High school and middle school students in Juneau are reportedly fighting more this semester than in years prior.
According to data from the Juneau School District, 11 fights occurred between August and October at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé. That’s more than double the number of fights that broke out there over the entirety of last school year.
The fights occurred both on and off campus. Police or Juvenile Justice Division officials responded to almost half of them.
There have also been eight fights among students at Thunder Mountain Middle School. But data shows that’s typical for the middle school level.
The district put together the data after staff and parents raised concerns about the increase in fights at last month’s Juneau School Board meeting.
Crystal Keaton spoke up at the meeting. She is a special education paraeducator at JDHS and has two children there.
“Almost on a weekly basis there are gigantic brawls and fights at the high school,” she said. “I was sitting in my resource room one day at the end of the day, and I heard some weird noise, and I go out in the hall, and there is a brawl outside of my classroom. There’s three to four kids attacking one student. On a weekly basis, this is happening.”
Her son, Elijah Keaton, is a student school board representative and a senior. He also testified at the meeting about the violence he’s witnessed. He said he’s not sure why more fights are happening, but he thinks it might have something to do with stress.
It’s been a year of major changes for students in Juneau. The high schools and middle schools were consolidated at the start of the school year in an effort to address last year’s budget crisis.
At a school board meeting Tuesday night, Juneau-Douglas Principal Paula Casperson told board members that staff are taking the incidents case by case.
“Our equity council has been dissecting some of the data that you’re looking at. Our site council has talked about this. Our school as a whole is having conversations,” she said. “One fight is one fight too many, and we really are working hard to address what we can when we can.”
Casperson said each incident is different, and the district uses a progressive and restorative justice approach to disciplining students involved in fights. She said school leadership hopes to repair the issue with school-wide conversations about creating a safe and welcoming environment.
The district’s data shows that the number of fights already appears to be declining over the past two months.
