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Annual Report on School Safety--October 1998
The organizations, Web sites, and other resources listed in this publication are not exhaustive, nor is their inclusion intended as an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, these listings are intended to assist schools and communities in developing and enhancing comprehensive school safety plans.
Federal Resources
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20202
http://www.ed.gov/
Safe and Drug-Free Schools Programs Office
www.ed.gov/offices/OSDFS
Email: SAFESCHL@ed.gov
The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program is the Federal government?s primary vehicle for reducing drug, alcohol and tobacco use, and violence, through education and prevention activities in our nation?s schools.
Office of Special Education Programs
www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP
The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) provides leadership and fiscal resources to assist State and local efforts to educate children with disabilities in order to improve results for those children and to ensure equal protection of the law.
Office for Civil Rights
www.ed.gov/offices/OCR
The mission of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation through vigorous enforcement of civil rights. OCR provides technical assistance to help institutions achieve voluntary compliance with the civil rights laws that OCR enforces.
Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE)
www.ed.gov/free
Resources for teaching and learning from 30 federal agencies with search tools and a bulletin board for teachers and federal agencies to communicate about potential collaboration on new teaching and learning resources.
Regional Education Laboratories
www.nwrel.org/national/index.html
Regional Education Laboratories is a map of links to all ten laboratories supported by the U.S. Department of Education to provide technical assistance to educators.
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
www.usdoj.gov
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/
OJJDP's mission is to provide national leadership, coordination, and resources to develop, implement, and support effective methods to prevent juvenile victimization and respond appropriately to juvenile delinquency. This is accomplished through prevention programs and a juvenile justice system that protects the public safety, holds juvenile offenders accountable, and provides treatment and rehabilitative services based on the needs of each individual juvenile.
U.S. Department of Justice for Kids and Youth home page
www.usdoj.gov/kidspage/
Information for children and youth on crime prevention, staying safe, volunteer and community service opportunities, and the criminal justice system.
The Justice Information Center
www.ncjrs.gov
The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) is one of the most extensive sources of information on criminal and juvenile justice in the world, providing services to an international community of policy makers and professionals. NCJRS is a collection of clearinghouses supporting all bureaus of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs: the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the OJP Program Offices.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20201
www.hhs.gov
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Adolescent and School Health
www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash
The mission of DASH is to: identify the highest priority health risks among youth, monitor the incidence and prevalence of those risks, implement national programs to prevent risks, and evaluate and improve those programs.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Violence Prevention
www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/dvp.htm
The Division of Violence Prevention in CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control has four priority areas for violence prevention: youth violence, family and intimate violence, suicide, and firearm injuries.
Center for Mental Health Services
www.mentalhealth.samhsa.gov
The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) is a program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The CMHS, in partnership with States, leads national efforts to demonstrate, evaluate, and disseminate service delivery models to treat mental illness, promote mental health and prevent the development or worsening of mental illness when possible.
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)
www.samhsa.gov/csap/index.htm
CSAP's mission is to provide national leadership in the Federal effort to prevent alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug problems.
National Institute of Mental Health
www.nimh.nih.gov/
The NIMH funds prevention research. This site includes a report by the National Advisory Mental Health Council Workgroup on Mental Disorders Prevention Research.
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McCormick Middle School School Safety Focus:
Demographic Information:
Contact Information: Dr. Jim Nolan, Principal A few years ago, because of concern about high incidences of bullying at McCormick Middle School, school officials instituted an anti-bullying program. The students named the program Students Against Bullying. Start-up activities included staff meetings and in-service training for all teachers, establishment of a steering committee including teachers and counselors, and involvement of parents through committee membership and communication sent home. For two years the activity was intense; student training sessions occurred every two weeks, and administrative policy changes to support changed student behaviors were adopted frequently. As an outgrowth of the anti-bullying focus, character education, conflict education, and a mediation program are now in place. All students are involved in these activities. The aspects of the program that focused solely on bullying are less intense, but follow-up on the original program continues. The school's administrator reports that McCormick is a different school today. The school's strict rules regarding students not touching each other inappropriately and showing respect to each other have cut out much of the shoving, pushing, and bullying behavior of the past. Statistics show that bullying incidents have been reduced by 22 percent. |
Safe, Drug-Free, and Effective Schools for All Students: What Works
cecp.air.org
The report Safe, Drug-Free, and Effective Schools for All Students: What Works! is an evaluation of programs formulated under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Act. The goal of the project was to learn about schools that managed to reduce discipline problems and improve the learning and behavior of all students, including those with disabilities. This report reflects three site visits conducted by a research team accompanied by expert panels.
Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools
www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/earlywrn.html
Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools offers research-based practices designed to assist schools and communities in identifying these warning signs early and developing prevention, intervention and crisis response plans.
Preventing Youth Hate Crime: A Manual for Schools and Communities
www.ed.gov/pubs/HateCrime/start.html
Provides schools and communities with programs and resources that can be used in preventing youth hate crime and hate-motivated behavior.
Manual to Combat Truancy
www.ed.gov/pubs/Truancy/
This guide seeks to offer parents, school officials, law enforcement agencies and communities a set of principles to design their own strategies to combat truancy, and describes successful models of how anti-truancy initiatives are working in communities across the nation.
Creating Safe and Drug-Free Schools: An Action Guide
www.ed.gov/offices/OSDFS/actguid/index.html
This guide outlines action steps for schools, parents, students, community and business groups, and provides information briefs on specific issues affecting school safety. It also contains research and evaluation findings, and a list of resources and additional readings.
Recommendations of the Crime, Violence, and Discipline Task Force, NCES 97-581
http://nces.ed.gov/
This document contains recommendations for state implementation of standardized data reporting system.
American Federation of Teachers
555 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 879-4400
www.aft.org
Boys and Girls Clubs of America
1230 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30309
(404) 815-5765
www.bgca.org
The Business Roundtable
1615 L Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 872-1260
www.brtable.org
Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice
Improving Services for Children and Youth with Emotional and Behavioral Problems
1000 Thomas Jefferson St., NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 944-5389
www.cecp.air.org/
The Center for Positive Behavior Intervention and Support
5262 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5262
(541) 346-5311
www.uoregon.edu/
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence
University of Colorado, Campus Box 442
Boulder, CO
(303) 492-1032
www.colorado.edu/UCB/Research/cspv/
Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America
901 N. Pitt Street, Suite 300
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 706-0560
www.cadca.org
Council of Chief State School Officers
1 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 408-5505
www.ccsso.org
Council for Exceptional Children
1920 Association Drive
Reston, VA 20191
(703) 620-3660
www.cec.sped.org
Council of Great City Schools
1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 702
Washington, DC 20001-1431
(202) 393-2427
www.cgcs.org
Hamilton Fish National Institute on School and Community Violence
1925 North Lynn Street, Suite 305
Rosslyn, VA 22209
(703) 527-4217
www.hfni.gsehd.gwu.edu
National Alliance of Business
1201 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 289-2848
www.nab.com
National Association of Elementary School Principals
1615 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314-3483
(703) 684-3345
www.naesp.org
National Association of School Pyschologists
4340 East West Highway, Suite 402
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 657-0270
www.principals.org
National Association of Secondary School Principals
1904 Association Drive
Reston, VA 22091
(703) 860-0200
www.nassp.org
National Education Association
1201 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 833-4000
www.nea.org
National Conference of State Legislatures
1560 Broadway, Suite 700
Dever, CO 80202
(303) 830-2200
www.ncsl.org/
National Governors Association
444 North Capitol Street, NW, Suite 250
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 624-5300
www.nga.org
National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY)
Academy for Educational Development
P.O. Box 1492
Washington, DC 20013-1492
(202) 884-8200
www.nichcy.org
National PTA
330 N. Wabash Avenue, Suite 2100
Chicago, IL 60611-3690
(800) 307-4PTA
www.pta.org
United Way of America
701 N. Fairfax Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 836-7112
national.unitedway.org
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
1615 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20062
(202) 659-6000
www.uschamber.org
U.S. Conference of Mayors
1620 Eye Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 293-7330
www.usmayors.org
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Holmes Braddock Senior High School School Safety Focus:
Demographic Information:
Contact Information: In 1994-95, this 5,200-student magnet school for mathematics, science, and engineering had 2,607 confrontational/violent or drug-related incidents. Deciding to take action, the Educational Excellence Committee created a multi-faceted School Improvement Plan (SIP) that aimed for a 5-percent minimum yearly decrease in such incidents. Safety and anti-substance use lessons are infused in the basic curriculum and several electives. Students may participate in reducing crime through a student court for conduct violations, a peer education program, and a program to increase safety and responsible behavior. Transgression reports and information on referrals are kept in a computerized student record. Two School Resource Officers provide counseling on drug use and law enforcement while improving relations between police and students. (For more information on School Resource Officers, refer to chapter 3, Model Programs.) There is an off-campus alternative school for students with special needs, a program for students at risk of dropping out, and a Juvenile Assessment Center that imposes alternative sanctions and treatment for first-time felony and misdemeanor offenders. Braddock High School is also well supported by parents, community groups, and local businesses. From 1994-95 to 1996-97, 1,000 fewer students were referred to the principal's office. In the same period, incidents in six categories declined in number: disruptive conduct from 899 to 559, defiance of school authority from 1,204 to 938, vandalism from 36 to 14, fights from 165 to 113, and narcotic possession/use from 48 to 33. After surveillance cameras were installed in difficult-to-monitor areas in 1997 -98, vandalism dropped 95 percent, almost eliminating graffiti in halls and staircases. |
Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior
www.darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ivdb/index.html
The Institute?s mission is to empower schools and social service agencies to address violence and destructive behavior, at the point of school entry and beyond, in order to ensure safety and to facilitate the academic achievement and healthy social development of children and youth. This is a combination of community, campus and state efforts to research violence and destructive behavior among children and youth.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health)
www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth/addhealth_home.html
Add Health is a school-based study of the health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7-12. It has been designed to explore the causes of these behaviors, with an emphasis on the influence of social context. Add Health postulates that families, friends, schools and communities play roles in the lives of adolescents that may encourage healthy choices of activities or may lead to unhealthy, self-destructive behaviors.
National School Safety Center
www.schoolsafety.us
The National School Safety Center was created by presidential directive in 1984 to meet the growing need for additional training and preparation in the area of school crime and violence prevention. Affiliated with Pepperdine University, NSSC is a nonprofit organization whose charge is to promote safe schools ? free of crime and violence ? and to help ensure quality education for all America?s children.
National Youth Gang Center
www.iir.com/nygc/
The purpose of the NYGC is to expand and maintain the body of critical knowledge about youth gangs and effective responses to them. The Center assists state and local jurisdictions in the collection, analysis, and exchange of information on gang-related demographics, legislation, literature, research, and promising program strategies. It also coordinates activities of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Youth Gang Consortium ? a group of federal agencies, gang program representatives, and service providers
Partnerships Against Violence Network
www.pavnet.org/
PAVNET Online is a "virtual library" of information about violence and youth-at-risk, representing data from seven different Federal agencies. It is a "one-stop," searchable, information resource to help reduce redundancy in information management and provide clear and comprehensive access to information for States and local communities.
School Mental Health Project/Center for Mental Health in Schools (UCLA)
smhp.psych.ucla.edu/
The Center?s mission is to improve outcomes for young people by enhancing policies, programs and practices relevant to mental health in schools, with specific attention to strategies that can counter fragmentation and enhance collaboration between school and community programs.
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Riverhead High School
School Safety Focus:
Interdiction (management of risk). Intervention. Prevention.
Demographic Information:
Contact Information: Edward J. Swensen, Project Manager District and School Safety Services, Inc. 135 Fourth Street Prior to 1995, Riverhead High School was the scene of increasing violent and disruptive behavior. During the spring of 1993, 25 percent of the school population received an out-of-school suspension for rule violations including fighting, weapons possession, assault upon teachers and students, and drug possession. The school district contracted with the District and Schools Services, Inc., consulting firm to implement a comprehensive and systematic program to eliminate school violence and disruption. The Riverhead Anti-Violence Project focuses on establishing a structured environment for violence mitigation. The model is built on three major components. The interdiction or management-of-risk component addresses policies and procedures such as administrative practices, use of security staff, and facility analysis. Intervention efforts, including the alternative school, counseling, and mediation, focus on the students who are not conforming to school policies and regulations. Prevention efforts consist of mentoring programs; anger management and bias reduction programs; career path education; and value, virtue, and justice curriculum units. First-year results include the following reductions: fights by more than 68 percent, assaults by 66 percent, assaults on teachers by 100 percent, display and threat to use a weapon by 63 percent, refusal to follow teacher direction by 93 percent, and incidents of harassment by 42 percent. |
Listservs
EDInfo
Subscribe to this new service listserv with the latest information about the U.S. Department of Education at www.ed.gov
ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education listserv
Subscribe to a joint ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education listserv where practioners, policymakers, and parents share ideas, resources, problems, and solutions. To subscribe, send a message to: listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu. Leave the subject line blank and just type, subscribe SAC-L <your full name here>
Making After-School Count! The C.S. Mott Foundation hosted a satellite teleconference in March 1998 with Vice President Gore on the importance of after-school programs. For a free copy, call Michelle Pemberton at (810) 238-5651.
Back to School: Families and Communities Together for Learning Satellite Town Meeting, September 1997 In a panel moderated by U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, a superintendent, parent, business executive, and others talk about how schools and communities can extend learning before and after school. Call (800) USA-LEARN to get a free copy.
Conflict Resolution for Youth: Programming for Schools, Youth-Serving Organizations, and Community and Juvenile Justice Settings?Satellite Teleconference. Presents videotaped proceedings of a teleconference held in 1996 that promotes the incorporation of conflict resolution strategies into programming for schools and other settings, provides information on the availability of training and consultation resources, and outlines various approaches to conflict resolution. Call (800) 638-8736 for a copy.
Youth-Oriented Community Policing?Satellite Teleconference. Presents videotaped proceedings of a teleconference held in 1996 that provides information on the characteristics of youth-oriented community policing and how it differs from general community-oriented policing, and highlights three unique and effective programs (U.S. Department of Justice video, VHS format. 1996. 120 minutes. NCJ 160947. $17.00 U.S.). Call (800) 638-8736 for a copy.
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Westerly Public Schools School Safety Focus:
Districtwide administrative policy revision. Intensive staff training. Academic and behavioral intervention strategies. Demographic Information:
Westerly School Department 44 Park Avenue Westerly, RI 02891 Phone: 401-596-0315 In response to complaints about the education of students with disabilities, the Westerly school district conducted a needs assessment and implemented intensive, ongoing staff development and collaborative team teaching. Using data-driven, consumer-oriented techniques, they restructured the schools? and district?s policies and programs to reflect their commitment to meeting the needs of each student, providing prevention and intervention when needed, and offering targeted interventions for students with more serious needs. To serve their students with behavioral needs, the elementary and middle schools established planning centers staffed by a counselor or teacher. Any student may choose to go to a planning center for a class period to do academic work in its structured setting or to "cool off" and work through a problem. The high school houses the Westerly Integrated Social Services Program, which helps students and their families access community services they need to be healthy and successful. The Westerly Integrated Social Services Program has paid off in a suspension rate nearly six times lower than the State figure (3.8 percent compared to 23.2 percent). This integrative and comprehensive approach to educating students has also led to improved grades, achievement, and attendance of students with emotional or behavioral problems; and to decreased disciplinary referrals. |
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