SJSD aims to prevent hate crimes amid national rise in schools
By Jenna Wilson
A federal report shows that hate crimes across schools in the U.S. are increasing, but St. Joseph School District officials emphasize student safety remains a priority, and these types of crimes won’t be taken lightly should they arise.
The U.S. Department of Justice defines a hate crime as a “crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.”
Data from 2018 through 2022 shows that the number of hate crimes at schools more than doubled from 500 in 2020 to more than 1,300 in 2022.
Of all the hate crimes in the U.S. during this five-year time frame, grade-school and college campuses were the third-most common site of reported hate crimes.
Shannon Nolte, director of nonacademic services with the St. Joseph School District, said reported hate crimes aren’t something they come across often, which hopefully points to the effectiveness of anti-bullying efforts.
“There’s no special emphasis that we’ve seen or any data that we’ve seen that would indicate this is a concentrated issue,” Nolte said. “I’m not going to say that means things don’t get said, as our counselors deal with that on a daily basis, but seeing that we haven’t seen a rise or had any indicators of this particular issue shows that our Tier 1 instruction is being properly implemented in our classrooms.”
School resource officer Sgt. Todd Derr said while reports of hate crimes don’t appear to be a key issue in St. Joseph schools as of recent, these are crimes that are monitored closely and it’s important that students who are victims of the crime speak up so action can be taken.
“If we receive reports of a serious crime happening on school grounds, it will be submitted to the prosecuting office to handle,” Derr said. “Hate crimes are no exception. If it’s not reported, we can’t address it, so kids need to go to their SRO or to school administrators and let them know that they feel like they’re the victim of some type of hate crime, bullying or bias so that we can address it both as a police department and as a school district.”
As language barriers and diverse backgrounds continue to increase in classrooms, school leaders say they’re focusing more on equity, which includes finding ways to provide each student with the resources they need to be successful in a classroom among others.
