How safe is your child’s school? See crime and suspension totals for all NC schools.
New school crime and suspension figures were released Thursday for individual North Carolina school districts, traditional public schools and charter schools.
The new totals from the 2018-19 school year are part of statewide figures released earlier this week. The annual state-mandated report showed suspensions, school crimes and dropouts all declined overall in the state’s public schools.
The results were mixed for individual school districts.
How safe is your child’s school?
Families can look up how many of 16 individual acts of school crime and violence were reported at individual schools.
Reportable crimes include assault resulting in serious bodily injury, sexual offense, sexual assault, possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance.
No schools have been designated by the state this year as being persistently dangerous. That designation would apply to schools that report at least two violent acts and five or more violent acts per thousand students in two consecutive years and where “conditions that contributed to the commission of those offenses are likely to continue into another school year.
The new state report also lists how many students received short-term suspensions at individual schools.
Fewer suspensions, crimes in Wake County schools
Suspensions dropped in the Wake County school system, continuing a steady decline in the number of students being kept out of class in North Carolina’s largest school system.
Short-term suspensions dropped 15.9% from 11,833 in the 2017-18 school year to 9,947 in the 2018-19 school year. Short-term suspensions last 10 days or less.
Only three long-term suspensions were issued in the 2018-19 school year, compared to six the prior year.
In contrast, Wake issued 20,651 short-term suspensions and 1,015 long-term suspensions in the 2008-09 school year.
In the intervening decade, school districts around the country began to look for alternatives to out-of-school suspensions as a way to keep students in class. It coincided with guidance from the Obama administration to reduce school suspensions. The Trump administration has rescinded that guidance.
In 2018, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights agreed to close an investigation into Wake’s student discipline policies.
The new state reports also show that acts of reported school crime and violence dropped by 12.5% in Wake from the prior school year.
Durham Public Schools moving in ‘right direction’
Short-term suspensions in Durham Public Schools dropped 36% from 5,996 in the 2017-18 school year to 3,852 last school year. Long-term suspensions dropped from 64 to 46.
Acts of school crime and violence dropped by more than 23%.
Like Wake, Durham reached an agreement in 2018 with federal civil rights investigators looking into the district’s discipline policies.
Durham school leaders credited the gains to strategies such as using restorative practices instead of suspensions, culturally responsive teaching and reducing implicit bias and racial inequities.
“We are doing pioneering work in equity and restorative practices in our schools,” Durham Superintendent Pascal Mubenga said in a news release. “That work is hardly complete, but the results show that we are continuing in the right direction. DPS students are learning and growing in a safer, more supportive environment.”
Suspensions rise in Chapel Hill-Carrboro
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools saw short-term suspensions rise 48.5%, from 239 in the 2017-18 school year to 355 last year. After having no long-term suspensions in 2017-18, there was one last school year.
But acts of school crime and violence dropped 6.25%
Short-term suspensions down in Johnston County
The Johnston County school system saw short-term suspensions drop 5.23% from 3,610 in the 2017-18 school year to 3,421 last year. Long-term suspensions more than doubled from four the prior year to nine last school year.
Acts of school crime and violence increased 2.2%.
Go to https://bit.ly/2wx9dtA to look up statewide, district level and individual school crime and suspension totals dating back to the 2007-08 school year.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 6:25 AM with the headline "How safe is your child’s school? See crime and suspension totals for all NC schools.."
