At least 269 K-12 educators arrested for child sex crimes in 2022 so far

Almost 270 public school employees were arrested on child sex-related crimes in the U.S. in the first nine months of the year, according to a new analysis.

At least 269 public educators were arrested from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, according to an analysis by Fox News. This works out to about one arrest a day, wrote reporter Jessica Chasmer.

“The 269 educators included four principals, two assistant principals, 226 teachers, 20 teacher's aides and 17 substitute teachers,” said Chasmer.

“At least 199 of the arrests, or 74%, involved alleged crimes against students,” she added.

The analysis compiled local news stories in the period that featured arrests of K-12 principals, assistant principals, teachers, substitute teachers and teachers’ aides on child-sex related crimes.

With an estimated 3.2 million public school teachers in the country, the arrests compiled by Fox News make up only 0.009%.

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and education advocate, said that the arrests may be the “tip of the iceberg.”

"The number of teachers arrested for child sex abuse is just the tip of the iceberg — much as it was for the Catholic Church prior to widespread exposure and investigation in the early 2000s," Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "The best available academic research, published by the Department of Education, suggests that nearly 10% of public school students suffer from physical abuse between kindergarten and twelfth grade."

Fox News noted that any arrest that were not publicized were not counted, meaning the true number could be higher.

The vast majority of arrests were of men, who made up over 80% of incidents considered in the report.