Critical Issue: Developing and Maintaining Safe Schools

ISSUE: Crime, violence, and disorder in schools have become major national issues, as reported in various national surveys of school order and safety. These problems not only endanger students and teachers, but they also prevent teachers from concentrating on teaching and students from concentrating on learning.

OVERVIEW: More than ever before, today's schools are serving children from dysfunctional homes, children living in poverty, children of teenage parents, and special education students. Unfortunately, resources to adequately serve the total range of needs presented by these students are becoming increasingly limited. Adequate parental supervision and control of these students has weakened, and many students have diminished respect for all forms of authority, including the authority of school personnel. As a result, schools are confronted with problems of students possessing weapons, students involved with gang recruitment and rivalry, and students engaged in drug trafficking, both as sellers and buyers. Such problems lead to violent acts in and around schools. In order to create a safe environment that is conducive to learning, schools must implement safety plans and comprehensive prevention programs that address the root causes of violence.

This changing educational climate has created an imperative need for schools to identify tools, strategies, and model programs that enhance the safety and success of all children and the professionals who serve them. Because young people are legally required to attend school, school personnel have a corresponding duty to provide children with a safe, secure, and peaceful environment in which learning can occur. Achieving this end requires that every school district and each individual school develop a school safety plan. Development of such plans is not limited to the school alone but must necessarily involve the entire community.

Jose Rodriguez, principal of Benito Juarez High School in Chicago, explains his belief that if schools are experiencing problems with students, it is important for administrators to inform the surrounding community so the problems can be addressed with collaborative initiatives. [493k QuickTime slide show] Excerpted from the video series Pathways to Prevention, videotape #3, Lessons Learned (Chicago Public Schools and the Midwest Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, 1994). A text version is available.

It is no accident that schools experiencing the greatest number and most severe incidents of crime and violence are located in communities that also exhibit these negative characteristics. To offset these tendencies, the creation of safe schools must involve students, teachers, administrators, parents, law enforcement officers, mental health professionals, business and community leaders, and a wide array of youth-serving professionals in the community. The involvement of expertise and support from a variety of resources is essential, because schools have been organized for the purpose of learning rather than as institutions designed to control crime and violence.

Ed Virant, project coordinator for the Drug-Free Program in the Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska, describes an effective school and community drug-prevention program in his district. [544k QuickTime slide show] Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #6, Preparing Students for Drug-Free Lifestyles (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992). A text version is available.

The most efficient and effective programs for developing safe schools are those that emphasize prevention, positive alternatives, the development of psychosocial skills, and recognition of socially competent behavior. A school climate that builds on the strengths and assets of each student, improving resiliency and protective factors while promoting self-esteem, counteracts the destructive factors that contribute to violence. Improving school order and safety is promoted by providing an environment in which students find a meaningful role and have a variety of pro-social activities in which to participate. Students who are involved in school activities are less likely to engage in school violence and disorder than students who feel alienated and deprived of personally meaningful school involvement (Stephens, 1995).

Maxine Womble, director of the Midwest Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, discusses the need for a wide range of prevention activities and the importance of good role models in the lives of children. [213k audio file] Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #6, Preparing Students for Drug-Free Lifestyles (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992). A text version is available.

GOALS: A safe-school plan is an all-encompassing program that provides for the safety and security of students and educators. It is an ongoing, systematic, and comprehensive process that addresses both short-term and long-term safety measures to eliminate violent attitudes and behaviors in the school. Its basic goal is to create and maintain a positive and welcoming school climate in which all members take pride. This climate is free of drugs, gangs, violence, intimidation, fear, and shaming. A healthy, positive school climate promotes the emotional well-being and growth of every student, while providing a safe, secure environment that does not condone violence in any form. At the same time, however, the school provides firm and consistent rules and guidelines for appropriate student behavior.

Each of the stakeholders involved in the school should recognize his or her responsibility to work for and achieve the following goals.

School Administrator Goals:

• Administrators provide leadership in assessing, developing, and monitoring the safe-school plan.
• Administrators establish a continuous system of school crime tracking, reporting, and feedback, and provide this information to concerned parties.
• Administrators design a school environment that ensures safe traffic patterns within and to and from school.
• Administrators adopt procedures for emergency evacuation and crisis management.
• Administrators establish a school safety council or school planning team with representatives from school staff, students, parents, and community representatives. This council is responsible for providing advice and making decisions about critically important cases of violence and crime, evaluating the state of school safety, and proposing revisions to the school discipline code and school safety plan as deemed necessary.

