…. of any district middle or high school, data from the police department show.
Police responded to the school at 30 Ash St. 185 times between Sept. 3, 2024, and June 11, or about once every 1.5 days. That would include calls about issues outside the school that might not have anything to do with the school’s students or staff.
Police responded to four battery calls, for example, and two for traffic-related hit-and-runs.
The vast plurality of the calls, 65, are for “stratified policing” — a police department term indicating that police are meeting at the school about ongoing public safety issues and not for particular incidents.
Police spokesperson Anthony Vogel said that officers generate the call type to show they are “providing a police presence” in an area.
Five years after the Madison School Board voted to remove school resource officers from the four main high schools, West had by far the most such police presence call types of any of the four schools. There were only 20 at Memorial last year, four at La Follette and four at East.
The police department’s records custodian redacted the reasons for three calls to West, saying “the information contains highly personal details related to a sensitive investigation and disclosing it would likely harm important public interests without providing any significant benefit to the public.”
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Gangs and School Violence Forum
Madison police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006. More.
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2017: Madison West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results.