BALTIMORE — Baltimore County Public Schools is tracking an increase in aggressive behavior amongst its sixth-grade students, according to school officials.
But overall, aggression among students is down this year when compared to last year, Superintendent Darryl Williams said in a letter to school staff.
Data shows that incidents of aggressive behavior have decreased by 11% over the past year.
The reduction comes amid the school’s investments in proactive safety measures such as hiring more than 150 student safety assistants for secondary schools, increasing the number of counselors available to students, developing new safety guidelines for athletic events, updating criteria for when bus drivers are to report behavior, and revising the Student Handbook and Code of Conduct.
Violent behavior is not the norm, Williams said. More than 111,000 students in Baltimore County Public Schools and the majority of them show up at school ready to learn, he said.
“[T]he intolerable actions of 8.2 percent of students who have engaged in fights and other aggressive behaviors this school year create the impression that violent behavior is the norm and accepted in our schools, and that there are no consequences for aggressive behavior,” Williams said in the letter. “That is categorically false.”
Parents of Baltimore County Public Schools students say they are fed up. Last month, handguns were recovered at Chesapeake High School and Randallstown High School.
Some of those parents protested outside of a school meeting on Tuesday.
“How can these kids learn when they’re surrounded by violence? They can’t,” Darren Badillo, a parent and member of the Baltimore County Parent Student Coalition, told WJZ.
At the rally on Tuesday, Tiffany Moyd described the trials of her son who hasn’t returned to class at Perry Hall High School since the first day of school because of the violence at the school.
“Nothing is being done and we’re already hitting the end of October,” Moyd said. “First quarter’s just about done.”
Badillo said she has documented over 35 incidents of violence in 19 different schools “day after day after day in the past 20 days.”
Williams noted that all of the parents have been invited to participate in the school district’s American Education Week for the first time since the pandemic started.
Their presence can make a difference, he said.
“It would send a powerful message to students and staff members if members of the community showed up to see the many positive experiences our school teams create for our students every day in BCPS,” Williams said.