RALEIGH — The State Board of Education received the annual K-12 school crime report during its meeting last week.
The board also called for sweeping pay raises for all staff, including nonteaching and administrative staff, as well as a moratorium on funding for the Opportunity Scholarship program that gives grants to students to attend the private school of their choice.
Michael Maher, chief accountability officer for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, delivered the crime report presentation to the board. He noted the school crime report has been given a new title — “Annual Report Discipline, Alternative Learning Placement, and Dropout,” or DALD for short.
Maher prefaced the report’s statistics by warning of “confirmation bias” in social media posts, news articles and other reports on violence in schools.
“Students and educators deserve safe places to teach, learn and grow,” State Superintendent Mo Green said in a press release. “While there is still work to be done to address instances of reportable criminal offenses, it is good to know that the vast majority of our schools experience a minimal amount of such acts and that more than 99% of our public school students are not committing these acts.
“It is also encouraging to see the downward trend of not only in those offenses, but also declines in suspensions and dropouts, as we know how critical being in school is to student success.”
The number of overall reportable crimes dropped by 794 acts, going from 11,962 in 2023-24 to 11,168 in 2024-25. Of the total number of acts of violent and reportable crimes committed last year, 11,439 were by students and 41 nonstudent offenders.
This year’s report shows the number of reportable acts decreased, but figures for assault causing serious injury spiked by more than 142% last year, going from 37 acts in 2023-24 to 90.
Sexual assault/battery also rose from 45 (2023-24) to 56 acts (2024-25), about a 24% increase.
Acts of violent crime rose from 250 in 2023-24 to 302 in 2024-25, a 20.8% increase. However, violent act rates were down over the two-year period by 22.9%.
One point stressed was that there were zero acts of corporal punishment for the seventh year in a row. Additionally, no instances of “Death/Homicide, Rape and Indecent Liberties with a Minor,” were reported for the 2024-25 school year.
Some other metrics included:
- 6.1% decrease in number of acts of violent and reportable crimes, down from 12,212 in 2022-23
- 8.2% decrease in the rate of violent and reportable crimes over 2023-24
- 9,966 students out of 1.5 million preschool to grade 13 students committed at least one act, or roughly a rate of 0.66%
- 78.1% of schools reported between zero and five instances of violent crimes, which translates to 2,115 out of 2,706 schools
- 44.1% of schools (1,193) reported zero violent crime acts.
- 34.0% of schools (922) reported between one and five violent crime acts
According to the report, possession of controlled substances was the most frequently reported crime, making up 62% of all reportable acts.
Possession of a weapon (excluding firearms and powerful explosives) was second with 16.3%, followed by assault on school personnel with 12.7%. The rate of those three crimes, respectively, is 4.61, 1.22 and 0.94 per 1,000 students.
