By: Richard Armen
Submitted: 2010-02-27 19:38:28 | Word Count: 524
Parents, teachers, and students expect schools to be a safe place. Acts of violence disrupt the learning process, not to mention having a profoundly negative emotional impact on those affected by school violence. According to a recent report on school crime and student safety by the CDC and the Department of Education, students aged twelve through eighteen are the victims of more than 2.7 million crimes at school each year. Over the past year, fifteen percent of all high school students reported being involved in a physical altercation on school property. Just how common are crimes on school campuses?
28 percent of students in middle school and high school reported being bullied in the last six months.A significant portion of these students also admitted avoiding one or more places at school for their own safety. Nearly 20 of students in middle and high school report being threatened with a beating.
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According to the Gun Free Schools Act Report, nearly four thousand students are expelled each year for bringing a gun to school. Perhaps surprisingly, more than a third of these expulsions involve middle school students, and a tenth involve even younger students. School violence might be a stereotypically high school occurrence, but it happens at all levels of the school system, even among kids as young as seven or eight years old.
In addition to incidents involving firearms, there are also thousands of other crimes, from physical assault to threat to vandalism, happening on school campuses worldwide. Not only gun related expulsions, but also violence in general, is actually more common in middle schools than at high schools. Students aged twelve through fourteen are more likely than older students to become victims of crime at school.
It is likely that violence, theft, and drugs will continue to be significant problems in the school system. A tenth of all high school students reported being threatened with, or injured with, a weapon in the previous year. Students in middle school or high school are more likely to be victims of theft while at school than while away for school. A quarter reported that drugs had been offered to them on school property within the past year.
The point to take away from this is that kids are not immune from violence in schools, no matter their age. This might seem like an urban high school problem, but it happens in schools of all sizes, and in all locations. A staggering 86 percent of all public schools reported one or more serious violent incidents in the 2005 2006 school year. The overall crime rate within schools is 46 reported crimes each year per 1,000 students. If you have a child at school, no matter their age, they must be prepared to deal with the possibility of such situations arising.
Your options to protect your children from violence at school are unfortunately limited. The vast majority of schools have a no tolerance policy, meaning that students may not carry such devices as pepper spray or a stun gun. They can, however, bring a personal alarm to school, and this can be invaluable in alerting teachers and other adults to a violent or potentially violent confrontation.
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