By Shelby Stewart-Soldan

Special to the Leader

During the regular Tuesday night meeting, superintendent Dr. Vickie Markavitch presented three reports to the Oxford Board of Education.

The first report was on suicide risk assessments, followed by threat assessments and bullying for each building in the district.

“We have been accumulating data over the course of the year on suicide assessments, threat assessments, and bullying. We have pulled that annual data together,” said Markavitch. “If you recall, we had a big switchover around suicide assessments, you did a new policy in I think February-ish, and in March-ish we redid the administrative guideline, we put a new, reinforced protocol in place. So this is where we have sat during the course of the year in terms of our numbers.”

According to the suicide risk assessment, district wide, there were 117 suicide risk assessments conducted over the 2022-2023 school year. Of that 117, 65 were deemed low risk, 23 were deemed moderate risk, and 11 were high risk. The other 18 were no risk level indicated, which will not be a category moving forward.

“That mostly occurred in the beginning half of the year before we had Navigate360 operating,” said Markavitch. “And the fix there is to operate through Navigate360 now. That should not appear again because there should be a required level that gets reported into low, moderate or high risk.”

Per building, Clear Lake Elementary has two assessments that were low risk, Daniel Axford Elementary had one assessment that was low risk, Lakeville Elementary had six assessments that were low risk, Leonard Elementary had one assessment that was low-risk, and Oxford Elementary School had one assessment that was low risk and two assessments that were moderate risk.

At the middle school, there were 27 assessments deemed low risk and eight deemed moderate risk. At the high school, there were 27 deemed low risk, 13 deemed moderate risk, 11 deemed high risk and 18 that had no level indicated.

The suicide risk assessment included questions about dangerous instrumentalities to make sure at-risk students don’t have immediate access or future access to what would be considered weapons in a suicide situation.

“We use instrumentalities in this case because in a suicide situation, the instrument they might be choosing to try to harm themselves could be over-the-counter drugs you get at any Walgreens, it could be using food and their own eating disorder, it could be a lot of different things that aren’t typically considered weapons, as you would consider the word when we’re doing threat assessments,” said Markavitch. “We had 36 percent overall inquiring about these dangerous instrumentalities, but from February on, after we did the policy and protocol, that went up to 57 percent.”

She also said that staff early in the year and prior to the policy change were not considering some things as ‘dangerous instrumentalities’ but have been and will continue to be trained going forward.

“If it’s going to be used to cause bodily harm, you need to consider that a weapon,” she said. “Some of this is under-reporting. Some of it is also that in the Navigate360, sometimes checking a box is required. Dangerous instrumentalities was not, but it has been fixed. We’re looking at getting that improved.”

In terms of threat assessments, there were also 117 done this past school year.

“According to the guidepost report, that’s 300 percent more than a typical school,” said Markavitch.

The threat assessment was broken down into Imminent priority, high priority, moderate priority, minimal priority and no priority indicated.

“With the no priority indicated, after the assessment, there was no threat perceived,” said Markavitch.

There were no threat assessments done that were high priority or imminent priority across the district.

For moderate priority threat assessments, there was one at Daniel Axford Elementary, three at Oxford Middle School, and three at Oxford High School.

Minimal priority threat assessments were the largest category, with six at Clear Lake Elementary, 14 at Daniel Axford Elementary, 10 at Lakeville Elementary, seven at Leonard Elementary, five at Oxford Elementary, 27 at Oxford Middle School, five at Oxford virtual academy and 28 at Oxford High School.

The remaining eight cases were all classified under no priority indicated, which will not be available going forward with Navigate360.

“98 percent were inquiring about access to weapons,” said Markavitch. “That means on the form, the boxes were checked. On the secondary level, they are also automatically wanded. So there’s the physical check as well as the verbal.”

The district began taking anonymous reports of bullying in the middle and high school this year as well, which was also presented to the board.

Total, there were 24 anonymous reports of bulling with 16 at the middle school, seven at the high school, and one at Oxford Virtual Academy. There were also a total of 16 investigations into bullying, two in Lakeville Elementary, 12 at Oxford Middle School, one at Oxford High School and one at Oxford Virtual Academy. Disciplinary action was also taken for bullying, one at Clear Lake Elementary, five at Oxford Middle School, seven at Oxford High School and three at Oxford Virtual academy.

“There are a lot of investigations, and some of them do not lead to discipline, or does not lead to a bullying classification because it did not meet the definition of bullying, which is frequent, over time, and with an imbalance of power,” said Markavitch. “When we surveyed the students, the two schools that had any significant number at all was the middle school and the high schools, which is why our approach has been very targeted rather than a blanket across the whole district.”

Not all of the reports of bullying were anonymous.

“The interesting thing about the trend is from April, May and June, those numbers on the reports, as well as on the investigations, and as well as on the incidences of bullying went down significantly,” said Markavitch. “The last couple months of school, no instances were reported.”

The reports are available on the agenda for the July 11 meeting on the Oxford Schools website.