The Pasco County school district has agreed to change the way its schools treat students with disabilities as part of a settlement related to a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation.
The Justice Department announced the settlement with the school district Tuesday after a lengthy investigation concluded that Pasco schools engaged in disability discrimination.
The department found that Pasco County schools routinely relied on punitive measures, like suspensions or calling police, to manage students whose behaviors related to disabilities. Such behaviors could have been addressed through proper support and de-escalation, the Justice Department said.
The investigation also identified problems with the way schools conducted threat assessments, which are procedures designed to identify and respond to threats to a school’s security. School personnel in conducting the assessments failed to consider individual student disabilities in relation to their behavior, the Justice Department reported. They often unnecessarily referred such students to law enforcement for arrest or involuntary commitment to mental health facilities under Florida’s Baker Act.
The agreement calls for Pasco schools to end discriminatory practices, which the federal investigation found resulted in disabled students losing hours of classroom time, being subjected to unfair threat assessments and facing arrest or commitment to mental health facilities against their will.
Corey Dierdorff, a spokesperson for the school district, said in a statement that the Justice Department’s probe began “in response to an allegation made in 2020″ about school data sharing with law enforcement.
The district didn’t elaborate on the source or substance of the allegation, but the investigation began a month after the Tampa Bay Times revealed the Pasco district had been sharing data on academics, attendance and discipline with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office was using the information to create a list of schoolchildren who were likely to become future criminals. Experts who reviewed the effort for the Times said it was likely biased against children with disabilities.
The investigation “eventually shifted” to allegations that the district discriminated against students with disabilities, Dierdorff said. It focused on how students with disabilities were treated in Pasco County schools from 2018 to 2022.
The district was identified as meeting the requirements of the federal Individuals with Education Act, with “no significant discipline disproportionality for students with disabilities during the same period,” Dierdorff said.