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"Safe Schools/Healthy Students"
Cicero, Illinois
| Partners: | J.S. Morton High School District Filmore Center for Human Services Berwyn & Cicero Police Departments | |
The J. Sterling Morton High School District is one of the state's largest districts, serving the Chicago border communities of Berwyn, Cicero, Lyons, McCook, and Stickney in Cook County, Illinois. This suburban district has two main high school campuses - East in Cicero and West in Berwyn - that serve 6,000 of the district's 22,000 students. The East district is 88% Latino (predominantly Mexican), and 23.9% of the students are limited English proficient. In the West, 39% are Hispanic and 4.5% of students are limited English proficient. At least 38% of the students in the district qualify for free or reduced cost school lunch. The truancy rate and drop out rates for the area are higher than the state average. The teenage pregnancy rate is increasing, with one to two new pregnancies being reported each week. The average age of teen mothers is 15.5 years. Over the past ten years, there has been a 70% increase in the number of persons living below the poverty level. Families qualifying for public assistance have increase by 80%. Few after-school programs exist and programs to build youth social skills are limited to just a few schools.
All local mental health agencies, public health agencies, schools, recreational groups, and law enforcement entities have committed to the project. Moreover, the most active community based advocacy group, Interfaith Leadership Project, is a collaborating partner. Not only does this group speak for many residents, but for most of the churches in the community and many businesses and health care concerns.
The district's integrated, comprehensive community-wide strategy is aimed at fostering healthy child development, preventing the initiation of violence and abuse of alcohol and other drugs, and enhancing mental health and social services to at-risk youth and their families. A community health educator will facilitate a variety of programs specifically for teen mothers, including a series of pre-natal and post-partum classes at the high school. Teen mothers will also receive home visits, assistance with daycare, health care services, and preschool services. A new violence prevention curriculum will be implemented at 20 elementary schools. To foster attachment to adult role models, community mentors will work to establish recreational and/or learning experiences through after school programs. A network of Case Managers specializing in working with high risk families will provide wrap-around services. A bilingual/bicultural psychologist will facilitate student assistance programming. Outreach workers will make home visits to truant students to increase attendance and graduate rates. Each school will undergo a safe school audit; school resource officers will be added and appropriate security measures will be instituted.
An evaluation plan has been developed for each element of the project, with specific assignments made to individual agencies. The evaluation plan includes both a process and outcome-based approach.
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[Des Moines, Iowa]