VIOLENCE, VANDALISM AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE
IN NEW JERSEY PUBLIC SCHOOLS

2004-2005

NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

July 2006
PTM 1505.64

Commissioner’s Annual Report to the Education
Committees of the Senate and General Assembly
On Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse
In New Jersey Public Schools
July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005

Based on the Electronic Violence
and Vandalism Reporting System (EVVRS)

Lucille E. Davy
Acting Commissioner

Prepared by staff of the
Division of Student Services

Barbara Gantwerk
Acting Assistant Commissioner

Susan B. Martz, Director
Office of Program Support Services

New Jersey Department of Education
100 River View Plaza, P.O. Box 500
Trenton, NJ 08625-0500

July 2006
PTM 1505.64

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Commissioner of Education’s Report on Violence, Vandalism and Substance Abuse in New Jersey Public Schools is submitted annually to the education committees of the Senate and Assembly of the New Jersey State Legislature. It provides the Legislature with data in four broad categories of incidents: violence, vandalism, weapons, and substance abuse. It also summarizes initiatives implemented by the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) to assist schools in addressing problems of school violence, safety and climate, student conduct and the use of illegal substances.

Consistent with previous years’ data, slightly more than seven schools in ten (71 percent) reported five or fewer total incidents in 2004-05 with nearly four in ten (38 percent) reporting no incidents at all. The reported location of incidents also mirrored that of prior years with three incidents in ten (30 percent) taking place in the classroom and another 21 percent in the school corridor. The police were notified in 40 percent of incidents reported, up from 35 percent from the 2002-03 school year.

The percentage of students committing offenses by student type remained fundamentally unchanged from prior years. Regular education students constituted 72 percent of offenders and students with disabilities 27 percent. There was an 11 percent increase from 2002-03 to 2004-05 in the number of school personnel reported as victims of any type of incident.

The NJDOE has aggressively pursued a variety of strategies to address the problems of student disruption and violence since the inception of the Safe Schools Initiative. The NJDOE’s most recent efforts to strengthen its approach to reducing school violence and improving school safety cover a broad array of policies, programs and other strategic initiatives, including the following:

The NJDOE is committed to providing ongoing support for school districts’ efforts to improve their comprehensive school safety programs and further reduce the levels of violence, vandalism and substance abuse in New Jersey schools. Continued training opportunities for both school administrative and support personnel, refinement of the Internet-based reporting system and analysis of these data will assist local education agencies (LEAs) and the NJDOE to accurately track progress in making schools safe for all students and staff.

INTRODUCTION

In 1982, N.J.S.A 18A:17-46 through 17-48 (see Appendix A), was signed into law. The "Public School Safety Law" was a response to a problem long recognized by the state Legislature, violence and vandalism in the schools. The law stipulated that:

The Commissioner of Education shall each year submit a report to the Education Committees of the Senate and General Assembly detailing the extent of violence and vandalism in the public schools and making recommendations to alleviate the problem.
(N.J.S.A. 18:53).

The law has a significant local component: It requires that school staff who witness or have knowledge of an incident of violence file a report of the incident with the school principal and, as amended in 2002, that the superintendent of schools hold a public hearing in the third week of October summarizing the data submitted to the department and submit a transcript of the proceedings to the department.

The Commissioner’s report provides the Legislature with data in four broad categories of incidents: violence, vandalism, weapons and substance abuse. Analysis of trends yields indications of progress and of concern and provides guidance to the department as it endeavors to focus its resources appropriately. In this report, the department also notifies the Legislature and the public of the actions taken by the Commissioner, State Board of Education and the Department of Education (DOE) to address the problems indicated in the data. Since 1994, when the State Board of Education adopted a resolution supporting implementation of the Department of Education’s Safe Schools Initiative, the department has embarked on various actions designed to address the problem of school violence and disruption documented in the incident reporting system. The department’s recent actions under the Safe Schools Initiative are described in the Programmatic Response section beginning on page 24 of this report.

The data gathered under the EVVRS are an excellent source of information for helping schools conduct comprehensive needs assessments, including the identification of patterns of incidents (e.g., types, locations, times, individuals or groups involved) consistent with the statutory and regulatory information provided below. The identification of priority needs based upon objective information is the cornerstone of effective planning for appropriate educational responses to school safety needs.

