EDITORIAL: Violence on the uptick at Clark County School District campuses

By a host of measures, violent incidents on Clark County School District campuses have increased markedly in recent years. Fighting, weapons possession and aggression toward teachers are all up since the 2013-14 school year, according to district statistics.

“Over the last … couple weeks,” Ken Young of the school district police told the Review-Journal’s Amelia Pak-Harvey, “the question has been asked: What’s going on? Why are we seeing such a sharp increase in the violent incidents in our schools? We’re asking the same question.”

In fact, the real mystery is why there is any mystery at all.

Since the 2013-14 school year, district officials have dialed back the number of disciplinary actions in an effort to placate activists who complained that minority students bore the brunt of expulsions and suspensions. They did so thanks to the Obama administration, which issued a “Dear Colleague” letter implicitly threatening districts with legal action if they did not adopt what is essentially a quota system for meting out discipline.

What mattered to Eric Holder’s Justice Department was not making sure that disruptive or violent students were punished, but that the race or ethnicity of those who were disciplined reflected the general makeup of the school or district. This is progressive logic at its finest. Political correctness run amok.

“Predictably, the watering-down of disciplinary policies has produced dramatic increases in the severity and scale of student misbehavior,” Peter Kirsanow of National Review reported in April. “Who suffers as a result? The non-misbehaving students — black, brown and white — whose classrooms are disrupted by misbehaving students taking advantage of the new, more lenient disciplinary rules.”

The numbers in Clark County mirror this trend. In 2013-14, almost 3,900 students faced expulsion, and 810 were transferred to campuses created for troubled students. For the 2016-17 school year, those figures had dropped dramatically — to 1,216 and 221, respectively — while violent incidents are spiking. The connection should be obvious.

“By changing what we can expel kids for and giving us (the) directive not to expel students, it has changed our campuses,” David Wilson, principal of Eldorado High School, told Ms. Pak-Harvey. He went on to say, “At some point, kids have to recognize that there are consequences for their behaviors. And in general, that’s not the case.”

The Trump administration has the authority to rescind Barack Obama’s “Dear Colleague” missive on this issue. It should do so as soon as possible. Local school districts don’t need federal bean counters staring over their shoulders every time they deal with an unruly student. If there is indeed evidence of discrimination in a specific district’s disciplinary approach, that can best be addressed at the local or state level.

In the meantime, Clark County School District officials should give principals and teachers wide-ranging authority to deal with problem students. If administrators truly care about bringing up the district’s woeful achievement levels, they’d move aggressively to ensure that those kids who engage in violent or disruptive behavior — regardless of their skin color — don’t poison the environment for those who are actually here to learn.