Giving Compass' Take:

· During the first half of the school year, New York City schools reported over 4,200 cases of bullying across the city. Chalkbeat discusses the number of cases this year and compares them to past recordings, showing an increase in number of complaints being tracked.

· How will recording the number of bullying complaints help schools provide a better environment for their students?

· Read more about the ways reporting bullying helps protect victims.

Over 4,200 bullying complaints were reported across the city’s schools in the first half of this school year, with close to half of them substantiated after officials investigated, education department officials said Friday.

The first-of-its-kind report, now required under city law, offers a more up-to-date picture of bullying, harassment, and intimidating behavior in the nation’s largest school system — and appears to show the number of substantiated complaints are on track to increase this school year.

“The impetus for this was to put some data behind how extensive and pervasive bullying is in our school system,” said Mark Treyger, who pushed for the new reporting requirements and is the chairman of City Council’s education committee. “We keep hearing about bullying cases without any firm data to inform policymakers.”

The new round of data closely mimics numbers the city already reports to the state’s education department — though the new reports will eventually include more granular information including how long it takes schools to respond to each complaint and whether schools appropriately communicated with parents.

The city’s bullying policies have come under increased scrutiny after a student, who claimed to have been the victim of bullying, stabbed a 15-year-old classmate to death inside their Bronx school in September. A month later, officials unveiled a suite of new anti-bullying initiatives.

“Our schools are safe havens, and we’ve made significant investments to equip school communities with more tools and resources in order to address bullying head-on and provide support to students and families,” said Lois Herrera, CEO of the education department’s Office of Safety and Youth Development.

Read the full article about bullying by Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat.