City schools have confiscated far more weapons from students than previously believed, The Post has found.
School officials recorded 2,485 separate instances when staff took guns, knives and other potentially deadly objects from kids in the 2014-15 school year, and 2,373 times in 2013-14, according to records The Post obtained under the Freedom of Information Law.
But the NYPD reports seizing only 1,678 weapons in the 2014-15 school year — 32 percent fewer than the Department of Education’s tally in the same period. In the previous school year, the NYPD reports seizing 1,347 weapons — or about 44 percent fewer than the DOE recorded.
“The public has no idea how many weapons are recovered from schools,” said Gregory Floyd, president of the school-safety-agents union, Teamsters Local 237. “This doesn’t fit the mayor’s narrative that schools are safe and crime is down.”
The huge discrepancy in DOE and NYPD data comes because the police have a narrower definition of deadly weapons — and because some educators simply won’t call the police when Johnny is caught with a blade in his pocket.
Each principal has discretion over whether to report confiscated weapons to police, and some are reluctant to identify students who bring in menacing objects, Floyd said.
While City Hall trumpets safer schools, principals can be rewarded or penalized based on the number of incidents in their schools.
“They don’t want their kids to get arrested,” Floyd said. “Sometimes school leaders give knives to safety officers but don’t say who they got them from.”
DOE spokeswoman Toya Holness said schools report more types of weapons to the state Education Department than those counted by the NYPD.
Besides firearms, BB guns, knives, Tasers, razor blades, box-cutters and chemicals like pepper spray, state law requires local school districts to report “any deadly or dangerous instrument.” That includes brass knuckles, hammers or other tools, sling shots, billy clubs and explosives.
The number of firearms taken from students shot up from 10 in 2013-14 to 26 in 2014-15, the DOE records show. Half of the weapons snatched from students were knives up to 4 inches or longer.
Mayor de Blasio has vowed to reduce the use of school-based metal detectors, which youth advocates say unduly criminalize kids. Floyd argues schools should add more machines.
“For a little inconvenience, you’re going to prevent tragedy,” Floyd said. Scanners detected 30 percent of weapons (703) confiscated in schools in 2013-14 and 27 percent (677) in 2014-15, according to the DOE records.
The city has stationary airport-style metal detectors in 88 school buildings that house nearly 400 schools, about a fifth of the city’s total.
Elementary schools accounted for 547 instances in which weapons were taken from kids in 2013-14, and 549 in 2014-15.
Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow HS had the most weapons seized (26) in the two-year period, followed by Susan E. Wagner HS (24) and Curtis HS (21) on Staten Island. Even the city’s most exclusive schools recovered knives, razor blades and chemical agents between 2013 and 2015, including Stuyvesant HS (six), Bronx HS of Science (five), and Brooklyn Tech (three).