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A Comprehensive Approach to School Safety
A number of programs discussed later
in this Bulletin, such as school-based
probation officers, school resource officers,
and alternative school programs,
are effective single-program approaches
to a complex problem that is often
more effectively addressed through a
more comprehensive approach to
school safety and school improvement.3 Although statistics show that
schools are by far the safest places for
youth, threats, bullying, intimidation,
and acts of violence are commonplace
in some schools. Left unaddressed,
these problems provide fertile ground
for future, and possibly more serious,
acts of violence.
However, youth violence is not solely
a school issue. Schools need the
meaningful involvement of students,
parents, and other school/community
partners to avoid operating in isolation.
Information about conditions in
the school and community needs to
be exchanged openly. Solutions to
school and community youth violence
must be identified collaboratively.
Stakeholders can then identify
comprehensively the risk and protective
factors that must be targeted to
institute systemic changes in the
school and community setting. In this
approach, a school/community profile
is developed to analyze and prioritize
the various problems at school
and in the community that need to be
addressed. School/community-based
teams can then design goals and objectives
to address these priorities,
allowing schools to select and implement
programs that have been evaluated
for their ability to reduce violence
or promote other mediating
factors. Elements of a collaborative
approach to school safety are listed
below.
A Collaborative Approach to School Safety
Virtually every observer who writes on the issue of school safety notes the need for comprehensive interventions that involve representatives from education, law enforcement, and the community.1 The 1998 and 1999 Annual Report on School Safety highlight the following tasks for participants in collaborative school safety programs:2
Students
- Behave responsibly.
- Report crimes and threats to school officials.
- Get involved in or start anticrime programs at school.
- Learn how to avoid becoming a victim.
- Seek help.
Parents
- Actively communicate with children.
- Be clear and consistent in disciplining children.
- Model prosocial behavior.
- Get involved with school and community organizations
and activities.
- Keep guns and other weapons out of the reach of
unsupervised children.
- Limit children’s exposure to and experience with
crime and violence.
- Participate in family management training or
counseling opportunities.
Schools
- Provide strong administrative support for assessing
and enhancing school safety.
- Redesign the school facility to eliminate dark,
secluded, and unsupervised spaces.
- Devise a system for reporting and analyzing violent
and noncriminal incidents.
- Design an effective discipline policy.
- Build a partnership with local law enforcement.
- Enlist school security professionals in designing and
maintaining the school security system.
- Train school staff in all aspects of violence
prevention.
- Provide all students access to school psychologists
or counselors.
- Provide crisis response services.
- Implement schoolwide education and training on
avoiding and preventing violence.
- Use alternative school settings for educating violent
and weapon-carrying students.
- Create a climate of tolerance and acceptance of
student diversity.
- Provide appropriate educational services for all
students.
- Reach out to communities and businesses to
improve the safety of students.
- Actively involve students in making decisions about
school policies and programs.
- Prepare an annual report on school crime and
safety.
Communities
- Establish school-community partnerships.
- Identify and measure the problem.
- Set measurable goals and objectives.
- Identify appropriate research-based programs and
strategies.
- Implement a comprehensive plan.
- Evaluate the plan.
- Revise the plan on the basis of the evaluation.
Police and Juvenile Justice Authorities
- Establish a working relationship with schools.
- Patrol the school grounds, facilities, and travel
routes.
- Respond to reports of criminal activities in the
school.
- Consult with school authorities and parents regarding
school security.
- Work directly with youth to maintain a constructive
relationship.
Businesses
- Adopt a local school.
- Provide training in basic job skills.
- Provide internships and employment opportunities.
- Provide scholarships to deserving students.
- Offer resources to local schools.
- Provide flexible work hours and leave to parents and
volunteers.
Elected Officials and Government Agencies
- Provide leadership for school crime prevention.
- Support school crime prevention research.
- Encourage all schools to monitor and report crime.
- Begin a discussion of key legislative issues in school
violence prevention.
- Build collaborations between and among Federal,
State, and local agencies to pool resources and maximize
the use of effective approaches to school safety.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education. 1998, 1999. 1998 Annual Report on School Safety and 1999 Annual Report on School Safety.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education.
1 See National Center on Violence Research, 1998; National School Safety Center, 1995; Gottfredson, 1997; Boyle and Kearns, 1998. For an indepth discussion of the practical and legal issues involved in the interagency information sharing necessary to implement comprehensive interventions involving representatives from a variety
of agencies, consult the JAIBG Bulletin Establishing and Maintaining Interagency Information
Sharing (Slayton, 2000).
2 See chapter 4 of the 1999 Annual Report on School Safety (U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education, 1999) for a list of relevant resources.
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As plans are crafted, it is critical to institute
supportive school policies and
procedures. Seamless services also
should be provided to protect and
support youth and families who may
need assistance. These services should
interface with social and mental health
services, alternative educational settings,
law enforcement, and the juvenile
justice system. Schools should
establish high academic and social expectations
for youth in addition to setting
norms of behavior. Effective policies
should provide guidance and
support and ensure that youth not
only are held accountable but also are
treated equitably and fairly.
Finally, the importance of evaluation
in this process cannot be overstated.
Schools need to institute an ongoing
evaluation process to ensure that the
assessment, planning, program selection,
and implementation phases of a
comprehensive approach are closely
monitored and adjusted. The school/
community-based teams should
assess whether the goals, objectives,
and implementation requirements of
the selected strategies can be measured
for evaluation purposes. They
should also measure the overall impact
of their plans in reducing violence
and disruptions at school.
3 The National Resource Center for School Safety
(NRCSS) provides training and technical assistance to
States, school systems, and communities to create and
implement such comprehensive school safety plans.
NRCSS is operated by the Northwest Regional Educational
Laboratory in Portland, OR, through a cooperative
agreement with two Federal agencies: the U.S.
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office
of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and
the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary
and Secondary Education, Safe and Drug-Free Schools
Program. NRCSS’s mission is to provide training, technical
assistance, resources, and information on school
safety and violence prevention to school districts, law
enforcement agencies, community organizations, and
State and local agencies working to reduce youth violence
and create safe schools. The Center operates a
lending library with resources and information relating
to school safety planning and essential components for
safe schools. The Center’s Web page (www.safetyzone.org) contains a database on effective school/
community-based programs for violence prevention.
| Increasing School Safety Through Juvenile
Accountability Programs | JAIBG Bulletin
· December 2000 |
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