Officials are saying city schools are the safest they've been since record-keeping began 18 years ago, but the number of weapons confiscated from students is surging. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
The Police Department says major crime in city schools has dropped 35 percent in five years, making classrooms, cafeterias and gyms safer.
"Last year was, in fact, the safest year we've had since we've been keeping those type of statistics," said Police Commissioner William Bratton.
Bratton and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina announced the decline, complying with a city law compelling the release of school safety data four times a year. They spoke after talking to students about anger management at the Leadership and Public Service High School in lower Manhattan.
They credited the drop in violence to school policies stressing communication and conflict resolution over arrest and punishment.
"We don't mean that we waved a magic wand. We mean that we actually invested professional development for teachers and in commitment time for students in the school day."
Arrests in schools are down 10 percent so far this year compared to last year. Summons are down one-third.
Still, civil libertarians complained that black students are still beging disproportionately arrested.
"Black students account for about 25 percent of all students in New York City schools and more than half of every criminal consequence in school. And so that's everything from criminal summons to juvenile reports to children being handcuffed without being arrested," said Kesi Foster of the Urban Youth Collective.
Critics of Mayor Bill de Blasio, who represent some charter school organizations, say city schools are still way too violent.
The number of weapons confiscated in schools surged to more than 2,000 in the last school year, up almost 23 percent from the year before. Most were knives or box cutters.
"We see the increased confiscation of weapons not as a negative thing but as a positive thing," Bratton said. "We're doing a much better job of getting them before they can be utilized for an incident in the school system."
Fewer guns were seized, seven compared to nine the year before. But on the first day of school this year, a 15-year-old student was arrested for having a loaded pistol.