State Board of Education reports progress made in school discipline, violent crimes

ByMichael Perchick WTVD logo

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

School violence, discipline are trending lower, State BOE reports

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- A new report released Wednesday highlighted broad drops in school discipline measures and violent crimes.

The Report to the North Carolina General Assembly on Discipline, Alternative Learning Placement and Dropout saw an 8.2% decrease in the rate of violent and reportable crimes this past year, with 44.1% of schools reporting zero acts of violent crime and another 34% reporting one to five acts.

"When you look across schools, most report few or zero incidents, and when we standardize by enrollment, we see our rates are stable or declining. The zero to five category reflects the typical school experience," said Chief Accountability Officer Dr. Michael Maher.

Of crimes that were reported, 62% were for possession of a controlled substance, 16.3% for possession of a weapon, 12.7% for assault on school personnel, 4.8% for possession of an alcoholic beverage, and 1.5% for combined violent threats. In total, violent crimes made up 2.6% of reported acts.

"While every incident matters, data shows severe violence is rare, and the most common challenges schools are managing are behavioral and substance-related, not widespread physical harm. Any policy, procedure or programmatic recommendation we make should be proportional to that evidence," Maher said.

The rate of short-term suspensions fell by 10.6% year-over-year. In total, 8% of students received one or more suspensions, with nearly 73% of suspensions for 1 to 3 days in length.

As for in-school suspensions, the rate decreased by 10.8% year-over-year, with 80.5% of schools reporting figures below the state rate.

While expulsions slightly increased (34 vs. 30), the rate of long-term suspensions decreased.

"Students and educators deserve safe places to teach, learn and grow. While there is still work to be done to addressinstances 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," said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Maurice "Mo" Green. "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."

Overall, dropouts decreased by 1.2% year-over-year, with high school students most affected. The top three reasons cited for dropouts are attendance, unknown, and moved/school status unknown.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction issued three recommendations moving forward: