Luis paced the front of the room as members of the Prevention Planning Team filtered in. He and Alex had continued their conversation throughout the week, and Luis was eager to share their ideas with the team. After distributing the meeting's agenda, he launched right in: "As you can see, the topic of the day is sustainability. Over the past two years, we've all worked hard to create a prevention initiative that is well-supported, responsive to school and community needs, and based on science. With only a year left on our grant, we need to make sure that substance abuse and violence prevention remains an integral part of Taft's culture and curriculum. My hope for today is that, by working together, we can develop a concrete plan for sustaining Taft's prevention initiative over time."

Knowing What Works

Walking to the easel in the corner of the room, he unfolded a piece of newsprint, which read:

Jane, the school's reading specialist, voiced an immediate concern. "How can we focus on sustaining the initiative's benefits when we don't know which prevention activities are actually producing benefits?" she wondered aloud. "We're all very proud of what we've accomplished, but before moving forward, don't we need to know what's working? I think that we should only continue those prevention efforts that prove to be effective."

"You're exactly right," Luis agreed. "Identifying the programs that are working and those that are not meeting our expectations will help us know where to concentrate our efforts. It also helps us make a strong case for sustainability, since few would argue against maintaining a program that has proven to be effective. Which is why," he gestured toward a man and woman sitting in the front row, "I've invited Rob and Marisha to share some evaluation data with us."

With this, he turned the floor over to the pair of university researchers who had worked closely with the Prevention Planning Team since the beginning of the project. Rob distributed a handout describing the current status of Taft's prevention activities, which included classroom-based and schoolwide efforts, family and community involvement efforts, and policy development and enforcement.

After giving team members a few minutes to review the document, Marisha began: "Overall, the news is good. We have a lot going on, but our efforts are well-coordinated. Here are some highlights from what we've learned:

• The social skills programs for students and parents have been well-received, but some of the teachers could use additional training and support to improve the quality of implementation. Also, the parent program could benefit from higher attendance levels.

• The Walk Safely program, which seems to be helping students feel safer on their way to and from school, could also benefit from greater parental involvement.

• The information and referral service has resulted in teachers referring more students for outside services. However, many students and families are failing to follow through with their referrals. We're not clear on why this is the case.

• Nothing has happened to date with classroom restructuring. We think that this might be too much for the school to take on at this time, since administrators are already immersed in other schoolwide reform efforts.

• Tobacco abuse and harassment policies have been written, but work still needs to be done around communicating this information. Also, policy enforcement is inconsistent. There could be many reasons for this, but lack of awareness of policy content might be one of them."

"In short, we've made a lot of progress, but not all of our activities are proceeding equally well."

As Marisha sat down, Rob reminded the group that these were only preliminary findings, and that he and Marisha were in the process of preparing a more complete evaluation report. "The report will provide you with detailed information related to the initiative's progress and current status, which you can use to make presentations, develop different types of reports, and share information about program activities with a variety of audiences. You will also need a lot of the data contained in the report to support applications for future funding."

Planning Next Steps

"But in the meantime," said Luis, "we can use the summary to help us determine our next steps. Let's take a look at the 'Next Steps' column of the table. There are six prevention activities listed: social skills for students, social skills for parents, the Walk Safely program, the information and referral service, classroom restructuring, and harassment and tobacco policy development and enforcement. We need to decide -- based on what we just heard -- which activities we should try to sustain and the best ways to do so." "And we don't have a lot of time left, so why don't we spend about 10 minutes brainstorming possible ways to sustain these activities." As the group talked, Luis wrote their ideas on the board:

• Strengthen impact of existing policies by improving enforcement.

• Tie prevention activities to district/state standards by identifying ways to connect classroom-based activities to current education requirements.

• Tie prevention activities to school reform efforts by working more closely with the school improvement team to promote parent involvement.

• Seek additional funding to support student and parent programs.

Putting down his marker, Luis broke into a grin. "These suggestions are great! We took the information we had and used it to figure out how to proceed." Looking at his watch, he continued, "Since we're out of time, how do you feel about dividing into two working groups to investigate these options before our next meeting? One group can focus on the first three options: ways to sustain prevention efforts through policy and education reform. The second group can focus on funding. The groups can report back when we meet again in two weeks. I feel confident that we can sustain the best of our initiative if we develop a plan that incorporates these strategies. Thanks," he concluded, "for your energy, ideas, and commitment!"

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Please think about the questions below and post your answers, comments, or questions in the Discussion Area.

1. Have you monitored the implementation of your school's prevention activities (i.e., process evaluation)? If so, how have you used your process evaluation data to inform your sustainability plans?

2. In planning for sustainability, have any of you decided not to sustain a particular program or activity? What was your basis for making that decision?