CCSD announces steps to rein in school violence

By Hillary Davis (contact)

Wednesday, March 30, 2022 | 2 a.m.

Physical altercations at school are now more likely to be an expulsion-level offense for students, and the Clark County School District will soon begin making campuses single points of entry in response to this year’s surge in violence, district officials announced Tuesday.

Batteries that net alleged offenders a criminal citation and fights that result in “significant campus disruption” will lead to recommended expulsion, if confirmed by a newly reactivated expulsion review board.

“We know that our kids are struggling because of the stress, anxieties and isolation of the pandemic but violence is not and will never be the answer,” CCSD Superintendent Jesus Jara said Tuesday during a news conference on school safety at the district administrative offices.

But, he added, “we also know that zero tolerance does not work.”

“We have to take care of our children, our precious asset in this community, so we have to find ways to engage them involving their parents and guardians and their re-engagement process,” he said.

Expelled students will be reassigned to alternative education programs — behavioral schools, online learning through Nevada Learning Academy or hybrid learning through the Acceleration Academy, a flexible hybrid option for students who dropped out — and required to undergo rehabilitation before returning to their comprehensive, or what could be called “regular,” schools.

“We must continue to provide a free public education, but it doesn’t have to be in our comprehensive schools,” Jara said.

It’s been a rough year for CCSD schools. Video clips of one-sided assaults in classrooms at Las Vegas High and Cheyenne high schools have gone viral online. Back-to-back hard lockdowns took place at Desert Oasis High School, one of them following a scrum involving a parent in the school’s quad. Pepper spray was used to dispel a lunchtime brawl at Foothill High School, followed the next day by an adult wearing only an open bathrobe, underpants and slippers assaulting a student in the school parking lot, according to a widely circulated video.

These events were only in the last few weeks. Overall, CCSD Police have responded to more than 6,800 reports of violence this year through February, leading to 775 arrests and citations, mostly for fighting, assault and battery.

CCSD Police Chief Mike Blackeye said there had been 3,000 reports of fights, assaults and batteries districtwide so far this year, with the historically most active time for campus unrest — the end of the school year — to come. He urged parents to talk to their children about their friends and school and to keep tabs on their social media.

“Our kids need help,” Blackeye said. “We’re getting them all the help we can possibly give them, but we need parents to actually be involved in that as well.”

The district’s “opportunity for reengagement,” as Jara called it, will see district staff, alongside parents, monitor students’ academic progress and attendance and guide them through counseling, anger management and other restorative practices with the HARBOR Juvenile Assessment Center. The center, operated by Clark County Department of Juvenile Justice Services, offers guidance and referrals to families of at-risk youths.

Ryan Lewis, principal at Garehime Elementary School in northwest Las Vegas and the president of CCSD’s administrators union, acknowledged that it wouldn’t be easy to conquer the district’s challenges with student behavior.

“This year has been a struggle. The struggle is real. We live it every single day. We wanted to be solution-based in moving forward” he said. “(Students) are really struggling with issues that are unprecedented, so we have to look at it from a different lens to help make that happen.”

District Attorney Steve Wolfson, who also attended the news conference, said his office would collaborate with the School District to rein in violence.

“We’re all listening to all of you,” he said. “We’re listening to you teachers, to police officers, Dr. Jara because we want to work together to try and change the culture, which is apparently in existence on campus.”

Practices that won’t be used: metal detectors and deans.

The school district uses metal detectors for events like football games. Additionally, some campuses have handheld devices, but students will not have to pass through airport-style metal detectors to get on campus, Jara said.

“That is not the answer for this right now,” he said.

Mike Barton, CCSD’s chief college, career and equity officer, said the smaller specialized schools where students were referred for disciplinary reasons — called behavior schools, or academic centers — have the seats available to accommodate in-person alternative instruction. He does not anticipate reopening more campuses; CCSD closed several behavior schools over the last few years because of low enrollment. It now runs three academic centers.

The traditional dean of students position in secondary schools, which Jara replaced with the less punitive “student success coordinator” about three years ago, will also not be reinstated.

Jara said that the district would begin physically securing campuses over the next few weeks to funnel them down to single points of entry. CCSD has more than 350 campuses, and sprawling secondary schools can be especially easy to access from multiple locations.