Barbara Clayton, coordinator of the Peer Intervention Program in Chicago, describes why the assessment of problems at individuals schools is a highly important part of any prevention program. [179k audio file] Excerpted from the video series Pathways to Prevention, videotape #3, Lessons Learned (Chicago Public Schools and the Midwest Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, 1994). A text version is available.

• Administrators ensure that all people involved with the school are working in support of safe schools. This goal involves parental involvement, careful screening and selection of all staff members, in-service training on school crime for all staff, comprehensive violence-prevention approaches, intervention in bullying behavior as well as racial and sexual harassment, addressing of student discipline issues in a nonshaming but firm manner that does not incite violent behavior, and development of interagency partnerships directed at creating a safe school within a safe community.
• Administrators provide leadership in developing extracurricular activities and recreation programs that provide positive alternatives to juvenile crime and violence, along with specific programs directed at eliminating gang influence in schools and preventing school drug trafficking.
• Administrators provide leadership in developing a school discipline code of student behavior and conduct. Such a code requires the input of parents, students, teachers, youth-serving professionals, and community leaders.

Teacher Goals:

• Teachers respond to students in a caring and nonshaming manner. They also provide consistent and firm guidelines and rules regarding student behavior.
• Teachers consider the teaching and modeling of pro-social behavior to be as important as the teaching of academic subjects.
• Teachers display diligent and impartial behavior when supervising students. They use a consistent and prompt manner to grant rewards for good behavior and sanctions for unacceptable behavior.
• Teachers participate in the development of a school safety plan, discipline code, and racial and sexual harassment policy. They also play a responsible part in the implementation of such policies by promptly and consistently reporting incidents of misbehavior, crime, violence, and harassment.

Betty Despenza-Green, principal at Chicago Vocational High School in Chicago, describes an initiative at her school in which teachers learn how to include prevention in their daily curriculum. [272k audio file] Excerpted from the video series Pathways to Prevention, videotape #2, The Chicago Vocational and Benito Juarez Stories (Chicago Public Schools and the Midwest Regional Center for Drug-Free Schools and Communities, 1994). A text version is available.

Parent Goals:

• Parents are equal partners with administrators and teachers in the development of the school safety plan and discipline code. Their recommendations on policy and implementation are carefully considered.

Cheryl Hollis, a family room liaison for the Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska, describes how the schools in her community attempt to involve parents in their prevention programs. [340k audio file] Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #6, Preparing Students for Drug-Free Lifestyles (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992). A text version is available.

• Parents are familiar with the school safety plan and the school discipline code.
• Parents are responsible for monitoring the behavior of their sons and daughters.

Student Goals:

• Students want--and are entitled to--a safe, orderly school environment in which to learn.
• Students develop a sense of responsibility for contributing to the improvement of school order and safety. Members of all peer groups participate actively in the planning, implementation, and enforcement of discipline policy and programs.

ACTION OPTIONS:

• Administrators conduct a detailed school safety assessment to determine the state of school order and safety. This assessment is an essential step in developing a safe-school plan. It includes a survey of school facilities, staff availability for supervision, and other resources (such as space for an in-school suspension program and records of the responsibilities and performance of security personnel) that may affect school order and safety. The assessment also includes a survey of staff, parents, and students to determine their views and recommendations regarding school crime and violence. After analyzing the collected data, administrators can verify and enrich the information through discussions with the relevant parties.
• Administrators establish a system for tracking and recording school crime and violence, with procedures for teachers and other staff to conveniently report all incidents to a central source. Received information is categorized according to the name of the violator, the type of violation, the time and place the incident occurred, and the school's response to it. Results are periodically reported to all concerned parties. This system enables school personnel to identify students who have demonstrated violent, hurtful, or inappropriate behavior, and to respond with an appropriate intervention or referral. It also enables school personnel to identify times and places where crime and violence are most likely to occur.
• Administrators work with teachers, students, parents, law enforcement officers, business and community members, and youth-serving professionals to develop a safe-school plan based on the information gathered from the assessment and tracking data. The plan should include: disciplinary strategies for teachers; a school discipline code and a means to implement, evaluate, and supervise the code; sexual and racial harassment policies; staff in-service training for cultural and ethnic sensitivity and conflict resolution; comprehensive crime- and violence-prevention approaches; and procedures for operating interagency partnerships.
• Administrators work with all school personnel to create a climate of school ownership and pride. Students, parents, staff members, and members of cooperating community agencies are made to feel that they are important parts of the school community. This feeling of inclusion is accomplished by their involvement in the development and implementation of the safe-school plan.
• Administrators form school-community-agency partnerships to serve those individuals and agencies that are helping the school in its safety efforts. For example, school staff might volunteer at community agencies, contribute to community service projects, support student extracurricular clubs and activities, or establish a parents' center at the school.
• Administrators develop a comprehensive prevention-education curriculum by infusing ideas provided by parents and students with the teaching expertise of the faculty. This curriculum includes instruction on self-concept development, morals, values, conflict resolution, friendship and relationship skill building, social competence, diversity, empathy skills, decision-making, and resistance skills. As an integral part of prevention programming, the school establishes rewards for good behavior as well as consequences for inappropriate behavior.
• Administrators ensure that those individuals and agencies responsible for school order and safety know and understand current state and federal laws affecting school crime and violence.

