This should be the last year for erratic school safety statistics on the School Accountability Reports.
Like in Westminster School District 50, which reported four assaults in 2004, then 685 the next year, and three on this year’s school district report cards. Or Jefferson County, the state’s largest district, which reported 629 assaults in 2004, zero in 2005, and one in 2006.
Lawmakers earlier this year passed a law requiring schools to classify “fights” and “felony assaults” differently. The law also asks that schools report “possession of dangerous weapons” as its own category.
These new classifications will be listed on the accountability reports, which are sent out to parents statewide.
But not until next year.
On this year’s school report cards, there are dramatic drops in the “assaults and fights” category – mostly because, school districts say, every principal defines a “fight” differently.
“I don’t think it was always crystal clear,” said Linda Chapman, superintendent of the district in Estes Park, which had 40 “assaults and fights” last year, and only three on this year’s report cards. “I don’t think it’s necessarily that our kids are behaving all that differently.”
State Rep. Michael Garcia, along with a handful of other lawmakers, decided to jump on school safety reporting after a fatal stabbing in Denver’s Montbello High School cafeteria was reported as a “weapons violation” rather than a “fight” last year.
The parents of the teenager who died, Contrell Townsend, worked with lawmakers to push for more refined definitions and a more accurate reporting system.
“My goal … was to give parents a better picture of school safety,” said Garcia, a Democrat from Aurora. “But there is still work to be done. … We ought to sit back and look at all these categories and see what could make it even better.”
Principal Ron Castagna said he is trying to be accurate at Lakewood High. But statistics, he added, tell only part of the story.
“We don’t try to hide anything,” Castagna said. “I feel like the SAR report is trying to boil it down to some sort of hard-core numbers. … The community knows what’s going on in their schools. I don’t know if one report can make any sense out of it.”
Staff writer Allison Sherry can be reached at 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com.
