The number of laptop computers, pocketbooks, iPods, and other property being stolen in the city’s public schools is on the rise.
Mayor Bloomberg’s staff attributed a 21% spike in “major felony crimes” in schools in the first two months of this school year largely to those thefts.

“There are more laptops, there are more Blackberries, there are more cell phones, and the smaller they are, the more mobile they are, the more they’re vulnerable to theft,” Mr. Bloomberg’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said.

Mr. Feinblatt also attributed part of the spike to the addition of five days in the first two months of the school year and said the increase in thefts, spread over a large system, amounted to neither a rash, an outbreak, or an epidemic.

The new crime numbers are included in the mayor’s preliminary management report, a compendium of thousands of city statistics ranging from the parking tickets issued to cases of syphilis.

Noticeably absent from the report was the latest high school graduation rate, a number that often draws attention and controversy. Last year, the city revised that rate upward months after the management report was released, disclosing a graduation rate of 58.2% rather than the 52.3% originally reported. The state education department, using different methods, reports a lower rate for New York City’s schools.

A spokesman for the city’s Department of Education, David Cantor said yesterday that the agency was “being completely thorough and rigorous so that the numbers can stand up to the closest scrutiny” this year.

The latest report, which covers July through October, the first four months of this fiscal year, found an increase in the number of families in the city’s homeless shelter system. It found including faster police response times (the department shaved 24 seconds off its average), cleaner streets, lower overall street crime, and an increase in childhood immunizations.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has relished in the use of statistics to determine what city programs are working and where the whip needs to be cracked to extract greater improvements, said in a statement that the snapshot showed the city was doing well.

“The range of performance measures captured in this report reflect city government’s effort to be more efficient and more responsible to the needs of citizens,” he said.

In the schools, Mr. Feinblatt said the city is taking steps to decrease the major felonies, including encasing laptops in brightly colored shrink wrap with the DOE logo to make stolen goods easier to spot and harder to sell illegally.

Overall, the city logged 348 major felonies in school in the first two months of this year compared to 287 at the start of last year. Many of the crimes took place on weekends and after-hours. Cell phones were listed among the items that have been stolen, notwithstanding Mr. Bloomberg’s ban on students bringing them to school. Violent crimes were up 2% on the whole, but down on a per-day basis.

The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, said she saw the jump in school crime coming. In September, the United Federation of Teachers launched a new reporting system for teachers who are victims or witnesses of crime in school. The union recorded 704 assaults, up from 321 the year before, 117 incidents of larceny, up from 78, and 46 sexual offenses, up from 24.

“This increase in incidents, as reported to us, is dramatic,” she said, adding that it is unclear if the rise in the union’s crime numbers is a result of increased reporting or a reflection of more incidents.

The number of homeless families entering the shelter system for the first time increased by 24%, while the number of single homeless citizens dropped by 6%. A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeless Services, Tanya Valle-Batista, said the agency “can only speculate” on why the number of families has increased, but noted the agency is currently expanding its homelessness prevention program.

Council Member Bill de Blasio lauded the mayor’s goal of decreasing the homeless population by two-thirds by the end of 2009, but said the new numbers are “evidence the goal is becoming increasingly hard to reach.”

The city also logged a 7% increase in calls to 311, the municipal hotline Mr. Bloomberg created. The call center received its 40 millionth call on the evening of October 18.

Calls about child abuse were up 27% following the high-profile death of Nixzmary Brown, and 89.4% of those who called 311 with legal questions asked about suing the city.