Havoc in homeroom
School crime study
New York City schools had the most “violent and disruptive incidents” in the state last year — accounting for more than half, with incidents including assaults, sexual offenses and bomb threats, a new report reveals.
The data released Tuesday by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli shows 17,991 incidents out of 32,084 statewide came from Big Apple public and charter schools — 56 percent of the state’s total.
That’s out of 1,817 city schools, which serve 1.1 million pupils — 40 percent of the state’s 2.7 million students.
“In order to learn effectively, students need to feel safe. Sadly, many students and faculty are confronted with violent and disruptive activity on a regular basis,” DiNapoli said.
The shocking data come a day after The Post revealed more than 1,600 knives were confiscated in city schools last year, the highest figure in at least five years and up drastically from the 873 blades seized in 2015.
DiNapoli’s study shows New York City schools logged the the highest overall incident rates last year — coming in at 16.9 incidents per 1,000 pupils, followed by the Capital District showing 12 occurrences per 1,000 kids.
Schools break down disturbances into categories including homicides, assaults, weapons possessions, sexual offenses and bomb threats.
The city led the state in sexual offenses — recording 3.3 per 1,000 students. That’s three times higher than the second highest region, the Mohawk Valley, with 1.1 per 1,000.
The city also had a high assault rate, at 8.3 assaults per 1,000 students.
However, the five boroughs did have lowest alcohol and drug-related incidents in the state, cataloging 1.9 reports per 1,000 pupils.
One fourth of all public and charter schools, about 1,210 institutions, across the state claimed they experienced not one single incident.
But only 8.3 percent of city schools reported zero incidents — compared to 47.2 percent on Long Island.
Parents of kids in city schools have new cause to worry: Seizures of knives from students soared 92 percent since Mayor de Blasio’s first year in office. An analysis of NYPD data by The Post’s Selim Algar found cops confiscated nearly 1,700 knives during the 2018-19 school year. The number of all kinds of weapons, meanwhile, topped 2,700, up 60 percent since 2014-15.
Algar’s findings echo previous reports of rising numbers of weapons in city schools. The logical explanation: Kids feel more frightened and believe they need a weapon in school for self-defense.
Department of Education spokesman Will Mantell pooh-poohed that idea. Instead, he attributes the spike to unannounced metaldetector scanning and kids feeling freer to report on their peers.
That might account for some of the rise, but it surely doesn’t explain why students feel the need to bring the weapons to school in the first place.
Mantell claims “the schools are safe and getting safer,” but if that were true, then at some point wouldn’t you expect the number of weapons found to drop, not climb?
School-safety-agents union chief Greg Floyd seems more on target: He blames a rise in bullying among students, after Team de Blasio relaxed school-discipline policies. Troublemakers no longer fear swift, meaningful punishment for misbehavior.
We’ve long warned that de Blasio’s relaxed discipline could lead to more disorder in the classroom, and reports on “school climate” have reflected that, as does the 92 percent spike in knives.
Alas, for de Blasio, “restorative justice” (read: mere slaps on the wrist) is all that’s needed; harsher measures — suspensions, for instance — are too rough on kids.
In 2017, the city suffered its first school slaying in 25 years, when a Bronx teen, who felt bullied, stabbed a classmate. Pray it doesn’t take another killing for de Blasio & Co. to see the flaws in their logic.