Bullying rises in schools: survey

MORE CITY students experienced bullying at their schools this year compared to last year, a Daily News analysis of data shows.

Responses by students to four bullying-related questions on the public schools’ 2017 school survey reveal that more kids are encountering the dangerous phenomenon in their schools.

This year, 81% of 433,715 kids in grades 6-12 who responded to the Education Department’s annual NYC School Survey reported that students harass, bully and intimidate their peers.

That’s a jump from the 71% of 434,693 students who filled out the surveys in 2016.

Critics of the city’s handling of school safety said the figures show bullying is on the rise and public school students are at risk.

“Under Mayor de Blasio’s leadership, our schools continue to get less and less safe,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, CEO of the procharter school lobbying group Families for Excellent Schools.

“The mayor must face facts, and act immediately to keep children safe from violence and bullying,” he added.

The city conducts its annual school survey to gather feedback from students, teachers and parents. Education Department officials published the 2017 survey results online on Aug. 8.

Students’ responses to multiple-choice questions on the survey showed increased harassment in public schools, although there were slight changes to the questions from 2016 to 2017.

Education Department spokesman Will Mantell said the city made the changes to more accurately capture schools’ quality, but argued the changes made it impossible to compare results.

“It’s simply not valid to compare multiple-choice survey questions that have different choices,” he said.

“Over the 11 years of the school survey, on questions that have remained the same, the percentage of students feeling safe in school hallways and teachers feeling that order and discipline are maintained have both increased,” Mantell noted.

In 2016, 51% of students said kid bullied each other at school “because of their race or ethnicity.”

On a similar question in 2017, 65% of students said kids bullied each other at school over “race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or citizenship/immigration status.”

Likewise, in 2016, 55% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like national origin, citizenship/immigration status, religion, disability, or weight.”

On a similar question in 2017, 73% of students said kids bullied each other at school because of differences “like disability, or weight.”

And in 2016, 46% of students said that kids at their school “harass, bully, or intimidate each other because of their gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”

That question was unchanged for 2016, when 59% of students reported gender-based bullying at their schools.