By PAT NEWMAN
Staff Writer

Based on the 1998-1999 discipline report on Fayette County Schools, figures show that ninth graders have a disproportionately high rate of disorderly conduct, fighting, tobacco incidents and threats and intimidation offenses.

“Ninth grade is a transition year,” said Fred Oliver, assistant superintendent of Fayette County Schools. “A lot of these students are not listening to you and end up getting into trouble. We see a lot of this type of behavior in the ninth grade. It dissipates in the following years,” he said.

Middle schools with high rates of discipline offenses also feed into high schools with equally high rates. For instance, Fayette Middle School has a total of 396 incidents for its three grades in 1998-1999 and feeds into Fayette County High School, where discipline offenses total 1249.

J.C. Booth Middle totalled 52 offenses. Its students go on to McIntosh High School, which listed a mere 55 offenses for the year. Flat Rock Middle racked up 232 offenses for the year and it feeds into Sandy Creek High School where discipline incidents totalled 728. Starr's Mill High School draws from both Whitewater Middle School, which had 82 offenses and Rising Starr, which totalled 23 offenses for the last school year. Starr's Mill tabulated 420 offenses.

Oliver admitted that school administrators did tighten up on discipline in the aftermath of violence at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado and Heritage High School.

“We were on a higher alert and were cracking down on comments,” Oliver said. “A father called because his son was suspended after making a reference to an assistant principal. He told me his son was only kidding,” Oliver said. “But it's like going to the airport and joking aloud that you are going to hijack a plane. You are going to jail,” he noted.

Figures on elementary discipline were not immediately available, according to Oliver, but most of the offenses that occur in the middle and high schools are not going to be found at the elementary level, he said. Elementary school children can be suspended or expelled, but more common forms of discipline are detention and, in some schools, in school suspension, Oliver explained.