School Safety & Educational Climate Report: Horseheads - WETM - MyTwinTiers.com

School Safety & Educational Climate report: Horseheads

HORSEHEADS, N.Y. (WETM) – New York State law requires all school districts to submit an annual “School Safety and the Educational Climate” report. It covers nearly a dozen categories, ranging from pulling false fire alarms, to bullying, assaults, and homicide. 18 News is taking a closer look at what the 2022-2023 reports show for districts in our region. On Thursday, we analyzed the Corning-Painted Post Area School District. Now it’s the turn of the Horseheads Central School District.

The district has 7 schools, serving 3,618 students from K-12. “We have a very good active community and a safe school structure. We have the problems that any household has, here.” said Superintendent Dr. Thomas J. Douglas.

The Horseheads Central School District reported no homicides, sex offenses, assaults or weapons found during the 2022-2023 school year. There were also no reported threats of school violence.

The report does show there was one “school-related” arrest. It happened at the high school, the only school that reported any incidents.

The report shows there was one incident of “Discrimination, Harassment and Bullying.” It says it involved bias against a disability. One student was suspended from school. The report says law enforcement was also involved.

“So, in this case, it rose to the level…” said 18 News reporter Nick Dubina.

“Basically, you’re digging into the report, which is the right way to read it, you’re reading it exactly right,” said Superintendent Douglas. “There was one victim. There was one offender. There was one issue, and it did lead to charges. It has to meet the criteria of what the state says is bullying. Often times, a lot of people do not understand. It must be known. It must be severe, and it must be pervasive and ongoing,” Dr. Douglas added.

The school district did not report any incidents of cyberbullying. There were 14 reported incidents of “use, sale or possession of drugs.”

“It’s a little over 1% of our student population, but here’s one of the things I would caution you on,” said Dr. Douglas. “That 14 could be one student doing it once, twice or three times. So, you could have 14 incidents, and hypothetically, have 1 student who violated it all along. So that’s the number that you would have to see if it’s a percentage of the student body. That’s the hard part,” Superintendent Douglas said.

“This report does even break down what you just described,” Dubina. “Number of students: 14.

“Yup,” Dr. Douglas replied.

“What it doesn’t tell you,” Dubina continued, “is what type of drugs, but you were alluding to that earlier, is it mostly THC?

“All of this was THC related,” Dr. Douglas replied.

All 14 students were suspended from school. The report says law enforcement was involved in all 14 incidents.

“The report says one student was suspended from school after being caught with alcohol during school hours. The incident also involved law enforcement.

Dr. Douglas says last year, the school dealt with about 1,300 disciplinary incidents. “Of that, about 500 to 600 were for skipping class or not going to school. So, you can see the numbers can be distorted.”

“There is a lot of actions in our secondary schools that don’t make this report.” Dr. Douglas continued. “You could just be hitting somebody in the hall, just typical kids screwing around. But say somebody gets hurt. That might require some type of penalty, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to rise to a violence, discipline disruption.”

“For the most part, you can see our discipline rate and our effective rate over the whole district is less than I think, one-percent of one-percent. So that’s what we try to strive for,” Dr. Douglas added. “Can we have good years and bad years? Yes. Then we try to make sure we take care of the kids and help them to become the young adults we expect them to be.”

You can read the reports for each school below: