Did Las Vegas schools experience a spike in violence during the 2021-22 school year?
School violence is an ongoing issue in the Clark County School District, but climbed to even higher levels last year.
During the 2021-22 school year, around 8,300 calls were made from Clark County schools to police dispatch reporting incidents of violence — an increase of about 1,300 calls compared to the 2018-19 school year.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Clark County schools shifted to remote learning for a year and three months — longer than many districts. The rise in violence followed the return to in-person learning in the fall of 2021.
Pandemic ills such as social isolation and mass layoffs hit Las Vegas particularly hard due to its entertainment-centric economy. The mental-health toll this has taken on students has largely gone unaddressed by Nevada’s ill-equipped mental health care system, which ranks last in the nation for youth.