IMPLEMENTATION PITFALLS: Failure to gain the support of students, school staff, parents, and the community prior to development and implementation of a safe-school plan may defeat its purpose. For a school safety program to succeed, all people affected by school crime and violence need to have grassroots involvement and psychological ownership. Failure to include the input from these people often results from leadership assumptions that "we know best" and that the most efficient approach is to impose a personally developed design.

Educators should not move ahead with a safe-school plan before the planners have comprehensive, accurate data about both the generalities and particulars affecting school safety from both an internal school view and an external community view. The result can be a waste of time, money, and energy without any positive influence on improving school safety.

Lack of information and understanding of the range of statutory and case law that is applied to school crime and violence can cause serious problems. Violation of student civil rights in an overzealous commitment to ensuring a safe school can lead to lawsuits that drain the school--and its safety program--of both money and human energy. On the other hand, excessive timidity and apprehension about violating student and adult civil rights for fear of lawsuits can result in failure to implement strong, effective measures to ensure school safety.

Ignoring the need to continually work at supporting and improving an effective network of community resources focused on improving school safety will eventually lead to the breakdown of the network. School officials cannot assume their work is done after the community-school safety network has been established. Maintaining the vitality and effectiveness of the network requires continual attention.

Inadequate attention to the influence of detrimental adults in the community can elevate the problems of school crime and violence. Persons entering the school who are not members of the school community must be carefully monitored. All entrances to the school must be secure.

Failure of school authorities to implement a reasonable school safety plan may lead to legal liability for harm that comes to students in the school. In certain cases that liability may extend to students who are off-campus or who are participating in school-sponsored activities after school hours.

Failure to adequately involve students in planning programs, resources, and rules for improving school order and safety will deprive the safe-school plan of important grassroots information and advice.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW: According to some educators, studies indicating a substantial increase in school crime and violence are suspect and unreliable. They suggest that the problem has been exaggerated or obscured by faulty data collection and interpretation.

Some educators believe that approaches emphasizing student control and punishment are far more effective than comprehensive approaches that include training in nonviolent conflict resolution and intervention in situations of bullying, sexual or racial harassment, and other forms of intimidating behavior.

Still another viewpoint is that the soundest, most reliable means of reducing and preventing school crime and violence is for parents to assume primary responsibility for controlling their children.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES:

Using the Law to Improve School Order and Safety

Resolving Conflicts Creatively Program (RCCP)

CONTACTS:

National Crime Prevention Council
1700 K Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 466-6272; fax: (202) 296-1356
E-mail: shields@mail.ncpc.org

National Organization on Legal Problems of Education
3601 S.W. 29th St., Suite 290
Topeka, KS 66614-2047
(913) 273-3550; fax (913) 273-2001
Contact: Robert Wagner

National School Safety Center
4165 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Suite 290
Westlake Village, CA 91362
(805) 373-9977; fax (805) 373-9277

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
U.S. Department of Justice
633 Indiana Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20531
(202) 307-5911; fax (202) 514-6382
WWW: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/

SUGGESTED READING:

School Order and Safety

Root Causes of Violence

Programs Building on Student Strengths and Assets

Safe-School Planning

Parental Involvement

Eliminating Gang Influence in Schools

Preventing School Drug Trafficking

Developing a School Discipline Code

School Safety Assessment

Tracking and Recording School Crime and Violence

Disciplinary Strategies for Teachers

School Discipline Codes

School-Community-Agency Partnerships

Comprehensive Prevention-Education Curriculum

State and Federal Laws Affecting School Crime and Violence

References

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Emanuel Hurwitz, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago; Julius Menacker, Ed.D, Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Ward Weldon, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago. Additional comments were provided by Carol Sullivan, a Minneapolis-based violence prevention consultant.

Date posted: 1996