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- Contact Us!
- About the PASCO Coalition
- Our Demands
- Our Members
- Events
- In the News
- Get Involved!
- Resources
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Contact Us!
[email protected]
(727) 371-6199
About the PASCO Coalition
Welcome! We are the PASCO Coalition: People Against the Surveillance of Children and Overpolicing. Our Coalition includes over 90 individual members and over 30 local, state, and national organizational members working together to end the Pasco Sheriffâs Office predictive policing program.
For decades, the Pasco County School District was sharing school records with the Sheriff. It is unclear how the District is going to address the harms that have flowed from sharing so much information. But what we do know is that the District is still sharing student information with some of the Sheriffâs employees, and that there are still not enough measures in place to protect private student data.
Regardless of what the District has, or has not done so far, Pasco Sheriffâs Office continues to pull information from child welfare files, student records, family information, and past experiences with law enforcement to put children on secret lists. Based on the Sheriffâs scoring criteria, we have grave concerns that its program disproportionately impacts children of color, children with disabilities, and families without financial resources. At the Sheriffâs last count, it has targeted 420 children.
Join us to end the Sheriffâs targeted harassment of students, their friends, and families, and to end the violation of familiesâ civil rights and privacy rights.
Our Demands
On May 4, 2021, the PASCO Coalition sent an open letter to the Pasco County School District highlighting our strong opposition to the District’s practice of sharing confidential student data with law enforcement and its participation in a school-based predictive policing program with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office. We urged the District to immediately end all student data-sharing agreements used by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office to surveil and harass students and families.
Also on May 4, 2021, the District held a regularly scheduled school board meeting. Without any notice to the public and without any opportunity for the public to comment the District voted to approve amendments to the data-sharing agreement between the District and Pasco County Sheriff’s Office. The community never had a chance to see the amendments before they were approved. We were only able to obtain a copy of the revised data-sharing agreement through a public records request after the school board meeting.
Unfortunately, the amendments to the data-sharing agreement are not good enough. Various individuals at the Sheriff’s Office still have access to student data. We know from the Sheriff’s own policies that they are required to use all information gathered in its predictive policing program â including student data. Moreover, neither the District nor the Sheriff addresses what happens to the 20 years’ worth of data that the Sheriff still has, or the harms that have come to students’ and their families as a result of that. Lastly, the District must have better safeguards on who accesses student data and how that is tracked.
Below are our seven demands that the District must take to protect student privacy and to meaningfully advance racial equity for Pasco County students and families:
- Immediately end all data-sharing agreements with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office.
- Permanently erase any database or list currently or previously used to identify or label students at-risk by the Pasco Sheriff’s Office.
- Do not renew any School Resource Officer (“SRO”) funding agreement with the Pasco Sheriff’s Office that requires the disclosure of legally protected student records or permits “intelligence led” police surveillance of Pasco County schoolchildren.
- Affirmatively notify every parent/guardian, in writing, if their student(s) has ever been identified as “at-risk”, “off-track”, “on- track”, “critical” or any other similar designation by the District or the Pasco Sheriff’s Office. The District must be transparent and provide families with all necessary information to determine and/or challenge their students’ “risk scores”.
- Enact policy reforms that explicitly ban predictive policing technologies and unlawful data sharing practices with law enforcement.
- Cease all retaliation against students, parent/guardians and District employees.
- Ensure that Pasco County School District administrators and educators undergo regular student privacy training.
Our Members
- ACLU of Florida
- ACLU, Greater Tampa Chapter
- Advancement Project
- BLM NPR
- The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
- Color of Change
- The Council of American-Islamic Relations-Florida (CAIR-FL)
- Disability Rights Florida
- Dream Defenders
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Equality Florida
- Florida Student Power Network
- Florida Social Justice In Schools Project
- Future of Privacy Forum
- The Greater Tampa Chapter of the ACLU of Florida
- Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA)
- League of Women Voters of Hillsborough County, Pasco Unit
- The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)
- NAACP Florida State Conference
- National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC)
- National Fair Housing Alliance
- Pasco Agents for Change
- Pasco County NAACP
- Pasco Pride
- Pastors for Florida Children
- The P.E.E.R. Group
- Restorative Justice Coalition
- Southern Juvenile Defender Center
- Southern Legal Counsel
- Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
- Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP)
Events
- Recording of May 8, 2021: PASCO Coalition Town Hall
- Register for August 12, 2021, at 5:30 PM: PASCO Coalition Town Hall
- Watch Live: August 17, 2021, at 6:00 PM: Pasco County School Board Meeting
In the News
- September 3, 2020 â present: Tampa Bay Times, âTargetedâ
- December 18, 2020: Student Privacy Compass, âThe Trouble with Pasco Countyâs Predictive Policing Programâ
- April 21, 2021: The Oracle, âOpinion: Pasco County schools must protect minors from profiling and privacy violationsâ
- April 26, 2021: Press release announcing the PASCO Coalition
- April 26, 2021: Tampa Bay 10, âControversial data-sharing program in Pasco County violates studentsâ rights, new group saysâ
- May 4, 2021: Press release with the Coalitionâs open letter to the District
- May 4, 2021: Press release with Coalitionâs response to the revised data-sharing agreement
- May 25, 2021: PASCO Coalition Op-Ed: ââPredictive policingâ continues in Pascoâs schools; itâs been amended, not endedâ
- March 6, 2024: Press release with Coalitionâs response to settlement agreement between DOJ and Pasco County School District
Get Involved!
- Sign the Color of Change petition to oppose the predictive policing program
- Join our mailing list
- Reach out to your school board member
Resources
- 5 things you need to know about the predictive policing program!
- Know your privacy rights!
- Template: file a FERPA complaint on behalf of your child
- Template: public records request to the Pasco Sheriffâs Office
- Template: public records request to the District
- How to contact your School Board members
- May 2018: Pasco Sheriffâs Office redacted âIntelligence-Led Policingâ Manual
- 2020-21 data-sharing agreement between the District and Pasco Sheriffâs Office
- 2020-21 amended data sharing agreement between the District and Pasco Sheriffâs Office
- May 4, 2021: PASCO Coalition open letter to the District
- July 30, 2021: PASCO Coalition letter to the District
- Demands for the school board meeting on August 17, 2021
- September 10, 2021: PASCO Coalitionâs response to NISTâs report on reducing risk of bias in artificial intelligence
- July 25, 2022: Letter to BJA from the PASCO Coalition
- September 13, 2022: National Policing Instituteâs Assessment of Pasco County Sheriffâs Officeâs Focused Deterrence Strategy
- September 12, 2023: Letter to BJA regarding NPIâs Assessment Pasco County Sheriffâs Officeâs Focused Deterrence Strategy