The Christian County School Board heard the discipline data report for school year 2017-18 at Thursday’s meeting.
The report describes the amount of disciplinary actions taken during the school year districtwide, including arrests, suspensions, and conferences with parents or other methods. The district saw 11,272 behavior referrals in 2017-18, which is an increase from 10,704 the previous year.
District Discipline Administrator Kim Stevenson read some of the statistics, which are broken down by ethnicity, and said 29 percent of African-American students enrolled were subject to an in-school suspension along with 12 percent of enrolled Caucasian students. 229 Caucasian students and 330 African-American students were suspended out of school at some point.
68 percent of arrests that happened in the district were African-American students, with Caucasian students making up 32 percent of arrests. In total, 41 students were arrested last school year.
Stevenson says they are working on interventions, such as working with social workers and school therapists, and will hopefully see a decrease in infractions and discipline.
She says the good news is the number of out of school suspensions decreased, which means more students are staying in school and still learning.
Stevenson says there is undoubtedly still work that needs to be done and they will continue to look for solutions and focus on the positives to improve. The goals for this coming school year include improving classroom management, focusing on mental health and reduce the number of arrests.