Some commenter's pull out the weak ‘kids will be kids, drugs happen’ argument when defending the Cave Creek Unified leadership surrounding all the recent incidents (four in four weeks?). Accordingly, lets look at the data and see how our safety incident rates compare to those of surrounding schools. Under NCLB and state law, schools are required to report safety incidents. These incidents are defined as:
Total number of incidents that occurred on the school grounds for school year that required the intervention of local, state or federal law enforcement (A.R.S.15-746.6)
Here is the data for Cactus Shadows and surrounding high schools for the past two reporting years based on school report cards from the Arizona Department of Education, who reports on data provided directly by the district. You can see for the last reporting year available, CSHS rate was more than three times greater than Desert Mountain and more than five times greater than Pinnacle. Foothills Academy, a school with identical demographics to CCUSD, had none for the past two years. Looks like all that Love and Logic\anti-bullying curricula\’Can’t we all get along’ assemblies is just a waste of time and money. What would work better would be is a district that embraced a commitment to high expectation and held people accountable for when those expectations are not met. Instead of high expectations we get we get ‘Inspire Excellence’, ‘whole child’, and ‘people always’, all part of a strategic plan that has languished over the past two years under the governing board’s all but absent stewardship.
Sure these didn’t occur under the current leadership, but are we making any progress? If you find other areas where our leadership is excelling, feel free to comment below. We would love to hear about it.
On Campus Incidents Requiring Law Enforcement | ||||
| Reporting Year | 2008 | 2007 | ||
| Cactus Shadows | Incidents | 37 | 56 | |
| Student | 1736 | 1586 | ||
| Pinnacle | Incidents | 8 | 0 | |
| Student | 2041 | 1906 | ||
| Desert Mountain | Incidents | 16 | 16 | |
| Student | 2443 | 2449 | ||
| Foothills Academy | Incidents | 0 | 0 | |
| Student | 253 | 236 | ||
| Incidents Per Student | ||||
| Cactus Shadows | 0.021 | 0.035 | ||
| Pinnacle | 0.004 | 0.000 | ||
| Desert Mountain | 0.007 | 0.007 | ||
| Foothills Academy | 0 | 0 | ||
Source: Arizona Department of Education, 2008 Data, 2007 and prior data
If we have anything wrong, let us know and we will correct immediately.
Do they keep resource officers at Foothills?
ReplyDeleteFoothills has an extensive reputation for drug use. Don't believe me, then put your own kids in there and see for yourself. I suspect that things at Foothills are handled more privately (i.e. the school, no police involved) and that the kids with the worst problems are either expelled or told they will be expelled.
From what I understand, the theft of a hamburger from another student at CSHS will be handled by the resource officer as an arrest and probably shows up in this report.
If there is any dearth of leadership at CCUSD, blame it on state budget cuts that have led to increased class size, reduced teaching and administrative staff. Hard to watch kids for problems when there aren't enough people to watch them. I know that it has led to bullying problems at recess that did not exist when there was better staffing a few years ago.
My sister works at a high school in the Peoria District and she says they work very hard to cover up incidents. If they don't report them, they don't show up in the statistics. We are such a small district I think it would be a lot harder to cover things up. Just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI hear you are running for the school board. If you get elected and kids still do drugs at our high school, will you feel that you are to blame?
ReplyDeleteWho in their right mind would believe any high school would have 0 incidents in a school year?
ReplyDeleteAdding Foothills is a joke. They don't have nearly as many students as the other three schools. Why didn't you add Saguaro, Chaparral, Horizon, North Canyon etc. etc??? Please compare apples with apples and not oranges, Watch.
ReplyDelete