Missouri finishes last in U.S. School Safety rankings for second consecutive year
Mitchell Kaminski
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
With students returning to classrooms this month, Missouri once again ranked last in the nation for public school safety.
A 2025 Wallethub ranking placed the Show-Me-State as 51st in the country for public school safety for the second consecutive year. This comes despite Missouri finishing 33rd in overall school quality.
The school safety rankings were determined by a series of metrics that included:
Number of high school students injured or threatened on school property
Number of students not attending school due to safety concerns
Armed high school students
High school students involved in a fight on school property
Laws regulating school resource officers
Bullying incidents
Youth incarceration rates
School saftey plan requirements
Records obtained by ABC 17 News show that Courage2Report, a confidential system for reporting school violence, received 927 tips between January 1 and July 3 of this year.
Of those, 106 involved bullying or repeated harassment, 94 were threats to kill, 65 were school shooting threats, 58 were reports of physical assault, and 33 involved alcohol or drugs.
Missouri has taken steps to try an address the issue in recent years.
In May of 2023, then-Gov. Mike Parson also announced a $3 million investment over three years for a new school safety app from Raptor Technologies. Over 140 schools have signed up for the program, which expedites and streamlines an emergency response by allowing teachers and other school staff to quickly initiate an alert through their mobile device or computer. Districts can also manage safety drills through the software.
In March, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 495, which focused on public safety and included the creation of a school safety committee within the Department of Public Safety.
The committee will evaluate safety concerns, develop guidelines, and create plans to prevent gun violence in schools. It will include members from the Department of Public Safety, the Missouri Sheriffs’ Association, the Missouri Municipal League, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Missouri School Boards’ Association’s Center for Education Safety.
The Missouri School Board Association’s Center for Education Safety bills itself as the only statewide school safety organization in Missouri. It partners with the Missouri Office of Homeland Security to help enhance emergency planning and safety in both public and private schools.
While the bill emphasizes preventing school gun violence, the committee will also address other safety areas, including student mental health, de-escalation training, and emergency procedures for severe weather.
WalletHub contributed some of the states’ rankings to their low spending. Missouri ranked 38th in the country in spending per student. According to U.S Public Education Spending statistics, Missouri spends $14,703 per K-12 student, which makes up 3.38% of the state’s taxpayer income.
In May, Kehoe established a 16-member Missouri School Funding Modernization Task Force to begin the process of modernizing the state’s K-12 foundation formula, which has drawn criticism from lawmakers, educators, and charter advocates alike for being outdated and inequitable.
Missouri’s school funding formula was last significantly updated in 2005, following earlier versions established in the mid-1970s and revised in the early 1990s. A final report is due to the governor by Dec. 1, 2026.