The 2025 DC Survey About Your School (DC SAYS), conducted by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), provides a comprehensive look at school climate[1] across the District of Columbia. For the first time, the survey gathered perspectives from students (grades 3–12 and adult learners), school-based staff, and families to better understand the experiences and perceptions that shape D.C.’s learning environments.
The survey was conducted in February and March of 2025. Participation varied across different groups: 76 percent of eligible students (48,745 participants) and 55 percent of school staff (10,036 participants) responded. Family participation reached 14,590 responses, which was below the 20 percent public-reporting threshold, but still offered valuable insights at the school level. Supportive Relationships, which asked about the feelings of support from teachers, family members, and friends, was one bright spot from the student survey with 88 percent responding favorably.
Comparing Perceptions of Safety
In this publication we’re digging a little deeper into the perceptions of safety for staff, students and family across two areas:
- School Safety, which asks how often students, parents, or family/caregivers worry about violence, bullying, or unfair treatment in school; and
- Safety While Traveling, which captures how frequently the respondents worry about safety on the way to and from school.
As background, for OSSE’s calculations of each metric score, responses were collected on a five-point Likert scale, with the top two categories counted as “favorable.” Each topic includes 5–7 questions, and the topic-level score is determined by dividing the number of favorable responses (scores of 4 or 5) by the total number of responses within that topic. Because of the lower response rate from families, state-level metric scores were not published, so the D.C. Policy Center averaged available school responses to estimate an overall score. Similarly, for the student survey analysis, the D.C. Policy Center averaged the metric scores across the two grade bands (Grade 3-5 and Grade 6-12) as reported by OSSE to estimate one overall student score.
A comparison of these metrics across students, staff, and families reveals clear differences in perceptions of safety. As shown in the bar chart, families consistently reported the highest sense of safety, followed by staff, while students expressed lower levels of perceived safety, both in school and during travel. This pattern suggests that while adults may view schools as relatively safe, students, those directly navigating hallways and neighborhoods, have a slightly different experience.
To better understand what might drive these perceptions, we examined whether the proportion of students designated as “at-risk”[2] was related to safety ratings. The scatterplot below visualizes this relationship between School safety (y-axis) and Safety while traveling (x-axis), with each point representing a school.
The blue color gradient indicates the percentage of at-risk students at each school—lighter blues correspond to lower percentages, while darker shades represent higher concentrations of at-risk students. A trendline demonstrates a clear positive correlation: schools where students feel safer while traveling also tend to report higher levels of safety within the school itself.
However, color variation adds another layer to the story. Schools with higher percentages of at-risk students (the darker points) tend to cluster toward the lower and middle sections of both axes, indicating lower overall safety perceptions. Conversely, schools with fewer at-risk students (lighter points) more often appear in the upper-right quadrant, reflecting stronger feelings of safety both in transit and in school environments.
OSSE also collects and reports student attendance data for all public schools in D.C., including chronic absenteeism and truancy, through annual and mid-year reports. We looked at the mid-year attendance brief[3], reporting data as of February 2025, to explore how patterns of chronic absenteeism align with perceptions of safety.
Similar to the trend observed among schools with higher proportions of at-risk students, we found that schools with lower perceptions of safety, both in transit and on campus, also tend to have higher rates of chronic absenteeism. The darker blue points indicate that as feelings of safety increase, chronic absenteeism generally decreases across schools.
This pattern highlights a broader equity issue: students who face greater socioeconomic challenges are also more likely to perceive their environments as less safe. While the correlation between travel and school safety is strong across all schools, the disparities in color intensity show that at-risk populations may face additional environmental and social factors influencing their sense of security.
Addressing these differences will require continued collaboration between schools, families, and community partners, particularly in neighborhoods where travel routes and school climates pose heightened safety concerns.
The DC SAYS data underscores both encouraging connections and persistent challenges. The alignment between in-school and travel safety suggests that broader environmental factors such as neighborhood safety, transportation access, and community trust play a crucial role in shaping how students experience school. The data also make clear that equity remains central to improving school climate, ensuring that all students, regardless of circumstance, can feel safe not just in their classrooms but on every step of their journey to and from school.
For more information and data on OSSE’s DC SAYS Survey, please visit https://osse.dc.gov/schoolclimatesurveys.
[1] OSSE defines school climate as “a product of school culture which forms the experience of students, parents, and educators in the school community. Together, OSSE believes that school climate and culture can create positive, welcoming, and inclusive environments where all students are prepared to succeed in school and in life.”
[2] A student group, which includes any student for whom one or more of the following occurs during the year1 : • Receives Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits • Experiences homelessness • Is a ward of the state (CFSA)
[3] The mid-year attendance report can be accessed here: https://osse.dc.gov/page/2024-25-school-year-attendance-reporting