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District reports big drops in fights, weapons incidents and substance cases in Phase 2 safety report
Summary
Freehold Regional's Phase 2 student-safety report showed reductions across multiple incident categories compared with the prior year, including fights (8 vs. 24) and total violence acts (21 vs. 44); administrators credited school climate work and safety teams. The data were presented by the district safety official at the board meeting.
The Freehold Regional High School District presented Phase 2 of its annual student-safety data, showing districtwide declines in multiple categories of incidents for January–June of the school year.
"This year, our violence acts ... we had 21 in phase 2. And last year in this phase, we had 44," said Mr. Mendez, who presented the report. He told the board that fights fell to eight this year from 24 the prior year and that weapons incidents fell to one from four. Confirmed substance-use incidents fell from 64 to 38 in the same period.
Mendez and other presenters emphasized that the district-level counts cover all six high schools and roughly 10,200 students, and they described the decreases as the result of targeted interventions, school safety teams and student leadership groups. "This is a tribute to our students, our staff, and our administrators in our buildings," Mendez said.
The report also covered harassment, intimidation and bullying self-assessment scores. Most schools received the top possible total on the state's self-assessment; two schools recorded a slightly lower score on a training component. Administrators said the data will be submitted to the New Jersey Department of Education and published next school year.
Board members thanked administrators and credited building principals and counselors for work on prevention and interventions. District leaders said professional development and summer academic supports will continue to be offered to students who need remediation.
Next steps: the district will post the NJDOE data publicly and continue targeted programming and monitoring described in the presentation.