Under the Gun-Free Schools Act, districts must report annually the number of firearm incidents that occurred by type of firearm [rifle, handgun, other (e.g., bomb)] within the type of school (i.e., elementary, middle, high school). In completing information on each incident as it is entered, each school fulfills its reporting obligation and need not summarize the data separately at the end of the year.

The Unsafe School Choice Option provision (Title IX, Part E, Subpart 2, SEC. 9532) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 sets forth the following:

Each state receiving funds under this Act shall establish and implement a statewide policy requiring that a student attending a persistently dangerous public elementary school or secondary school, as determined by the State in consultation with a representative sample of local educational agencies, or who becomes a victim of a violent criminal offense, as determined by State law, while in or on the grounds of a public elementary school or secondary school that the student attends, be allowed to attend a safe public elementary school or secondary school within the local educational agency, including a public charter school. (italics added)

The NJDOE’s Unsafe School Choice Option (USCO) Policy was adopted by a resolution of the State Board of Education in June 2003. The USCO statute and the NJDOE’s USCO policy contain two provisions that apply to local educational agencies (LEAs) receiving funds under NCLB: 1) persistently dangerous schools; and 2) victims of violent criminal offenses. Effective the beginning of each school year, LEAs receiving NCLB funds must be prepared to complete the transfer of students who choose to exercise the option offered under Provision I and Provision II of the USCO policy, as appropriate. Compliance with the policy is a condition of receiving funds under any and all titles under NCLB. Chief school administrators are annually required to certify compliance with the NJDOE’s USCO policy in their applications for NCLB funds.

The maintenance of accurate and complete records of incidents of violence, vandalism and substance abuse is particularly important since the EVVRS is the data source used by the NJDOE to determine persistently dangerous schools under the USCO Policy. Additionally, schools are required to report information on victims of violent criminal offenses, pursuant to the USCO Policy.

The required policy for these school safety requirements may be found at http://www.nj.gov/njded/grants/nclb/policy/unsafe.htm. A question and answer document can be found at: http://homeroom.state.nj.us/evvrs/uscopolicyqanda.doc. In addition, a fact sheet describing the process for determining the policy and summarizing key issues is located at: http://www.nj.gov/njded/grants/nclb/policy/unsafe_facts.htm

In January 2002, a state law (N.J.S.A. 18A:36-5.1) was passed designating the third week of October each year as "School Violence Awareness Week." Regulations, (N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.2) in support of "School Violence Awareness Week" were adopted in August 2005. Guidance on school district obligations for the week is provided annually to each school district. During this week, school districts are required to organize activities, such as age-appropriate forums for student discussions on conflict resolution, as well as issues of student diversity and tolerance. Also, districts are required to invite law enforcement personnel to join members of the teaching staff in the discussions. Finally, programs must be provided for school board employees that are designed to help them recognize warning signs of school violence and to instruct them on recommended conduct during an incident of school violence.

In January 2002, a state law (N.J.S.A. 18A:17-46 et seq.) was passed requiring each chief school administrator to conduct a public hearing on all acts of violence and vandalism which occurred in the previous school year. Regulations [N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.2(a)4 and N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.3(f)] on the hearing were adopted in August 2005. Guidance on school district obligations for the hearings is provided annually to each school district. The proceedings of the pubic hearing must be transcribed and kept on file by the local board of education, which must make the transcript available to the public.

Verification of the annual report must be part of the NJDOE’s monitoring of the school district. The local board of education is required to provide ongoing staff training in fulfilling the reporting requirements pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:17-46. Additionally, the majority representative of the school employees must have access monthly to the number and disposition of all reported acts of school violence and vandalism.

In compliance with N.J.S.A. 18A:17-46 et seq., the NJDOE has adopted regulations [N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.3(f)] that require district boards of education to impose a penalty on school employees who knowingly falsify a report of an incident of violence and vandalism.

Legislation (N.J.S.A. 18A:37-13 et seq.) enacted in September 2002 required each school district to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying on school property, at school-sponsored functions and on school buses by September 2003. Regulations (N.J.A.C. 6A:16-7.9) on intimidation, harassment and bullying were adopted in August 2005. To assist school districts in developing these policies, the legislation required the NJDOE to develop and issue a model policy applicable to grades kindergarten through twelve. The NJDOE’s model policy titled Model Policy Prohibiting Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying on School Property, at School-sponsored Functions and on School Buses, that was updated in 2006, can be found at http://www.state.nj.us/njded/parents/bully.htm. Schools must report on the EVVRS all incidents of harassment, intimidation and bullying that apply to the definition of harassment, intimidation and bullying under the statute.

