A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Kentucky Center for School Safety issues its safety data report of law violations in schools


The Kentucky Center for School Safety (KCSS) released its 2015-16 School Safety Data Report examining law violations committed in Kentucky’s public schools.

During the 2015-16 school year 6,001 students committed 6,995 law violations. These 6,001 students comprise less than one percent (0.92 percent) of the student population (655,475 students), indicating that the vast majority of students in Kentucky’s public schools did not commit a reported law violation.

This year’s report includes an Appendix C that captures types of law violations by grade level and category.

Even though this report shows that less than one percent of students in Kentucky committed a law violation in a school setting, there are several items that warrant close monitoring in the future:

1. Marijuana/hashish use and possession is the number one law violation for 2015-16 and accounted for 26.45% of all law violations. While this rate is consistent with previous years, the popularity of marijuana/hashish with teenagers is a major concern for all communities.

2. Alcohol use and possession decreased considerably, 26.19%, in the 2015-16 report. This violation had increased by 46.80% in the previous report.

3. Disorderly conduct violations increased by 192.81% from the previous report. Upon further review of the data, it appears that some districts did not correctly code specific incidences of disorderly conduct in the 2014-15 report. This appears to be the underlying cause for such a great increase in incidences of disorderly conduct in the 2015-16 report.

4. The disproportionality of race, special education and socio-economic status among student violators continues to be a concern and suggests that a thorough analysis of school-level data is warranted.

5. The largest number of law violations occurs with ninth graders. This key transition year is also reported as troublesome in studies of retention, failed subjects and attendance.

6. Although “other” weapon violations, (n=341, 88.80%), predominately involved objects that are capable of being readily used by one person to inflict severe bodily injury upon another person, violations involving a firearm, handgun, or rifle were rare (n=43, 11.20%) in the 2015-16 school year.

7. Violations for terroristic threatening
may be under reported. Representatives from the Kentucky Center for School Safety are frequently consulted about anonymous threats that have been uncovered, but cannot be attached to a student. Since only violations that can be assigned to a student are reported, anonymous threats that require school administrators to investigate and respond are not captured in the current data. This may be an area that needs to be addressed in future reporting procedures.

The district groups include: less than 2,499 students, 2,500-4,999 students, 5,000-9,999 students and greater than 10,000 students.

As required under KRS 158.442, the KCSS analyzes all law violations reported by each of Kentucky’s public schools each school year. 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.

This report focuses solely on law violations committed by students enrolled in our state’s public schools.

The 2015-16 School Safety Data Report ca be found at www.kysafeschools.org.

Here are how some are schools measured up:

. . . . .District. . . . . . . . .Enrollment. Violations.Violators. …White. ….Black…Othr. .RateW. RateB. RateO. Total

. . . .


Related Posts

Leave a Comment