By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
HILLSBOROUGH — Incidents of violence and vandalism in district schools went up 45 percent in the 2007-08 school year, according to the district’s annual violence and vandalism report.
But as District Superintendent Edward Forsthoffer noted after presenting the report at the Board of Education’s Oct. 20 meeting, the numbers are still low 58 total incidents in a district of 7,600 students.
”Hillsborough’s a safe district,” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t mind having my children come to school (here). They are very low numbers, but they aren’t zero. We want zero.”
The report showed increases in the numbers of incidents in the violence, vandalism, weapons, and substance abuse categories, with the total incidents increasing from 40 incidents in 2006-07 to 58 in 2007-08.
The largest increase the incidents category occurred in the Substance Abuse category, which jumped from five incidents to 13. Dr. Forsthoffer said most of the incidents involved a group of seven students coming to an event drunk, with the remaining incidents involving marijuana or marijuana and cocaine.
The number of incidents in the weapons category increased from three incidents to eight, though Dr. Forsthoffer said most of the incidents were minor. According to Dr. Forsthoffer, three incidents involved students bringing pocket knives to school; two incidents involved students bringing razor knives to the school; one incident involved a student bringing an unloaded paintball gun to school; one incident involved a student making a “threatening” motion with school scissors; and one incident involved a student creating darts from pushpins and blowing them through a drinking straw.
Though vandalism increased by a single incident, the cost to repair the damage increased from $200 in 2006 to 2007 to $2,950 2007-08. According to Dr. Forsthoffer, several of the incidents involved expensive items, including lacrosse nets and replacing a damaged door. The district’s insurance covered the repairs, Dr. Forsthoffer said, so the money did not come from the district budget.
Incidents that required police notification increased from 13 in 2006-07 to 21 incidents in 2007-08. The number of short-term suspensions increased as well from 45 in 2006-07 to 61 in 2007-08.
”Our suspensions did increase, but I think that’s expected,” Dr. Forsthoffer said at the meeting. “If there’s going to be an incident, there have to be consequences.”
The number of regular education students committing the offenses went up as well, jumping from 24 in 2006-07 to 43 in 200708.

