O.C. Public Schools Still Safer Than Most

For the fourth year running, Orange County public school campuses were safer than most statewide, but a handful saw sharp increases in the number of crimes reported, according to data to be released officially today.

In the annual California Safe Schools Assessment, Orange County reported fewer occurrences of drug and alcohol offenses, battery, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, sex offenses, weapons possession and property crimes than the whole of California.

The figures were compiled from crime reports filed by school districts for the 1998-99 school year.

The results were mixed.

While the Orange County rates of property crimes and weapons possession fell, crimes against people and drug and alcohol offenses were up from the previous year.

Bill Habermehl, an associate superintendent with the Orange County Department of Education, saw the data as encouraging.

Orange County schools, with a total enrollment of 471,404, reported lower crime rates in all categories than those in neighboring counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego.

He attributed the upswing in several categories to better reporting but also to the volatility of small numbers. The Magnolia Elementary School District, for example, cut its drugs and alcohol incidents by a seemingly spectacular 100%--from one incident the previous year to none last year.

“We feel Orange County has some of the safest schools in the state of California, and the data support that,” Habermehl said. “We’re pleased with the information; it’s one more reason people move to Orange County.”

In all, Orange County tallied 3,920 incidents of school-related crime in the 1998-99 school year--about 8.32 crimes per 1,000 students enrolled in local schools. The most commonly reported crimes involved damage to property--theft, vandalism, graffiti and arson--followed by drug and alcohol offenses and battery, a category that covers many schoolyard skirmishes.

The county’s only homicide in the report was the November 1998 shooting of an El Modena High School senior on his way home from school, an incident that happened too late to make the previous year’s school safety report.

Among the biggest leaps in crime rates were within the Orange County Department of Education’s schools, as opposed to individual school districts. That was attributed to the increasing numbers of students enrolled in the county department’s alternative and correctional schools, where students are typically referred by their school districts, probation officers or others who feel they need a different environment. Many of the students in these programs have been expelled because of their home districts’ adherence to zero-tolerance policies on drugs and weapons.

The skyrocketing enrollment in alternative education helped contribute to dramatically higher rates of drug and alcohol offenses and battery.

“The reason our numbers are high is the population we deal with--students for whom regular school wasn’t working,” Habermehl said.

Several other school districts--including Anaheim Union High, Brea-Olinda Unified, Fullerton Joint Union and Newport-Mesa Unified--have seen their statistics zigzag over the years. Some districts with an upswing in drug and battery offenses credit some of the change to better definitions from the state of what constitutes a reportable incident.

The definition of battery, for example, has confused school administrators for years. The state is defining it as willful and unlawful use of force or violence with an aggressor who deliberately targets a victim as opposed to a mutual fight between two students. Likewise, drug offenses have increased now that students caught with marijuana accessories are reported to the state.

The small Brea-Olinda Unified School District attributed its crime fluctuations to internal problems with reporting incidents. Although the alcohol and battery incidents reported to the state jumped more than fourfold in both categories, the schools’ overall safety figures have remained constant, said Supt. Peggy Lynch. The district since has trained staff to avoid future bookkeeping problems, she said.

“We weren’t being as thorough as we should have been,” she said.

One district bucking the statewide trend was South County’s Capistrano Unified, where offenses in nearly every category were down, in part because of the district’s zero-tolerance policy, said spokeswoman Julie Jennings.

Jennings said her district couldn’t claim all the credit for lowered property damage. “The dollar loss . . . depends on whether you have students who are spray-painting or damaging sports equipment [or] if someone breaks into a computer lab,” she said. “There’s not a lot of control over the specific incident.”

Anaheim and Orange’s safety officers have noticed more cases of students being caught with marijuana and related paraphernalia, contributing to higher crime rates.

Frank Boehler, Orange’s director of child welfare and attendance, said his students have been caught with marijuana more often because of consistent enforcement.

“The [community] supply of marijuana was up, “ he said. “I also think we’re getting better at catching the kids.”

In Anaheim schools, school safety administrator Bob Montenegro noticed a drug offense spike because students caught with rolling papers or marijuana pipes are now reported to the state.

“We’ve had more [drug and alcohol] incidents, there’s no question about it,” he said. “But I also think we’ve done a better job implementing our reporting system.”

In Fullerton high schools, officials accidentally double-reported two incident of vandalism--causing an inflated figure of dollar loss due to property crimes. The weekend incidents occurred a few weeks apart at Sunny Hills High, when someone trashed some classrooms, damaging televisions, computers and windows.

The actual loss was $60,000, not the $250,000 sent to the state. As a result, Supt. Michael F. Escalante said, the dollar loss per student is closer to $7, not the reported $17.46.

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* THE BREAKDOWN

Campus crime reports are listed district by district. B7

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School Safety

For the fourth year, Orange County public schools tallied proportionally fewer crimes than the state overall, according to the 1998-99 California Safe Schools Assessment released by the state Department of Education. The figures below show crime rates per 1,000 students and the change from the previous year’s figures.