Study links school redistricting to higher rates of firearm violence in urban communities
In areas that had some type of school redistricting, the firearm incident rate increased almost 11% compared with areas that had no school redistricting
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ADJUSTMENTS IN SCHOOL BOUNDARIES AND OTHER FORMS OF SCHOOL REDISTRICTING HAVE BEEN LINKED TO SPIKES IN SHOOTING-RELATED INJURIES IN URBAN AREAS, ACCORDING TO NEW STUDY RESULTS BEING PRESENTED AT THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS (ACS) CLINICAL CONGRESS 2023.
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Key takeaways
- This is the first study to examine the impact of school redistricting on firearm violence in urban communities, examining data from 63,000 urban census tracts.
- Any school redistricting event was associated with a 10.6% higher firearm incidence rate compared with communities that had no redistricting, and school boundary adjustments were associated with a 21.3% increase.
- In areas that had a school redistricting event, firearm violence increased 14% in the year the redistricting occurred over the previous year.
BOSTON (October 20, 2023): Adjustments in school boundaries and other forms of school redistricting have been linked to spikes in shooting-related injuries in urban areas, according to new study results being presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2023.
Sarabeth Spitzer, MD, MPH, a general surgery resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, presented the study results looking at school redistricting data, firearm injury incident data, and community-level sociodemographic data for 63,000 urban census tracts on a year-to-year basis from 2014 through the 2019-2020 school year. The study used data from the National Center for Education Statistics, Gun Violence Archive, and the American Community Survey.
Key findings
- Among the studied census tracts, 5,665, or 1.5% of all tracts, had some type of school redistricting event.
- After adjusting for community characteristics, such as sociodemographic data, any school redistricting was associated with a 10.6% higher firearm incidence rate compared to communities that did not redistrict schools.
- School boundary adjustments specifically were associated with a 21.3% increase in firearm injury incidence rate.
Observations on study results
While the evidence linking social disruptions and community violence has been well vetted, this is the first study looking at school redistricting specifically, Dr. Spitzer said. Along with the existing evidence surrounding social disruptions, anecdotal evidence from teachers reporting that they noticed a spike in violence in the process of school redistricting provided rationale for the study, she said.
Dr. Spitzer explained how the study defined school redistricting: “School redistricting, at its most basic level, is when there are changes to where kids go to school based on their home address,” she said. “This happens for various reasons, often due to resource distribution in a community.”
Different types of redistricting exist, which the study doesn’t specify, but they include combining or rearranging school districts and changing boundaries.
“Only a few kids are affected, but the resulting impact is that there is social destabilization in some way because, as everyone who has attended middle school and high school knows, you get to know the community that you’re a part of and there are social hierarchies that exist and a known quantity of the people in your area,” she said. “When you have this shuffling of school districts, it means that there are new social interactions and new hierarchies that need to be formed. And you have a disruption as a result of that.”
These disruptions not only impact children, but parents, as well, who may have to change work routines, and neighbors that families might rely on to watch out for their children, she said.
The study compared firearm incidents in census tracts for the year a school redistricting event occurred compared with the prior year. “We saw that in the year with a redistricting event, there was a 14% increase in firearm violence compared to the year prior,” Dr. Spitzer said.
This means policymakers could target resources, such as sending in counselors and expanding training in the ACS STOP THE BLEED® program, to address firearm violence in areas that undergo school redistricting, she added. The ACS STOP THE BLEED® program provides training to anyone to save a life in a bleeding emergency. It has trained more than 3 million people. The ACS operates the program under a license granted by the Department of Defense.
Dr. Spitzer acknowledged the study data predate the COVID-19 pandemic. “We would love to have more recent data, but, if anything, what we saw in the pandemic was a huge spike in firearm violence,” she said. “We think that part of that is actually due to social destabilization.” Future research, hopefully, would draw on more recent data to investigate the relationship between school redistricting and firearm violence post-pandemic, she said.
Study coauthors are Tanujit Dey, PhD; Ali Salim, MD, FACS; and Molly P. Jarman, PhD; of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Citation: Spitzer S, et al. School Redistricting’s Impact on Firearm Injury: A Study in Community Disruption, Scientific Forum, American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2023.
