WORCESTER—Worcester Public Schools administrators are set to brief the school committee this week on a closer look at student discipline data, after a recent release showed a rise in incidents coded as staff assaults over the past two school years.
According to a new analysis shared by the WPS, the overwhelming majority of those incidents occurred in elementary schools, often involving the same students and largely concentrated in the earliest grades.
Districtwide, fewer than half of one percent of students were involved. In the 2024–25 school year, 98 out of 24,778 students were connected to an incident coded as a staff assault, the district said.
The report, which will be presented at the committee’s Thursday, Dec. 18 meeting, shows that 83% of the 158 staff assault incidents reported in 2024–25 occurred in elementary schools, defined as kindergarten through grade 6. By comparison, 6% occurred in middle schools and 6% in high schools. The remaining incidents fell outside those categories.
Within elementary schools, the concentration was even sharper. Seventy percent of all staff assault incidents — 111 of the 158 — occurred in kindergarten through third grade.
The analysis also found that many of the incidents at the K–3 level involved repeat students. In kindergarten, 26 reported incidents were committed by 10 students. In first grade, 35 incidents involved 14 students; in second grade, 35 incidents involved 17 students; and in third grade, 15 incidents involved seven students.
At the secondary level, Worcester Public Schools reported a year-over-year decrease in incidents coded as staff assaults.
Superintendent Brian E. Allen said the findings point to specific challenges at the elementary level while also pushing back against broader concerns about school safety.
“Above all, our priority is to do everything we can to make sure all staff and students are safe in school,” Allen said in the press release. “There are issues we are addressing at the elementary level, for both students and staff, to ensure everyone gets the necessary support, programming and training. At the same time, I want to dispel any notion that our schools are unsafe.”
The upcoming presentation also includes suspension data. Worcester Public Schools reported that 96% of students were not subject to disciplinary action in the 2023–24 school year. Out-of-school suspensions were issued to 2.9% of students, a rate the district said is comparable to Boston at 3.3% and Springfield at 5.3%, and slightly higher than the statewide average of 2.4%.
For the 2024–25 school year, the most common reasons for out-of-school suspensions districtwide were fighting, physical assault of another student, repeated school violations, disruption of school, and verbal assault of an employee.
The district also noted that changes to state law in 2022 limited the use of long-term suspensions, requiring schools to consider other tiered consequences first, except in cases involving weapons, controlled substances, or assaults on staff.
Worcester Public Schools said it anticipated inconsistencies in how incidents were reported following the rollout of a new student information system in the 2023–24 school year. As a result, the district plans to develop an instructional guide and provide additional staff training on how incidents are coded.
Other potential next steps include restoring certain specialized programs for students with high needs, expanding professional development for staff, broadening the scope of early childhood support teams, and exploring additional staffing supports.
The new analysis builds on discipline data released last month at the request of the school committee, which showed declines in several categories of weapons possession and physical assaults between students, alongside increases in areas such as fighting, bullying or harassment, marijuana possession or use, and verbal assaults on employees.
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