NEW YORK (WBNG) — A report released by the New York State Comptroller’s Office shows that bullying and drug-related incidents in New York schools are on the rise.
According to data from the New York State Education Department’s School Safety Educational Climate (SSEC) report, certain incidents are on the rise across the state, some reaching pre-pandemic highs, whereas other incidents, including serious, violent or disruptive incidents, have remained low.
“Reliable public data about school safety is critical and informs where we need to address problems and identify solutions,” said New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. “This report builds on my office’s previous work examining violent and disruptive incidents in our schools. It’s disturbing to see the rise in bullying and drug-related incidents. We need to do everything we can to make sure students and teachers feel safe and this data shows there is more to do inside and outside our schools to meet these goals.”
Reported bullying rates
According to State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, bullying is the most frequently reported incident category in the SSEC.
During the 2023-2024 school year, the report states that bullying accounted for 61.8% of all reported incidents, resulting in a rate of 12.4 incidents per 1,000 students.
Reported bullying rates in New York City dropped sharply during the pandemic, and then rose rapidly from 10.5 incidents per 1,000 students in 2019-2020 to 25.8 incidents in 2023-2024.
According to the report, rates of reported bullying in upstate schools remained consistently higher than those reported downstate.
Cyberbullying incident rates remain relatively low according to SSEC data, however many cyberbullying incidents likely go unreported due to the anonymity of certain platforms, among other reasons.
Drug-related incidents
Drug-related incidents dropped during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years, likely due to the shift from in-person to online instruction.
After returning to the classroom, rates rose higher than pre-pandemic levels, with a reported 4.2 incidents per 1,000 students in 2017-2018 to 6.5 incidents in 2023-2024.
Rates of drug-related incidents were twice as high upstate as they were in New York City during the 2023-2024 school year.
Violent and Disruptive Incidents
Serious, violent and disruptive incident rates declined gradually during the pre-pandemic years and have remained relatively low, likely related to a change in how the State Education Department defines serious incidents.
The new definition states that to be considered a serious incident:
The offender must be 10 years or olderMeet the criteria for a felony as determined by school officialsMust be reported to law enforcement
From 2017-2018 to 2023-2024:
Cases of assault declined from 4.9 incidents per 1,000 students to 0.5 incidents.
Similarly, cases of sexual assault dropped from 1.6 incidents per 1,000 students to 0.1 incidents.
Weapons possession cases also dropped from 3.1 incidents per 1,000 students to 0.9 incidents.
41% of public elementary schools and 5.9% of public secondary schools reported no serious, violent or disruptive incidents of any kind.
*It should be noted that a school reporting zero incidents through the SSEC report may still have records of individual disruptive and violent incidents that are stored locally. For example, incidents that resulted in disciplinary action would be retained, even if the incident did not meet the threshold for SSEC reporting.
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