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About the American College of Surgeons
The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for all surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has approximately 90,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. "FACS" designates that a surgeon is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Data/statistical analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
Does suspending kids from school
Being suspended from school or sent to the office is tied to a big drop in grade point average (GPA), especially for Black and Latinx children, according to UC San Francisco researchers.
Their study, publishing Oct. 20, 2023, in JAMA Network Open, analyzed the school records of 16,849 students in grades 6 through 10 in a large urban school district in California from 2014 to 2017. Black students who had an “exclusionary school discipline” (ESD) event – being removed from a classroom or suspended – in 2014 to 2015 saw an average drop of 1.44 points in their GPA by the end of the three-year study.
Latinx students saw a drop of 1.39 points and American Indian/Alaskan Natives saw a drop of 1.33 points after three years if they were suspended or sent from class in 2014 to 2015. The average GPA decline across all students who experienced an ESD in the 2014 school year was 0.88 points after researchers controlled for race, ethnicity, maternal education, gender, age or whether the student had an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for disabilities.
Black children were 10 times more likely to experience an ESD event than white students, and Latinx students were three times more likely. The school district studied doesn’t allow expulsions, so there were none to examine.
“ESDs hurt all those who experience them, but they drastically hurt those from minoritized groups, and particularly Black and Latine communities,” said Meghan D. Morris, PhD, UCSF associate professor in epidemiology and biostatistics and senior author of the study. “These events are another way of reinforcing the systems of racism that already occur within the classroom and the school environment and the community environment more broadly.”
Because ESDs reflect embedded racism, they should be considered adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that put students at greater risk for chronic illnesses like diabetes and asthma, as well as mental illness, said Camila Cribb Fabersunne, MD, first author and UCSF assistant professor of pediatrics.
“These children are experiencing discrimination in how school discipline is applied,” said Cribb Fabersunne. “When students are subject to trauma in a place that should be a sanctuary – a place where they think they will be safe from racism and the adults will support them – it impacts them in a profound way.”
The power of the white coat
Just as pediatricians screen for attention issues and learning disabilities during health care visits, they must screen for ESDs by asking patients whether they have been sent home or expelled from school – and intervene if so, Cribb Fabersunne said.
“Pediatricians should call the school and ask the assistant principal why the disciplinary action was taken,” Cribb Fabersunne said. “They should explain that the student’s behavior may reflect difficult things going on outside of school, and that practices like restorative justice and mindfulness are more effective responses.”
Black and Latinx students are suspended at higher rates compared to white students, and receive harsher punishments for similar behaviors. Past research shows ESDs don’t prevent classroom disruptions; in fact, they are linked to more disruptions, exclusion by peers and truancy. In adulthood, children who experienced ESDs are more likely to be incarcerated. GPA, meanwhile, indicates educational attainment, which research has shown to be key to socioeconomic opportunity in adulthood, the authors wrote.
Pediatricians should encourage schools to adopt positive, non-exclusionary practices to address student behavior, such as meditation, social-emotional skills training and restorative justice, which emphasizes problem solving and cooperation to heal and prevent harm to others. In addition, pediatricians should be advocating to increase the funding and support that schools receive to provide trauma-informed socio-emotional support services.
“I don’t think pediatricians are enraged enough. If we want health equity, we need to advocate on the individual, school and local level, because these disciplinary practices are widespread and hurt our patients, and that is going to harm their health,” said Cribb Fabersunne. “The power and privilege of the white coat is real, and we should use it for good.”
Authors: In addition to Morris and Cribb Fabersunne, authors include Seung Hyun Lee, independent researcher; Danielle McBride, UCSF Department of Medicine; Ali Zahir, UCSF Department of Neurology; Angela Gallegos-Castillo, Instituto Familiar de la Raza Inc.; and Kaja C. LeWinn, UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences.
Funding: This publication was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through UCSF-CTSI grant UL1.
Disclosures: None.
About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.
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JOURNAL
JAMA Network Open
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