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Sticks and Stones Part 2 Schools and communities now have a new resource to turn to as they work to make schools safe places dedicated to learning.
The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory has been selected to operate the National Safe Schools Resource Center, charged with providing training and technical assistance to the nation's schools and communities to help them create and maintain learning environments that are free of crime and violence.
The three-year grant for operation of the center, which was announced last month, was awarded to NWREL by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
"NWREL believes the development of a safe school environment is a goal that cannot be isolated from the overall school improvement plan," says Dr. Ethel Simon-McWilliams, Executive Director/CEO of the Laboratory. "The center will assist local communities to develop safe school plans, which will be implemented within the context of overall school improvement plans that embrace diversity, build resiliency, and provide educational programming such as anger management, peer mediation, and conflict resolution."
Research shows that schools demonstrating success through reform also demonstrate corresponding improvement in attendance, discipline, and drug problems, as well as violence. School-based programs can also be the cornerstone of comprehensive efforts to reduce violence in the community at large.
The most horrific incidents of school violence, such as those that have occurred in Oregon, Arkansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi, rivet the nation's attention and strike fear into schools everywhere. Schoolhouse shootings in the 1997-98 school year left 14 teachers and students dead and three dozen injured. Although one of the center's roles will be providing training to help schools recognize and address the early warning signs of potentially violent youth, Simon-McWilliams stresses that school violence encompasses a wide range of behaviors, most of them far less sensational than the rare incidents that earn headlines.
"This kind of violence, although traumatic to those involved as well as the nation, is not typical of the day-to-day violence that youth in America face," notes Simon-McWilliams. Her comments echoed those of President Clinton last summer when he stated that in most schools, it is the smaller acts of aggression-threats, scuffles, constant back talk-that take a terrible toll on the atmosphere of learning.
The problems that schools and communities face in promoting, creating, and sustaining safe learning environments can be addressed through several basic approaches:
Increasingly, combinations of these approaches are being promoted and used in more comprehensive improvement models. The center at NWREL will provide school personnel, parents, and community members with information and assistance in implementing each of these approaches.
The National Safe Schools Resource Center will deliver an array of coordinated training, technical assistance, and resource activities within the context of a community-focused safe schools planning process, notes Carlos Sundermann, who has been named director of the new center. Assistance will be delivered through field-based workshops, onsite training, technical assistance in collaboration with other organizations and programs, and with extensive use of innovative applications of technology.
"The prevention of violence in our schools is a problem that cannot be addressed in isolation," stresses Sundermann. "It will require a collaborative effort between schools, students, parents, and communities to prevent violence before it happens. That will be the focus of our work in the new center."
For more information on the center, call (503) 275-0131.
-Samantha Moores
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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