; or any number of other of possible reasons.
For example, of the data reported by the District to PDE directly, there were 347 incidents that occurred off grounds while en route to or from school in 2021-2022. Due to the language of Section 1310-A, the District does not provide direct information to OSSA on the number of incidents that occur when students are transported to or from school through busses or public transportation. While OSSA has assisted victims in these cases, it is only when those victimized reached out directly to OSSA for assistance. Thus, the number of incidents reported to OSSA in the data set above do not reflect any incidents occurring when students are travelling to and from school.
Bullying counts are also not fully reflected in the data reports to the OSSA. For example, in the 2021-2022 school year, seven bullying incidents were reported to OSSA, while 149 were reported to PDE. On the District website, under the Office of Student Rights and ResponsibilitiesOpens In A New Window, there were a total of 268 substantiated reports of bullying, and 270 reports of harassment. These examples illustrate the differences between the total known incidents throughout the school year.
PDE receives a broader count of incidents to include academic and student codes of conduct, as well as truancy, adjudication reports, etc. To view the detailed report the District submitted to PDE for reference, click here, School District of Philadelphia Safe Schools Report.pdf.
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