The district's data, reported yesterday by the Philadelphia Daily News, show a 1.2 percent decline in assaults on teachers through the end of February.
But some educators say violence in city schools is worse than the numbers indicate. Despite recent efforts to crack down on district administrators who fail to report serious incidents, as is required by state and federal law, critics say teachers and other staffers are still reluctant to report attacks.
"The numbers are flawed because teachers are afraid to tell what's going on," said Mimi Shapiro, a veteran teacher who left her position at the Elkin Elementary School in Kensington in April 2006.
Now cochair of a fledgling local chapter of the National Association for Prevention of Teacher Abuse, Shapiro said her group had attracted teachers who said they were punished by administrators for reporting abuse, as well as educators who were fearful of reprisals.
"That feeling should not exist, but it is real," Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said yesterday. "The other side of the coin is it's a Catch-22."
He said that when principals report serious incidents, they are warned by superiors that their schools are on the way to landing on the list of "persistently dangerous schools" under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Jordan said: "Principals are getting mixed messages as well."
James B. Golden, the district's chief safety executive, said the district encouraged educators who were victims and were fearful of reprisals to report attacks directly to the district's violence hotline.
"We have worked hard over the last year and a half to mitigate that kind of concern among teachers and staff," Golden said yesterday.
