December 1998 NWREL To Operate National School Safety Center
S chools and communities across the country now have a new resource to turn to as they work to make schools safe, nonviolent places dedicated to the business of learning.
The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory has been selected to operate the National School Safety Center, which is 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 (OJJDP).
"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, the Laboratory’s Executive Director/CEO. "The center will assist local communities 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 and violence incidents. 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 echo those of President Bill Clinton this 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 are described in a recently published NWREL booklet, Peaceful Schools. Major approaches being used to address these problems include:
1. School policy
2. Early warning and prevention
3. Curriculum-based programs
4. Parental engagement
5. Mentoring
6. Physical facilities
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.
A major factor in NWREL’s selection to operate the national center is its past successful efforts in assisting education and community personnel in preventing the harmful use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs, and reducing violence related to the use of these substances. NWREL operated the Western Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, from 1987 to 1995. Currently NWREL operates the Northwest Regional Comprehensive Center, designated as the lead regional center in the area of safe and violence-free schools, and the Northwest Regional Equity Center, which provides services to keep schools safe and free of violence.
The National School Safety 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. He explains that 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.
Sundermann, who brings 27 years of experience in education and human services to his new role, previously served as director of both NWREL’s Comprehensive Center and the Western Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities.
"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, par-ents, and communities to prevent violence before it happens. That will be the focus of our work in the new center."
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