Each school district is granted local control over the contents of the policy and ancillary procedures, but, at a minimum, all of the components set forth in the authorizing statute must be addressed in a school district’s policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying. In part, the provisions of the statute require school districts to stipulate both the consequences and the remedial actions for persons violating the policy; persons who engage in reprisal or retaliation against someone who reports a violation of the policy; and persons who falsely report allegations of harassment, intimidation and bullying as a means of retaliation or as a means of harassment, intimidation or bullying.

The NJDOE recognizes that decisions about consequences and actions to be taken in response to violations of policies prohibiting harassment, intimidation and bullying should take into consideration the unique circumstances of the acts and the persons involved, as well as the unique conditions and characteristics in each school district. The NJDOE also recognizes that these decisions must comport with existing school district policies, including those that address the provisions of N.J.A.C. 6A:16, Programs To Support Student Development, in general, and N.J.A.C. 6A:16-5.1, Code of Student Conduct, in particular, as well as the provisions of the district’s Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials, pursuant to N.J.A.C.6A:16-6, Law Enforcement Operations for Substances, Weapons, and Safety. N.J.A.C.6A:16-6, Law Enforcement Operations for Substances, Weapons, and Safety.

Pursuant to N.J.S.A.18A:40A-22 et seq., district boards of education are permitted, but not required, to adopt policies for the random testing of controlled dangerous substances, as defined in N.J.S.A.2C:35-2 and anabolic steroids, of the district’s students in grades nine through twelve who participate in extracurricular activities or who possess parking permits. The policies must be consistent with regulations to be adopted by the NJDOE in consultation with the New Jersey Department of Human Services, the New Jersey Constitution and the Federal Constitution.

Pursuant to N.J.S.A. 30:9A-24, any teaching staff member who, as a result of information obtained in the course of his or her employment, has reasonable cause to believe that a student has attempted or committed suicide, shall promptly report this information to the Division of Mental Health Services (DMHS), New Jersey Department of Human Services in a manner prescribed by the DMHS. Pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:16-111 et seq., each public school teaching staff member is required to complete at least two hours of instruction in suicide prevention in each professional development period, as part of the professional development requirement for public school teaching staff members established by the State Board. The professional development must be provided by a licensed health care professional with training and experience in mental health issues. Additionally, under N.J.S.A. 18A:16-111 et seq., school districts are required to provide instruction in suicide prevention for elementary, middle and high school students, in accordance with revisions to be made to the Core Curriculum Content Standards in Comprehensive Health and Physical Education.

In August 2005, the State Board of Education amended N.J.A.C. 6A:16 in the following areas described below. This chapter of administrative code is being reviewed for readoption in 2006.

Districts have reported incidents online for six years.¹ The Electronic Violence and Vandalism Reporting System, http://homeroom.state.nj.us (EVVRS), deployed in March 2000, allows districts to report information electronically about individual incidents – including offender and victim information. An EVVRS User Manual, accessible on the EVVRS homepage, contains general guidance for reporting and incident definitions, e.g., what constitutes a simple assault, aggravated assault, or a fight. A scenarios document, also on the EVVRS homepage, helps schools to classify an incident by describing typical incidents and key questions to consider when deciding to report and how to classify. The data entered on the EVVRS and verified by districts form the basis of the findings section of this report to the state legislature and of the report to the federal education department on the Unsafe School Choice Option policy.

The department recognizes that individuals may interpret and apply the definitions in the EVVRS User Manual differently. For example, one student calls a second student a name; the second student pushes in return and a shoving match begins. They stop when a security guard intervenes. One district might consider it a scuffle and not report it on the EVVRS, while another may consider it a fight sufficiently serious to report. The department recognizes that this kind of difference in perspective introduces "error" into the system, i.e., a departure from the true number that would be reported if everyone interpreted and applied the definitions in the same way. Therefore, there may be variability in reporting across districts. Additionally, a shift in responsibility for reporting within a school or district can produce changes in violence and vandalism figures reported year to year and, thus, represents another potential source of inaccuracy.

