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District outlines discipline metrics and anti-bullying definitions as board reviews data
Summary
Administrator Dr. Ross presented discipline data to trustees, detailing how incidents are reported and categorized, counts for the year and trends across the last three years, and the district's process for investigating bullying and harassment reports.
An administrator gave the Warren County R-III Board an overview of discipline reporting and recent trends on Feb. 13, emphasizing the district’s investigative steps and the distinction between aggressive conduct, harassment and legally defined bullying.
“To call something bullying is a very specific ... and causes a reasonable student to fear for their physical safety,” Dr. Ross said while explaining the district’s legal thresholds and how reports escalate from abusive language and threats to harassment and then bullying.
Ross told the board that principals rely on four primary information sources to start an investigation: direct student reports and statements, automated alerts from district monitoring software (ARC), entries from the anonymous reporting system (Spireo) and referrals received by administrators. He said Missouri law requires timely investigation once student statements trigger a protocol.
Ross provided counts for the current school year through January: 85 school days elapsed; the district's buildings reported about 82 student concerns brought directly to principals, more than 1,670 automated ARC alerts that required review, 26 reports via the anonymous “bully hotline,” and 755 student statements that required follow-up. He said the district is tracking trends compared with prior years: bullying referrals at this point were about 14 this school year versus roughly 13 last year and about 15 two years ago; harassment referrals were 16 this year versus 13 last year and 12 two years ago.
Ross highlighted improvement in abusive-language referrals districtwide (declining from 155 last year to 118 this year) but said physical-aggression incidents have inched upward (about 158 two years ago, 180 last year and 186 this year). He said much of the physical-aggression total arises in elementary schools because even a single physical incident triggers that classification.
The district uses tiers of intervention (Tier 1–3) and documented consequences that progress with repeated infractions; administrators track repeat offenses and individual students' referral histories in the student information system (Infinite Campus). Ross said buildings maintain local response pathways (for example, check-in/check-out programs or bus-major pathways) and that administrators compile building-level data to measure intervention effectiveness.
Board members asked about repeat offenders and how interventions are measured; Ross said those are active areas of work and that some measures (like PBIS at elementary schools) provide more structure for monitoring interventions. He said a discipline committee made up of building staff, administrators and parent representatives will meet soon to review policy (policy code JGR) and three years of discipline data; the committee will generate requests for information and potential policy recommendations to return to the board.
Trustees encouraged parents to report concerns via school contacts or the anonymous system and praised staff for the volume of follow-up work the administrators conduct. Ross said about 98% of students do not receive referrals and reiterated that the district is focused on supporting students who need additional interventions.
