Submission
The Kentucky Center for School Safety (KCSS) has released its 2013-14 School Safety Data Report.
The report shows that less than 1 percent of students in Kentucky committed a law violation in a school setting. However, several items warrant close monitoring in the future:
• Drug and alcohol violations make up 46 percent of all law violations.
• There were 384 weapons violations reported – 43 of these were classified as firearms, and 341 as “other,” mostly knives.
• There were 5,687 law violations 5,687 committed by 5,145 students.
The school district data are grouped by population to provide comparative data for school districts of similar size. The district groups are: less than 2,499 students; 2,500-4,999 students; 5,000-9,999 students; and more than 10,000 students.
As required under KRS 158.442, the KCSS analyzes all school board policy and law violations reported by each of Kentucky’s public schools annually. This analysis provides school officials with statewide data that can be used when reviewing their respective district’s student behavioral management policies and practices.
While historically KCSS has undertaken the responsibility of analyzing both board violations and law violations, in 2012 the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) began to produce a similar report that reflected the number of resolutions (consequences) assigned for each reported violation. Therefore, this and subsequent reports by KCSS will focus solely on law violations committed by students enrolled in the state’s K-12 public schools.
This report will be a baseline that will be used in coming years to illustrate trends in Kentucky’s school districts, as well as those throughout the state. Please note that since this is the first year of reporting in this format, there is no comparative prior-year data. After this baseline year, KCSS will resume the practice of showing data from previous years on law violations.
It is our hope that this data will provide school district officials with the information needed to review their disciplinary approaches and to continue to seek effective methods for addressing law violations.
The 2013-14 School Safety Data Report may be accessed on the KCSS’s website here.