New York school safety

New York runs 1,094 separate school districts. That fact shapes most of what you will see on this page. To rank a district, we need enough schools inside it whose records are complete enough to score, and only 53 districts in the state meet that condition. The other districts are not hidden or penalized. Most of them are small, or too few of their schools filed records we can stand behind. A district with no rank is a district we cannot say anything reliable about.

What this page can tell you

These grades come from the federal Civil Rights Data Collection for 2021-22. Of the 4,842 schools in New York, 1,547 have a published safety score. We publish a score only for schools graded A or B, because those are the records we believe. A grade of C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a true zero is ordinary — not evidence of safety, just not implausible. D and E mean schools of that size and grade level normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and this one reported almost none. Every school is measured against roughly 1,500 schools nationwide closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grades.

In New York, 650 schools land in the doubtful range, D or E. That is 13.4% of the state's schools, against 11.3% nationally. Read that as a statement about paperwork. The comparison is not adjusted for state, and differences between states in this collection are differences in reporting behavior, not differences in child safety. A doubtful grade means records we cannot verify. It does not mean a school is dangerous, and nothing here should be read that way.

Among ranked districts, Brentwood Union Free School District and Lakeland Central School District come out safer than 100% of ranked US districts. North Colonie CSD, Fairport Central School District, and Lancaster Central School District each rank safer than 99%. Fairport is the one where every school in its scored set had records complete enough to score.

Safest ranked cities in New York

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every New York city with schools

Every New York school district