The buildings and grounds of D.C. Public Schools were the sites of 3,500 emergency calls to the D.C. police during the 2007-08 school year, according to a new report by the Heritage Foundation and the Lexington Institute.
More than 900 of the calls cited violent incidents, including assaults and sex offenses. Nearly 1,400 calls complained of property incidents such as auto theft and vandalism. The remaining 1,250 calls reported acts such as drug offenses, gunshots, suicide and disorderly conduct.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee “and her team have been incredibly effective about communicating school accountability and reforms, but there’s been very little in the way of communicating school safety,” said Don Soifer, a member of the D.C. Public Charter School Board and one of the report’s authors. “And poll after poll tells us that parents care a lot.”
Soifer is quick to point out that the data, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the police department, includes incidents at all hours of the day, and does not distinguish between a call to police and an actual criminal charge.
Dunbar Senior High in Ward 5 and Anacostia Senior High in Ward 8 saw the highest number of police response to crimes, according to the report. Dunbar reported 55 calls for assault, while Anacostia reported 47. Both schools enrolled about 900 students in 2007-08.
The report detailed “perhaps the most disquieting data” at elementary schools. Webb Elementary in Ward 5 reported 35 incidents of assault, and Ward 8’s Moten Elementary reported 30 incidents.
D.C. Public Schools are different than charter and private schools in that the police department is the first responder to incidents. The city turned security over to the department in 2005, following a fatal shooting of a student at Ballou High School in Ward 8.
Jennifer Calloway, spokeswoman for DCPS, pointed out that the school system’s accounting of “serious incidents,” defined as fights, abuse, assault, robbery, weapon possession, drugs or fires, fell 17 percent to 1,117 between August 2008 and April 2009, from 1,353 a year earlier.
