KFOX Investigates School Violence

Since the story about a Bel Air High School student found beaten in a bathroom last Thursday, KFOX pulled up student discipline reports from the Texas Education Agency. The reports revealed more about fights and gang activity in the El Paso, Socorro and Ysleta school districts.

While El Paso Independent School District is the largest of the three, Ysleta ISD still had more cases of controlled substance and drugs and incidences that are punishable as felonies.

“We invested in drug-sniffing dogs, and we are getting more cases of that,” said Liza Montelongo, a board of trustee member for YISD.

Here’s a look the numbers of discipline cases the school districts for 2008-2009.

At EPISD, there were 67,643 students enrolled during that year and 29,743 cases of student discipline. Out of those numbers, 11 cases were punishable as felonies, 142 were related to gang violence, 282 cases of a controlled substance or drugs on campus and 948 cases of fighting, according to the TEA.

At Socoro ISD, there were 42,827 students enrolled with 11,529 cases of discipline. Of those numbers, 13 were punishable as a felony, 6 cases of gang violence and 308 cases of fighting.

At YISD, there were more than 47,643 students and 8,380 cases of discipline. Ysleta leads the pack with 22 cases punishable as a felony. There were also 54 cases of gang violence and 563 cases of fighting, the second highest of the three districts.

"One of the reasons I think our numbers are slightly higher than anybody else is we have a zero tolerance policy," said Montelongo. "Within the last three years, the district has invested over $2 million in security cameras."

The head of security at YISD said there are 95 cameras across the district and they are getting ready to install 32 more. It’s a part of a three-year plan to put more cameras in schools, at in the end there should be 328 cameras in place.

"One of the board's priorities is to ensure that our kids have a safe environment, learning environment," said Montelongo.