The number of “serious” safety incidents in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland dropped overall last year, according to data presented Tuesday.
But there was an increase in some categories, including weapons, bomb threats and trespassing.
At Tuesday’s MCPS Board of Education meeting, Marcus Jones, the newly appointed chief of security and compliance for the school system, shared data that showed there were 221 incidents during the 2023-24 school year where weapons were discovered, up 30% from the previous year.
There were 84 cases of false alarms and bomb threats — an increase of 11%. There were also 101 cases of trespassing on school grounds — an increase of nearly 14% over the 2022-23 school year.
There were two categories where the number of serious incidents significantly dropped: fighting and drugs.
According to the data presented Tuesday, there were 130 incidents involving fighting among students, a decrease of 17.7%. And there was a 27.2% drop in the number of incidents related to drugs.
Board member Brenda Wolff questioned some of the data: “The numbers for ’23-24, particularly fighting, that looks like an awfully low number to me, at least from what I can see on social media.”
Wolff said she was concerned that schools don’t report all incidents.
“I’m trying to understand what direction schools are being given,” she said. “Because I believe that a lot of them are not reporting to make themselves look better.”
Peter Moran, chief of the Office of School Support and Improvement for Montgomery County Public Schools, said he agreed with Wolff regarding that data point.
“When you look at that number and you think about the number of school days and what we’ve experienced, the validity of that is extremely questionable,” said Moran.
Wolff followed up by saying she believes that principals have to know that “they are not going to be punished as a school — if I could use that term — because of what’s going on in the building.”
Jones, who previously served as Montgomery County’s police chief, told school board members that one of the strategies he’d like to see to deal with serious incidents is an “all hands on deck” approach, where school staffers at all levels are increasingly visible throughout the school buildings.
The messages at all levels, said Jones should be, “It is my job, it’s your job, it’s our job to maintain safety and security in our school environment on a daily basis,” said Jones.
Jones said he wanted to take a look at different approaches to handling incidents like bomb threats.
“We discovered that many of these calls came from outside of Montgomery County,” Jones said. “They came from outside of the state of Maryland. And in fact, on a few occasions, they came from outside of the United States.”
Jones didn’t offer specifics on exactly how approaches to bomb threats could differ, but mentioned that current protocols could focus on levels of threat to determine responses that “minimize disruption.”
Jones also told the board, “I know there’s been a big issue centered around monitoring restrooms. We want to be able to be involved in that.”
“Addressing and reducing substance abuse is a major priority of mine as it was when I was Chief of Police,” Jones said at the meeting.
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