Several years ago, when the Lowndes County School District was applying for a Safe and Drug-Free Schools grant through the United States Department of Education, school officials were required to survey students about prevalence and risk factors for drugs and violence on campus.
The data was deemed so valuable within the district, even when it was no longer required, school officials decided to continue issuing the survey to high-schoolers and middle-schoolers.
Lowndes County Assistant Superintendent Dr. Peggy Rogers said the district uses the information to target areas of concern and make changes when necessary.
Brandy Gardner, Safe and Drug Free Schools coordinator for the district, recently gave a presentation to the school board about the results of this year’s surveys, which were distributed in January.
The survey asked questions about safety, as well as tobacco and alcohol use. Of the 5,000 students in the district, 2,153 took the voluntary, anonymous questionnaire. Because less than half the eligible student population participated, and because participants may not have answered all questions, Rogers cautioned against making invalid inferences about the data.
Data also is skewed by the number of survey participants at each school. At New Hope Middle School, 696 students took the survey, compared with 479 at New Hope High School, 395 at Caledonia High School, 384 at Caledonia Middle School, 101 at West Lowndes High School and 98 at West Lowndes Middle School.
For example, slightly more than half the participants — 52.39 percent — agreed with the statement, “I feel safe at school.”
But 15.9 percent strongly disagreed with the statement and the balance was “neutral.”
In last year’s survey, which was taken by 2,139 students, 63.32 percent agreed they felt safe at school and 11.5 percent strongly disagreed.
Of the six schools participating in the survey, students at Caledonia Middle School reported feeling safest, with 64.84 percent of the 384 survey participants responding positively. Students at West Lowndes High School also gave high marks for safety, with 62.38 percent of 101 respondents saying they felt safe at school.
At New Hope Middle School, which had the highest survey participation, 44.11 percent of respondents said they felt safe.
More than 88 percent of the questionnaire participants also reported they had never been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, while 7.01 percent said they had been threatened one to three times and 1.9 percent said they had been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property more than six times.
School discipline
The report also indicated the majority of suspensions and expulsions, 35, were for fighting, while 13 were for alcohol or drug possession, 11 were for weapon possession, seven were for vandalism, four were for assault, two were for gang-related incidents and one was for disorderly conduct.
Compared to last year’s results, there were fewer expulsions for fighting, assault and disorderly conduct, but increases in expulsions for weapon possession, vandalism and gang-related incidents.
Expulsions for alcohol and drug possessions more than doubled this year, with 13 students expelled compared to six last year.
Drugs and alcohol
But more than 80 percent of survey participants said they had never tried alcohol, tobacco or drugs. If students were going to experiment with substance abuse, middle-schoolers were more likely to try beer, while high-schoolers were most likely to try other forms of alcohol.
District-wide, 86.16 percent said they had never tried marijuana, while 85.23 percent had not tried cigarettes, 82.95 percent had not tried beer and 81.75 had never tried other types of alcohol.
Based upon survey results, ages 11 to 14 were at highest risk for experimentation with beer and cigarettes, with 19.09 percent saying they had tried their first beer and 11.57 percent saying they had begun to smoke during those years.
Of the middle school students surveyed, students at Caledonia Middle School reported 80.47 percent, the highest of the county’s middle-schoolers, had never tried beer, while West Lowndes Middle School reported 77.55 percent had never tried beer and New Hope Middle School reported 74.71 percent. District-wide, 62.98 percent of students surveyed had never tried beer.
At the high schools, 63.37 percent of students surveyed at West Lowndes High School said they had never tried beer, compared with 46.58 percent at Caledonia High School and 42.38 percent at New Hope High School.
West Lowndes Middle School students reported that 88.78 percent had never smoked, compared with 85.68 percent at Caledonia Middle School and 85.2 percent at New Hope Middle School.
Among high school students, 79.21 percent of students at West Lowndes High School said they had never smoked, while 64.93 percent of students at New Hope High School and 60.76 percent of students at Caledonia High School reported the same.
Under the Unsafe School Choice Option, a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act, students attending “a persistently dangerous public school” or students who become a victim of a violent criminal offense are allowed to transfer to a safer school within the community.
All schools within the Lowndes County School District have been designated as safe schools by the Mississippi Department of Education, Rogers said.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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