Do the Leaders of Salem-Keizer Public Schools Even Want to Keep the Kids Safe?
Plus, their data is TERRIBLE. It even mislead a veteran journalist!
As reported in a number of outlets, on March 2, 2023, a student was arrested on the campus of South Salem High School for possession of a loaded firearm and a knife.
According to a detailed report on the Salem Reporter by Les Zaitz:
“‘A social media user called police to report a student who sent a video message to them through the platform,’ the Salem Police Department said in a release issued eight hours after the incident. ‘The caller was concerned because the video showed the student claiming to be at the high school with a gun.’”
Later, the report confirmed, “Police located the teen somewhere inside the school.”
“‘As officers approached, the student fled from the school. He was subsequently apprehended without incident at a vehicle. The teen was found in possession of a knife,’ the statement continued.”
“A search of the vehicle ‘and a backpack the juvenile carried’ turned up the loaded firearm.”
Evidently, he didn’t get the memo from the school board when they banned concealed carry on all Salem-Keizer School properties. I wonder which other criminals might have missed that memo, because surely criminals would follow the school board’s rules, right?
Before we get to the part about how terribly the district displays its behavior incident data, consider this:
The school didn’t lock down. They had a student with a loaded gun and a knife on campus with other students and staff, and they didn’t lock the campus down.
Doesn’t that seem rather dangerous, in light of other school shootings? There are no school resource officers (SROs) in Salem-Keizer Public Schools, and there are no private citizens allowed to conceal carry on campus, thanks to Superintendent Christy Perry and the Salem-Keizer School Board, respectively.
This is a district that wrote a threat assessment plan that they’re so proud of that they published it as an academic textbook for other districts and entities to use in designing their own safety plans.
Does it seem like they have a handle on safety and threat assessment?
And let’s consider how their actions now seem to contradict previous actions, some very recent:
May 18, 2022 - Waldo Middle School locked down due to “suspicious individuals that were refusing to leave the campus”.
They’ve locked down in the past when a student had a gun. They’ve locked down multiple times for there being suspicious activity in the area, some of which they didn’t even find anything that was actually suspicious. They’ve locked down when the police are just in the area responding to a call. Yet they chose to leave everything as usual.
What if this youth had decided he wasn’t going to share a video of his threat and decided to just bring the gun and knife to school? Remember that the student fled when confronted. Would he have been able to flee if the school were in lockdown? And with the school not in lockdown, what would have happened if the student had pulled his gun and started firing instead of fleeing?
As someone who pays attention to the data put out by the Salem-Keizer School District, something later in the initial report caught my attention:
“A report provided in February by school district officials to the Salem-Keizer School Board on ‘high school major discipline incidents’ listed no entries in the category ‘weapons-firearm’ dating to the 2018-2019 school year. It showed two incidents in the current school year involving knives with a blade over 2.5 inches.”
That didn’t look right to me. So I went and found the report he was talking about.
It was attached to the posted agenda and would have been presented in the February school board meeting scheduled for February 28, 2023, but the meeting was canceled due to inclement weather.
Interpreting it as it seems Zaitz did, indeed, it appears to say that there were no firearms incidents from 2018-2019 through December of the 2022-2023 school year. But I knew that was incorrect.
In the school board meeting on July 12, 2022, the Superintendent presented a report with the discipline incidents over the entire 2021-22 year listed by month, and I could see what happened.
Even though the report that Zaitz read from is titled “SKPS Monthly Monitoring Data - Through Jan 2023” (emphasis mine), it is only a January snapshot of each year, for the past 5 school years, at least for the discipline data. It isn’t cumulative for any period displayed. The title of the tables for discipline data all end in “- Jan” which could easily be interpreted as “through January”. Instead, it should say for example “High School Major Discipline Data for Jan of each School Year” or just add “Jan” to the beginning of each school year (e.g. Jan 2022-23, Jan 2021-22, Jan 2020-21, etc).
Another aside, for some reason, the district switched how they report data in January 2023. For Sept, Oct, and Nov of 2022, they only reported the current year’s data as a running tally for those respective months. There were no prior years to compare against, just month-to-month. Then in January (for December 2022’s monthly monitoring data), they stopped reporting the months prior but added the same month for prior years. So instead of seeing a trend line for the year-to-date, they were seeing snapshots to compare that particular month, year-over-year.
They’ve also changed many of the category names and definitions from period to period, so it can be difficult to compare apples to apples. There’s no explanation, no key, no crosswalk. Just change for change’s sake.
Confused yet? I think that’s what they’re going for. They want any public that feels like paying attention to get that glazed-over look and shrug:
For others who look at data, it’s like looking at a picture through a keyhole. There’s a lot more to whatever picture they’re trying to show (or not show).
For firearms at the high school level in 2022-23, (not including the incident at South Salem High School) there was one in Sept 2022, and one for all of 2021-22. In 2020-21, they reported data for the high school level beginning in March 2021, and only reported "Weapons" as a whole, not broken out, but there were weapons incidents listed. In years previous to that, the district didn't report it in the same way they did for the years mentioned above (if they reported it at all), so I couldn't find if there was any data for weapons. But the data confirms at least two incidents with firearms in the last two years at the high school level.
For blades over 2.5", at those links above, you'll see that there were five in Sept 2022, four in Oct 2022, one in Nov 2022, two in Jan 2023, and 22 in all of 2021-22, confirming at least 34 incidents with knives having blades over 2.5” in length in the last two years.
By the way, there were also three firearms incidents and 26 incidents with knives having blades over 2.5” in length at the middle school level over the same time period. Elementary? Zero guns, but 6 knives.
Those figures are alarming, especially given the apparent new policy change of NOT locking down a campus when a student has a weapon.
But despite suspicious activity (a social media post threatening violence at school), a report of a student with weapons on campus (a loaded gun and a knife), and police activity in the area (police responding to the actual campus), any of which in the past would have caused the school to go on lockdown, the school didn’t lock down for all THREE of those things happening at the same time.
In an update to the article, Les Zaitz reached out to the school district and Salem Police Department with some questions. Neither organization responded to his questions about the event. However, when asking about other recent school lockdowns, “the school district’s communications director, Aaron Harada, responded: ‘It would be best for this to go through our public records process.’” Talk about a non-answer from the person charged with managing the district’s communications.
Parents in the district, especially parents of children at South Salem High School, the principal sent a message that said that “[the school’s] staff are available to support students and families who may have concerns,” so I would encourage you to email her and ask why the school stayed open.
You might as well also ask Aaron Harada since he’s forgotten he is the communications director and needs to communicate.
Robert Silva is the Chief Operations Officer, overseeing Safety and Risk Management.
And last but not least, the big boss, Superintendent Christy Perry.
You could email your school board chair, and she’ll feed you platitudes and nod along somehow both sympathetically yet also patronizingly at the same time, after which she’ll say that she hears you, but they’re just a governance board and don’t make district policy, even though they do when it suits their political agendas.
But that’s a topic for another day.
Someone’s got to answer the questions you have about why they aren’t doing everything they can to keep kids safe. They’re public servants and you’re the public. So, be polite, and ask the questions… politely!
romaine_tara@salkeiz.k12.or.us (South Salem High School Principal)
harada_aaron@salkeiz.k12.or.us (Communications Director)
silva_robert@salkeiz.k12.or.us (Chief Operations Officer - overseeing Safety & Risk Management)
perry_christy@salkeiz.k12.or.us (Superintendent - SKPS)