To reduce errors and promote consistency in reporting, the department created "scenarios" for those types of incidents that, due to their particular circumstances, invite discrete differences in interpretation. The scenarios describe incidents within the context in which they occur and provide factors to consider in selecting the correct incident category. The revised incident definitions and the scenarios were distributed to all chief school administrators, included in the revised EVVRS User Manual, posted separately on the EVVRS homepage, and discussed during the EVVRS training sessions. During its annual EVVRS training for district administrators and EVVRS account users conducted in the spring of 2004 and winter of 2004-05, the department stressed the importance of districts referring to these two documents when deciding whether an incident is the type to be reported on the EVVRS and, if so, how to classify it. The importance of including offender and victim information – particularly the information on USCO Provision II – received special attention in the EVVRS training and in notices e-mailed to all EVVRS account users during the 2003-04 school year.

Findings

This report provides unduplicated counts of incidents for the total number of incidents and the total by major reporting category. The total for the four incident categories will not necessarily add up to the grand total of all incidents. Beginning with the introduction of the EVVRS in 1999-2000, if a single incident included a threat and a simple assault, for example, each type is recorded and counted. In deriving a total for the number of incidents of violence, however, the incident that included both a threat and a simple assault would be counted once. Similarly, in calculating an unduplicated total of the number of incidents, an incident that included a fight and damage to property would count as one incident, as well as one incident of violence and one incident of vandalism. Thus, totals as indicated, are unduplicated counts of the number of incidents within a category. A bias incident that included violence and vandalism would be counted as one bias incident in addition to being counted in the two major reporting categories.

The Commissioner’s report to the legislature usually reports one-year changes (e.g., 2002-03 to 2003-04) in the incident data. This year’s report tracks two-year changes by major category and incident type within each category covered by the three school years 2002-03, 2003-04 and 2004-05. Because the two-year drop in the number of incidents of violence has been dramatic, the report explores the extent to which this drop in violence is general across all districts or associated more strongly with a subset of districts.

In 2004-05, the number of schools reporting no incidents of any kind increased by more than 100 over the three-year period. Three schools in eight (38 percent) reported no incidents. When one includes this group that reported no incidents, slightly more than seven schools in ten (71 percent) reported five or fewer incidents. At the other end of the continuum, the number of schools in the categories representing the highest number of incidents (11-24 incidents, and 25 or more) declined by 37 and 51 schools respectively.

Header information is the data that a district records for every incident and includes:

The date and time data are primarily for local use and were not analyzed. The distribution of data over the three years on the location of incidents is nearly identical. (see Table 1). Three incidents in ten occurred in the classroom, while overall, slightly more than three in four (76 percent) occurred inside the school building.

Table 1: Location of Incidents

With a decline in incidents, districts made fewer notifications to law enforcement in 2004-05. Although the number of notifications has declined, the percentage of incidents involving notification of law enforcement has increased (see Table 2). Notification of police occurred in 40 percent of all incidents reported by districts, an increase from 35 percent reported in 2002-03 (and from 32 percent two years earlier, 2001-2002 – not shown in Table 2). This shift may be indicative of districts reporting the more serious types of offenses and not reporting the less serious types that they had reported over the EVRRS in the past. It is also may be related to the increasing number of schools with school resource officers who are, in the majority of cases, local police officers. Having police officers in the schools may help clarify the need to notify law enforcement regarding certain types of incidents and, generally, make notification easier.

Table 2: Police Notification

Districts reported 164 incidents of bias in the 2004-05 school year, representing no significant change from 2003-04 (167), and a two-year increase of eight percent from the 152 incidents of bias reported in 2002-03.

Figure 3 displays the total unduplicated count of incidents by each of the four major reporting categories for the past three years. From 2002-03 to 2004-05, there were fewer incidents of violence (a decline of 21 percent); this decline is particularly notable in view of the addition of three types of violence (harassment/intimidation/bullying, terroristic threat and kidnapping in 2003-04). When 985 of the 1,134 incidents of harassment/intimidation/bullying that occurred without any other incident type occurring as part of that incident are not counted (as harassment/intimidation/bullying was not reported in 2002-03), there were 3,947 fewer incidents of violence reported in 2004-05 than had been reported by districts two years earlier, representing a decline of 28 percent. In the other three reporting categories, there was an 18 percent decrease in incidents of vandalism, and a small decrease in weapons offenses (four percent), and a one percent decrease in substance offenses between 2002-03 and 2004-05.

