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"Safe Schools/Healthy Students"
Farmington, Utah
| Partners: | Davis County School District Davis County Mental Health and Substance Abuse Layton City Police Department | |
Davis County is a suburban community made up of fourteen small cities between Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah. The school district serves 58,903 students, growing at a rate of two per cent per year. Sixty-eight different languages are spoken within the district. Although Davis School District appears to be an affluent suburban area, the north end of the county is characterized by low income families, single parents, 40% mobility rate, and the risk factors associated with these dynamics. A 1997 school district survey identified mobility, transition, and academic failure as the highest areas of risk, while a 1998-99 assessment also included overcrowded schools, lack of affordable housing, teen pregnancy, drugs, alcohol, and crime, and family violence. The county's youth suicide rate is four times higher than the national average. The county also has the highest number of juvenile sex offenders in the state.
Davis County School District and its two partners will work closely with the Anti-Drug Coalition, created in February 1999, for the purpose of developing a safe and drug-free schools plan. The Coalition includes representatives from the schools, law enforcement, city and county mental health departments, juvenile justice, health, the faith community, parents, and students.
Project BRICK is designed to promote safe, drug-free, and orderly learning environments by increasing students' abilities to make positive decisions and to avoid high-risk behavior. All parents will be targeted at the pre-school level, with on-going support throughout their children's school years. Prevention education, K-12, will include alcohol and other drug issues, anti-violence programming, and respect-building. Each elementary school will have a Case Management Team - a multi-disciplinary, problem-solving team - that will intervene and assist students. The Junior High component includes a Student Assistance Program for students who have been referred. This element continues through the high school years, providing the organizational structure of the Case Management Teams as well as support groups. Prevention programming, service-learning, and careers programs also offer students opportunities to set goals and look toward the future. Continuous staff training will provide all school employees the necessary foundation to move students from risk to resiliency. School reform will expand after-school programs for all students, not only at-risk populations. A Family Educational Counseling Center will be established and staffed jointly with mental health and district personnel. The Center will operate two evenings a week to serve families and will act as an umbrella of services, including identification, referral, treatment planning, intervention, education and in-service. Additional school resource personnel will be hired, and training will be provided for new and existing school resource officers.
Project BRICK will be evaluated by Intermountain Evaluation Services, using both qualitative and quantitative methods and measurement.
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[Norfolk/Portsmouth, Virginia]