In 1995 the Florida Department of Education crated the School Environmental Safety Incident Report (SESIR) system to improve the accuracy and quality of data reported by schools. Over the past 12 years, the SESIR system has undergone several refinements and revisions, requiring continual training and technical assistance to school and district-level personnel. Training and technical assistance activities ensure the following:
- Accurate interpretation of SESIR incident definitions.
- Administrative awareness of changes made to SESIR incident definitions.
- Administrative awareness of new critical data elements required to be reported to the state.
In addition to addressing specific issues raised by district personnel, training activities also provide a forum to raise the school districts’ level of awareness of these data quality issues that should be addressed:
- Inappropriate use of local disciplinary codes for SESIR incidents.
- Misinterpretation of SESIR incidents, resulting in over-reporting or under-reporting of specific incidents.
- Failure to record required data elements related to incidents (e.g., weapon-related, gang-related).
- Failure to include all relevant SESIR information on district incident referral forms.
SESIR Web-Based Training
To augment district and regional training workshops provided to school administrators, the SDFS-QDM Project is developing a Web-based training module to be used by district personnel to test and improve their knowledge of SESIR definitions. The training provides a variety of scenarios that require accurate interpretation of incidents and the completion of incident referral forms that resemble those currently in use. The anticipated release date for the training module is July 2007.