NYC school weapons recoveries have skyrocketed by 80 percent this academic year

By 

Selim Algar

MORE ON:DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

• NYC schools need more opportunity — not race-based ‘redistribution’

• NYC shelled out millions on monitors overseeing failing agencies 

• Woke-up call: Parents put virtue-signaling school board members on notice

• NYC families leaving some of city’s top school districts at alarming rate

It’s an arms race inside the nation’s largest school system.

Student weapons busts have skyrocketed by 80 percentcompared to pre-pandemic levels, according to startling new NYPD data.

From guns and knives to tasers and pepper spray, city kids are are packing a lot more than books this year.

A Bedford-Stuyvesant teacher told The Post that students she would never have suspected of carrying weapons are now doing so out of fear.

“Tasers and pepper spray are becoming about as common as pencils and erasers,” she said. “You have kids looking for trouble, and then you have those who want to protect themselves.”

A Queens principal said the surge is a reflection of the city as a whole. “If it’s more dangerous out on the street then this is what you are going to see,” he said. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone.”

A total of 3,315 weapons were recovered in Department of Education schools from July 1 to February 20 of this academic year. Over that same stretch in the last pre-pandemic year in 2019-2020, the figure was 1,845 — an increase of 80 percent, according to the NYPD.