An exterior view of the Clark County School District administrative offices Tuesday, March 29, 2022.
Thursday, May 12, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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One in five students in the Clark County School District doesn’t feel safe at school, according to a district survey.
The district queried students in grades 4-12 for its annual survey, and found that about 79% said they feel safe. But the students’ sense of security dwindled as they grew older — from about 89% in the upper elementary school grades to 76% by high school.
The results broken down by race showed that Black children of all ages felt the least safe, also diminishing as they aged. By high school, only about 69% of Black students felt safe, compared to about 76% of white students, 77% of Latino students and 80% of Asian students. About 15% of CCSD’s 304,000 students identify as Black.
District staff will go into more detail on the survey results, and how the district can bolster students’ perception of safety, with the School Board at its regular meeting starting at 5 p.m. today at 2832 E. Flamingo Road.
The perception of safety was based on responses to the following statements: This school is safe; students feel safe in this school; this school has safety procedures that work; and “I sometimes stay home because I don’t feel safe at this school.”
The Sun analyzed calls to Clark County School District Police for violent crimes from the first seven months of the school year and found that of the 6,827 calls logged through February 775 led to arrests and citations, mostly for fighting, assault and battery.
Calls for safety are coming from many, including students. Take Naika Belizaire, a youth leader with Code Switch, a local organization that advocates for restorative justice for girls of color, who spoke at a recent meeting.
“Multiple students at this district do not feel safe, and it’s not because of the violence from students… but the fact that CCSD has no effective method of eradicating this violence,” she said after a demonstration outside the meeting chambers over intensifying campus violence. “We don’t have safe spaces for students. We have police officers instead of counselors. We have people in administration that don’t listen to us. We deserve to be heard, to have the problems that we tell you guys be taken into account.”
The district surveys students annually on their feelings about their safety. This year’s numbers are comparable to pre-pandemic 2019-20, district data show.
While responses in last year’s survey showed that students felt significantly more secure then, learning was conducted almost entirely online in 2020-21 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
