Jefferson County Public Schools records 582 fights in just first two weeks of the 2021-22 school year
LOUISVILLE, Ky Sept 3 2021 In the first two weeks of the 2021-22 school year, Jefferson County Public Schools has handed out 582 behavior referrals to students who have fought with fellow students and staff.
JCPS reports that 425 fights have occurred at schools as of Aug. 24, according to data obtained
Of the 582 behavior referrals, the district has doled out 713 resolutions. The district has mostly resolved fights by suspending students from schools with 209 out-of-school suspensions reported.
At times, footage of altercations this school year have been caught on cell phone cameras and made headlines in Louisville.
“I want the responsible parties to be held accountable for that,” said Jamie, a mother who said her daughter had been stabbed in the forehead during a fight at Fern Creek High School. “… She’s going to have to live with it for the rest of her life.”
Violence broke out at Fern Creek High after Jamie’s daughter was blamed for spreading a sexually explicit video of one of the assailants’ sisters, which the girl denied.
“Eventually they found out who sent the video,” the daughter, a Fern Creek junior who did not want to be identified, told WDRB News. “It was another boy from a different bus, but I guess that didn’t change that they wanted to fight.”
Cell phone video captured the incident, like others so far this school year. JCPS says four students involved in the Fern Creek High fight were disciplined. Jamie’s daughter was suspended for three days.
“It’s hard to watch someone repeatedly stabbing and hurting your baby,” Jamie said. “… I have watched that video I know 45 times.”
Jamie’s daughter initially thought she had hit a wall because she felt something hit her head. Blood, she said, was “everywhere” in the aftermath of the altercation.
“The nurse lady, she had asked me did I hit a wall or did I get stabbed with something, and I just assumed that I had hit a wall until everybody was telling me that she stabbed me,” the daughter said, “and then I looked at the video.”
Fern Creek High is not alone in dealing with violence involving students so far this school year.
A student faces a charge of bringing a gun on school property after a pellet gun was found in a trash can outside Pleasure Ridge Park High School following an altercation there, and Marion C. Moore School chemistry teacher William Bennet is under investigation after getting into a fight with a student, who says he was provoked after Bennett made a racially charged comment toward him.
Hundreds more violence incidents have not garnered as much public attention, however.
The Binet School, which serves students with severe disabilities, reported 32 violent incidents that resulted in 32 referrals, the most in JCPS so far. Goldsmith Elementary School had the second-most with 22 fights followed by Cane Run Elementary with 21, Marion C. Moore with 19 and Kammerer Middle School with 17.
Renee Murphy, head of communications for JCPS, said data provided by the district to WDRB News represents “a range of different incidents, some more serious than others.”
“I also think it’s important to note that many of our students have not been in our buildings with us physically since March of 2020, and so we know all that’s happened throughout the course of that time that we were apart,” Murphy said. “… Things have happened in our community and are still playing out in our community, and it’s important for us here at JCPS to make sure that we have the supports that students need when they are with us.”
Marion C. Moore had the most out-of-school suspensions so far this school year with 20 followed by Crosby Middle School with 15, Kammerer Middle with 14 and Meyzeek Middle School with 13, according to JCPS data.
Eighty-six referrals throughout JCPS were handled through phone calls with guardians, 60 were resolved with conferences with guardians and 57 resulted in either full or partial in-school suspensions, JCPS records show.
Seventy percent of referrals after violent incidents have been doled out to male students, who represent 59 percent of out-of-school suspensions.
More violent incidents have been reported at JCPS elementary and middle schools than at the district’s high schools. District data show 171 fights reported in kindergarten through fifth grade and 174 reported in sixth through eighth grade compared to 80 in high school grades
Middle school students make up the bulk of behavior referrals at JCPS with 267 reported in those grades, according to JCPS data.
Metro Louisville is dealing with an uptick in violence and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Trauma and its effects, Murphy said, don’t leave students once they cross the thresholds from their communities to their schools.
“Just because we are at school, it doesn’t mean that any trauma or hurt doesn’t come with a student as well, so that’s why it’s important for us to make sure that we have our supports in place to make sure that students have what they need when they’re with us,” she said.
Fights in schools has rekindled interest from some on bringing officers back in schools in some capacity.
The COVID-19 pandemic sidelined talks among members of the Jefferson County Board of Education about creating an internal force of school security officers. City budget cuts pulled 17 LMPD officers from school beats as resource officers, and a split board vote meant contracts with other police agencies for 11 school resource officers were not approved ahead of the 2019-20 school year.
“I think that’s been a question that has been raised, and so we have told families that we want to have a conversation with them,” Murphy said. “… We know that there are views on both sides of this issue, so we want to make sure that we have this conversation, and we can present information to our board when that time comes with the input from our community.”
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