School safety is everyone’s concern, but it is also everyone’s responsibility. Students perform at higher levels when they feel safe at school, and parents want schools to provide a secure place for their children to learn.
Beginning in 1993, the Kentucky legislature enacted KRS 158.444, requiring Kentucky schools to report discipline/behavior data on an annual basis to KDE, through the Safe School report submitted by all districts and schools. KDE maintains a statewide data collection system by which schools report by sex, race, and grade level:
1. All instances of violence and assault against school employees and students; incidences of possession of guns and deadly weapons on school property or at school functions; all incidences of the possession of alcohol, prescription drugs, or controlled substances on school property or at school functions.
2. The number of arrests, charges, and whether civil charges were pursued by the injured party.
3. The number of suspensions, expulsions, and corporal punishments for these incidences.
KDE collaborates with the Kentucky Center for School Safety at Eastern Ky. University by sending this raw data to them for analysis and publication of the annual Kentucky Safe School Report, which can be seen on their website at: http://kysafeschools.org/