The overall 21 percent two-year drop in the number of incidents of violence between 2002-03 and 2004-05 is indicated most markedly in the declines in the following types of violence evident in Table 3: simple assaults decreased by 1,851 incidents or 37 percent, fights by 1,078 or 18 percent, threats by 798 or 35 percent³, and sex offenses by 199 or 54 percent. There were no incidents of kidnapping reported in 2004-05. The 19 percent decrease in damage to property over the three years covered in the report and 13 percent decrease in thefts constitute the most notable changes in the vandalism category.

In the Weapons category, the seven bomb offenses comprised hand-made explosive devices, four of which exploded and three that failed to explode. No victims or associated cost to the school district related to these incidents were reported. With regard to the Substances category, the decline in the number of incidents involving possession may be due largely to a decline in the number of incidents involving drug paraphernalia. Incidents involving cocaine increased by 43 (from 66 to 109 or 65 percent) over the three-year period. See Appendix D.

Much of the decline of over nearly 4,000 incidents of violence over the three-year period (see note in Table 4) can be attributed to large decreases reported by a few districts to a greater degree than it can be attributed to decreases across all districts. The data in Table 4 show the number of districts reporting at least 20 fewer incidents of violence between 2002-03 and 2004-05, grouped by the size of the decrease in reporting. The eight districts⁴ reporting at least 100 fewer incidents of violence were associated with over half (58 percent) of the net decline in school violence over the three-year period. Two districts accounted for 1,500 of the 2,305 fewer incidents reported by these eight districts combined.

Districts reported an unduplicated total of 1,003 incidents of vandalism in which they incurred cost, a decline of 15 percent from 2003-2004 and 27 percent from 2002-03. As in prior years, property damage (73 percent) and theft (24 percent) accounted for most of the incidents resulting in costs to districts in 2004-05 (see Figure 4). As multiple types of vandalism were involved in a few incidents, the percentages of all types of vandalism where the district incurred cost exceed 100 percent and the totals by type of vandalism in Figure 4 exceed the unduplicated total (1,003 incidents in 2004-05). The total cost to all districts was $513,061, a 19 percent decrease from the cost of vandalism in 2003-04 and a 16 percent decline from the cost in 2002-03.

* Two Fireworks incidents included under Arson in 2003-04 and 2004-05.

As in prior years, in 90 percent of the cases where a disciplinary action was taken, students who committed an offense received an out-of-school suspension. Removal to an alternative program was used in only two percent of the cases. The distribution across types of actions taken has remained consistent from year to year (see Table 5).

Table 5: Disciplinary Action Taken

Figure 6 displays the types of alternative placements selected by districts when students were removed from school for disciplinary reasons. Of the 234 students placed in an out-of-district program in 2004-05, only 21 attended a county alternative education program, i.e., a program run by an LEA to which any district in the county may send a student, on a tuition basis.

Figure 6: Placement of Students Removed or Suspended

I. Offenders and Victims

In 2004-05, regular education students constituted 72 percent of the offenders in the cases where the offender was known. Students with disabilities, who represent 16 percent of the student population, constituted slightly more than one quarter (27 percent) of reported offenders. The proportions are similar to those of 2002-03 and 2003-04. See Table 6.

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5. In many cases of vandalism, particularly those of theft and damage to property, the offender is unknown to the district.  In 1,693 cases (8% of all incidents) in 2004-2005, the offender was reported as unknown.

The percentage of victims who were regular education students declined for the second year in row. They constituted a smaller percentage of victims in 2004-05 (57 percent) than in 2003-04 (61%) and 2002-03 (64 percent). The data in Table 7 also show a large one-year increase (from 2003-04 to 2004-05) of 375 (27 percent) in the number of school staff (all staff including contracted staff) who were victims of an offense of any kind. This increase follows two years of decline from a high of 1,923 in 2001-02 in the number of staff victimized. The percentage of students with a disability who were victims (18 percent) is slightly higher than their percentage (17 percent) in the student population.