The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Township students are below average when it comes to being “written up” for disciplinary incidents, the Board of Education was recently told.
Students in the elementary, middle and high schools received fewer disciplinary citations than their national cohorts, Nicholas Solomon, the District’s Director of School Management, told the Board at its June 19 meeting.
The information was part of the Student Safety Data Report presented by Solomon at the meeting. The report covered the period from September 24-December 24, 2024.
During that time, Solomon said, 99 percent of elementary school students received one disciplinary referral or less, with the national average being 90 percent of elementary school students.
In the middle schools. 97 percent of students received one disciplinary referral or less, compared with the national average of 84 percent.
And in the high school, 98 percent of students received one disciplinary referral or less, compared with the national average of 87 percent.
“Our kids are acting age-appropriately, and better,” he said.
There is a downturn of the number of “write-ups” in District schools, Solomon said.
In total disciplinary referrals in the high school decreased from 272 in the first have of the 2023-24 school year to 225 in the first half of the 2024-25 school year, he said.
In the middle schools, referrals decreased from 362 in 2023 to 290 in 2024, and in the elementary schools referrals increased slightly from 104 in 2023 to 105 in 2024.
Township schools are showing a downward trend from the first part of the 2023-24 school year to the first part of the 2024-25 school year, for the most part, when it comes to certain disruptive behaviors, Solomon said.
In the elementary schools, incidents of disruption decreased from 25 in 2023 to 13 in 2024. Incidents of noncompliance dropped from 19 in 2023 to 14 in 2024.
But incidents of physical aggression increased from 48 in 2023 to 60 in 2024, and incidents of obscene or inappropriate language r materials increased from two in 2023 to seven in 2024.
Physical aggression, Solomon said, “could be fist fights, maybe. But it also means pushing, shoving, kicking. And guess what? If you’re in elementary school, you go to recess, you’re going to see pushing, shoving, and kicking.”
In the middle schools, incidents of physical aggression decreased from 85 in 2023 to 54 in 2024, while disruptive incidents decreased from 83 in 2023 to 74 in 2024.
The use of obscene or inappropriate language or materials decreased from 60 in 2023 to 38 in 2024.
Incidents of noncompliance increased from 61 in 2023 to 68 in 2024.
In the high school, incidents of cutting classes decreased from 139 in 2023 to 93 in 2024, while noncompliance incidents decreased from 55 in 2023 to 35 in 2024.
Disruptive incidents increased from 27 in 2023 to 45 in 2024, while physical aggression incidents increased from 17 in 2023 to 20 in 2024.
Incidents of CDS or tobacco use increased from 17 in 2023 to 18 in 2024.
Solomon said administrators look at the various incidents “and we try to address how we can do things differently,” he said. “And we discuss this type of data to see if there’s anything strategically we can do differently in terms of support.”
In terms of reported incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying, Solomon said about 25 percent of all reported incidents are borne out after investigations.
In the first half of the 2023-24 school year, 72 incidents were investigated and 18 were confirmed, he said.
In the first half of the 2024-25 school year, 45 incidents were investigated and 12 were confirmed, Solomon said.
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