Local school violence numbers jump
Nov. 16—GUILFORD COUNTY — Violence at schools and school events has jumped sharply compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, and Guilford County Schools officials discussed Tuesday night steps they are taking to try to deal with it.
The number of students who received out-of-school suspensions for such things as fighting, aggressive behavior and assaulting faculty or other students went from 358 in August and September of the 2019-20 school year to 567 in the same period of the current school year, an increase of 58.4%, GCS Chief Performance Officer Sonya Stephens told the Guilford County Board of Education.
The increase echoes local, state and national trends of higher rates of homicide and assaults since the pandemic began, said Mike Richey, who was promoted Tuesday night to GCS's assistant superintendent for school safety.
"The numbers on mental health are disturbing," he said.
Superintendent Whitney Oakley said that schools reflect the problems present in the community.
"To solve this crisis, the school system can't do it by ourselves," she said.
One thing GCS is doing is expanding its School Safety Office, hiring four additional people to work on safety planning for each school, she said.
"For too long we've operated here with limited resources, and our schools are feeling it — and they're telling us," she said.
GCS also will start offering incentives for more staff to attend athletic events to help supervise in hopes of heading off fights, and there will be new anti-bullying training for school staff, Oakley said.
Richey said principals already have begun having detailed safety plan discussions with athletic directors before athletic events, and that has helped.
"Our issues with games have continued to decrease as the season has gone on," he said.
Oakley is scheduled to have a press conference today at Fairview Elementary School in High Point about school safety trends and what the school system is doing about them.
These new measures are in addition to safety initiatives that the school board previously had been updated on, including the addition of high-speed body scanners at the county's high schools, the installation of cameras on all school buses, work to make school entry points more secure and efforts to provide more mental health support services for students. Work also should begin soon on updating video cameras in the schools, Richey said.
In other business, the board voted in favor of increasing the potential budgets for six projects that had been approved in March 2021 as part of the funding provided by the $300 million school bonds package voters approved in 2020. Architectural and engineering firms are working to complete the final cost estimates, which will be submitted in the coming months, but because of higher than expected construction and supply costs and some design changes, the current cost estimates "exceed the original budgets by significant amounts," according to a memo to the school board.
The board voted to increase the combined budgets for the six projects — all for schools in Greensboro — by a total of more than 75%, from $215.1 million to $379.5 million.