Information snapshot reveals improve in fights at Madison excessive faculties | Native Schooling
The number of fighting behavior recommendations at three of Madison’s four main high schools rose sharply this September compared to the same month two years earlier, when the school year last began in-person classes.
Forty-nine referrals were made for the fight in September 2021, compared to 28 for the same month in 2019. September 2021 marked not only the first full month of high school instruction since the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020, but also the first Classrooms have been full for decades, but the Madison Police Department no longer had an officer stationed at each of the schools.
Videos taken by students show part of an altercation outside East High School in Madison on Nov. 8 and police efforts to break up a subsequent series of pepper spray fights.
The data, released Monday in response to a Sept. 30 public records request by the Wisconsin State Journal, went from three to 11 at West and Memorial High Schools and seven to 12 at La Follette High School. The 15 recommendations at East High School were the same both years this month. Together the schools have about 7,500 students.
The newspaper had requested copies of the actual recommendations tracked by a system the district uses to log incidents of behavior and other student data, but district prosecutor Mankah Zama Mitchell instead provided a one-page summary listing the total number of recommendations every school. As part of the district’s behavioral education plan, students caught fighting can receive anything from a warning to expulsion, depending on the severity of the case.
