More than half of city students report school bullying: report

September 3, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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CITYWIDE — MORE THAN HALF of city public middle and high schoolers reported witnessing regular bullying among their peers in last year’s annual student and teacher satisfaction questionnaire, reports ChalkBeat, with 43% also reporting harassment online. The numbers are the highest recorded since the survey began in 2019. In particular, 40% of respondents reported that peers were bullied over their ethnic or religious backgrounds, up from 30% in 2019, while just 77% answered in the affirmative to a question about whether students treated classmates from other cultures equally, down from 91% three years ago. Black girls were the group most likely to report being targeted in the survey of over 350,000 NYC kids. Recent migrants have also reported bullying, as the city has struggled to accommodate the influx of asylum-seekers in recent years. Students from Jewish, Muslim and Middle Eastern backgrounds have experienced antisemitism and Islamophobia in the wake of the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October, leading schools Chancellor David Banks to testify before Congress in May on the city’s efforts to combat hate.

The city Department of Education has said that it is currently working out the details of a plan to ban cell phones from schools citywide, in an effort to cut classroom distractions and tackle social media addiction and cyberbullying. While Banks had initially indicated that the ban could begin this month, insiders are now floating a possible February start date.

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