Greene County sees highest ratio gain in incidents
For every 1,000 Greene County school students, slightly more than 39 were involved in an act of violence during the 2000-2001 school year. The county’s five school districts combined reported 254 violent incidents or 101 more than the year before from among the 6,471 students enrolled, giving it the highest ratio from among neighboring counties. This was an increase from the 153 incidents reported the year before.
The Greene County students were also more likely to use weapons than their counterparts in Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties with 13.29 weapons per 1,000 students, although they toted no firearms.
However, one of those five school districts was the only one in the local area to report no violence for the 2000-2001 “Annual Report on School Violence and Weapons Possession” as well as for the year before.
Southeastern Greene School District’s assistant to the superintendent, Dr. Philip J. Savini Jr., said the rows of zeros on the report the state Department of Education released recently on its Web site is not a mistake.
“We don’t have discipline problems here. We have the day to day classroom problems but with only 300 kids in the high school and approximately 400 at the elementary school, we don’t have any major problems,” he said.
Savini said the school district has strict discipline rules that apparently serve as a deterrent. Add to the rules the presence of school police, a relationship with the local district justice and support from parents and the school board, and Savini said the students got the message that violence is not welcome at Southeastern Greene.
It is up to the school districts individually to interpret the definition of violence and determine their own threshold on what constitutes an act of violence and their own policies on discipline. The report itself notes the data should not be used to compare school districts.
There has been concern over the six years the report has been done that it is inconsistent among school districts and even among schools within a district.
Jefferson-Morgan School District is an example of the potential for differences among the individual reports.
The elementary school principal, Linda Mancini, said she logged three acts of violence in the school year that just ended.
Compare that number to the 89 acts of violence listed on the 2000-2001 state report for the elementary school before Mancini gained the principal’s position. Also, compare that to the six incidents at the secondary school.
Mancini said Jeff-Morgan has a policy on discipline for kindergarten through 12th grade that she believes was previously applied in the literal sense. She said she plans to propose to the school board that the elementary students be given consideration for their age and situation.
“It’s not that we don’t have problems, it’s a normal elementary school,” Mancini said.
“You have to have policies but as an administrator you have to look at the situation and be fair.”
Elsewhere in Greene County, Carmichaels School District had 72 incidents, up from 60, and Central Greene School District had 39 incidents, up from 13.
Carmichaels was an example of school districts that logged quite a few more suspensions of students than the year before with eight in-school and 62 out-of-school suspensions, compared to five in-school and 51 out-of-school suspensions previously. The district also had two assignments to alternative education, compared to none the year before.
Carmichaels Superintendent James Zalar said the district had an opportunity to use the Intermediate Unit 1 alternative education school in Uniontown during the 2000-2001 school year, and that option worked out well.
“The fact that the kid is still in a school setting is better than sending him home,” he said.
He said the out-of-school suspension is a consequence of fighting and the district tallied 43 fights.
“We’d like to reduce fighting and we’ve instituted character education to help resolve conflicts before they come to blows,” Zalar said.