Gwinnett schools underreport safety infractions

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Posted 6:28PM on Monday, April 28, 2003

ATLANTA - Gwinnett County school officials acknowledged that they failed to report thousands of serious infractions on a state-mandated school discipline report after Atlanta media noticed the discrepancy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV reported Monday that the state's largest school system withheld at least 24,568 serious incidents, including fights, thefts and drug, sex and weapons offenses. After initially denying problems with the report, Gwinnett school officials acknowledged they underreported the infractions, the Journal-Constitution and WSB reported. Associate Superintendent Don Fielder said it was not intentional. ``Gwinnett has a good reputation,'' Fielder said. ``The people here are honest. They have a continuous improvement philosophy, which basically says when we believe that we are doing something wrong, we are going to fix it and move forward.'' Georgia law requires the Department of Education to collect data on 23 serious disciplinary offenses or on any incident resulting in serious discipline. The data are used for an annual report to the General Assembly, setting discipline policy guidelines and determining which schools are labeled ``persistently dangerous.'' The ``No Child Left Behind Act of 2001'' will allow students who attend schools with that designation to transfer to safer schools beginning this fall. According to public documents and Gwinnett's internal database, obtained by the AJC using the state's Open Records Act, school officials underreported serious disciplinary incidents by at least 85 percent. Among the incidents that went unreported in Gwinnett were 260 incidents of vandalism, 109 weapon offenses, 46 sex-related offenses, 180 drug and alcohol offenses and 326 incidents involving serious threat or intimidation. Gwinnett's numbers differ greatly from those of Cobb and DeKalb county schools, ranked second and third behind Gwinnett in enrollment. Cobb, for instance, had 97,843 students last year and reported 42,040 disciplinary incidents to the state. Gwinnett, with 115,837 students, reported just 4,258. In all, 138 public schools in Georgia including 88 in metro Atlanta reported no data to the state.