Expanding Access to Real-Time School Safety Data: Development of a State-wide School Safety Dashboard

This project will create an enhanced real-time school safety dashboard for the state of Florida, train stakeholders on its use, and develop actionable insights and resources based on the data. The dashboard will leverage Florida’s new monthly school safety reporting requirement to provide timely access to school safety data while leveraging a public facing interface that is based on user feedback, allows comparisons across schools, includes trends, and integrates with other school data (such as state report card, truancy, absences, drop out rate, free and reduced lunch, achievement, etc.). We will couple the enhanced dashboard development with training of education stakeholders in the state to effectively use the dashboard to improve school safety as well as integrated resources grounded in analysis of the data to provide actionable responses by stakeholders to school safety data.  The project aims to accomplish four goals: 1) Development of an enhanced school safety dashboard interface based on user feedback, 2) Transition of the dashboard to support monthly updates rather than annual updates of safety data, 3) Development and implementation of training on dashboard use by educators, parents, school board members and law enforcement 4) Assessment of the use of the dashboard to generate further insights that can inform school safety. By providing this “real-time” access to data in a way that a broad spectrum of stakeholders can view, there will be opportunities for schools to adjust practices in real time and for the state to respond to needs of districts and schools as they emerge. This project brings together partners from the University of Florida, the non-profit Safe Schools for Alex, and the Florida Department of Education to implement this transformative data dashboard, trainings, and analytic insights to improve school safety. The result will be the most comprehensive school safety dashboard in the country, serving millions of students across thousands of schools in Florida, while also providing a model for the development of similar dashboards in states nationwide.