APS releases bullying numbers

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The Albuquerque public schools have been trying for a couple years now to get a better handle on bullying. KRQE News 13 has been trying to get APS to give us specifics about how widespread it is.

News 13 a formal request and the numbers the district just gave us may surprise you.

“One kid is one kid too many,” Kris Muerer, with APS, said.

APS has a fight of its own on its hands. Trying to figure out just how many of its almost 90-thousand students are being bullied and how to stop it. News 13 asked the district to give details from last school year; problem is the district lumped bullying reports and physical fights in the same category last year. The district had 1337 reports filed.

“They are not actually the number of students they are the number of incidents that occurred and it could be more than one student involved in an incident,” said Muerer.

932 students were suspended for their part in those incidents.

But keep in mind, schools don't tell the district about students being teased or taunted unless it's an ongoing thing.

“We don’t report all classroom behavior things because if we did that's all we would be doing reporting all day long,” said Muerer.

APS also says there will always be bullying victims that don't come forward, “If you don't know about it you can't do anything about it.”

The district has a clear definition for bullying, “Conflict is a one time incident, bullying is something that happens over time and continues to happen.”

In order to figure out just how big of a problem they are really dealing with the district is changing the way schools report bullying this year. Those reports will now longer be lumped in with assaults. They are also tracking the cases closer.

“What the number doesn't tell you is what happened how was it reacted to what happened with it, those kind of things, that's even the deeper story that we want to know,” said Muerer.

APS is also trying to get all 140 schools on the same page and with the same training to deal with bullying. The district says that probably won't happen until next school year.

The district suspects less than half of those 13-hundred reports filed last school year were cases of actual bullying. If that's true, that would amount to about five cases of bullying per school last year.