Fewer than half of underclassmen at the two high schools here said they felt safe at school in their responses to voluntary annual youth risk behavior surveys taken during the school year that just ended.
The 48.4 percent who said they feel safe is significantly lower than the 58.4 percent from the year before who responded that they felt safe.
The survey results also show that more than 28 percent of respondents said violence is a problem at their schools, and nearly 14 percent reported being in a physical fight at school. The percentage of respondents in fights is up a bit from the year before while far fewer students than the previous year felt that violence is a problem.
Suspensions up, tooIn addition to the survey, district information shows that two of the four intermediate schools reported many more suspensions for all causes last year than the year before. Fighting and threatening behavior were the two major reasons for the increases, Daniel Weast, director of student services, told the West Allis-West Milwaukee School Board last week.
The intermediate schools seeing the signficant increases were Frank Lloyd Wright and West Milwaukee, with both still well below their 10-year highs in the number of suspensions.