A study into student discipline — compiled by Lincoln Public Schools and the Lincoln Police Department — will provide crucial insight and direction as educators work create a safe and welcoming learning environment for all students.
The third annual report, which was instituted as part of the agreement that added six school resource officers in the district’s 12 middle schools to the single resource officer assigned to each high school, is the first based on data free from the direct impact of COVID precautions like remote learning and reduced in-school attendance.
The amount of data might not be enough to establish major trends, but it’s a snapshot that can provide guidance, if properly employed, to help students and teachers.
For example, the number of suspensions were up over both the COVID years and the academic year prior to COVID. The suspicion there is that the unstructured nature of COVID-era instruction translated, for some, into distracted and undisciplined students upon their full-time return.
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It will be important to watch that number fall in future years.
On the upside, the number of calls to law enforcement went down about 7.6% from 2018-2019. Again, COVID year numbers were lower, as one would expect with fewer students in school.
But of concerns of some critics of officers in schools has been the worry that more students would be routed out of the school discipline system and into the judicial system. The report noted that assaults, drug offenses and vandalism were among the more common causes for calls.
Vandalisms may be been impacted by social media challenges, and what constitutes an assault may be different than it was a decade or two ago. Again, this is worth keeping a close eye on.
Because K-12 education experiences can set a tone for life, it’s essential that officers and educators delve into the disparity between students of color and students in special programs versus the general student population who end up as suspects or victims involved in police calls or who end up suspended.
LPS has set goals associated with and developed strategies around closing those gaps. Students will need attention, and staff will need ongoing training in cultural differences and conflict de-escalation.
Every data point here is a person, a student, a potential contributor or our community. The numbers give LPS and the LPD some good direct, and that direction will improve with more data and more time.
But the real goal isn’t to move any numbers. It’s to change lives.