How Safe Are Your Schools?

A presidential appointee finds federal resources can boost schools' violence prevention efforts

I was the principal of Margaret Leary Elementary School on April 11, 1994, when a 10-year-old brought a .22 semi-automatic handgun to school and killed Jeremy Bullock, a 5th grader. At the time, Jeremy was the youngest student in the United States to be murdered at a school.

The tragedy served as a terrible wakeup call, not only to Butte, Mont., but to the rest of the nation. After each subsequent fatal school-based shooting, including the most recent in Littleton, Colo., communities have issued a common refrain: "We didn't think that could happen here."

In Butte, we were left wondering how a community could be nursed back to health after such a sudden and violent schoolyard calamity. We also needed to learn how secondary victims could receive caring support and long-term rehabilitation for post-traumatic stress.

We looked for solutions that would address the multifaceted problems wrought by the homicide and that would allow students, teachers and the entire school community to move on with their lives.

A Safety Team

Our school district's initial step was to create a school-based safety team. The team, consisting of individuals from child service agencies, teachers, counselors, parents, law enforcement, the county attorney's office and the faith community, focused on crisis debriefing, children at risk of troubled behavior and restoring the school to some measure of normalcy.

This interagency group continues to meet on a weekly basis to discuss crisis procedures and operational safety.

We discovered immediate crisis debriefing in the hours after a serious act of violence to be an absolute must. Ideally, this debriefing should be conducted by someone who is trained in critical incidence work. In Butte, I filled that role, having been trained years earlier by Community Intervention, a Minnesota-based training organization that deals with crisis management.

I immediately gave notice to fellow team members that I needed assistance and at least 40 counselors, law enforcement officers and school board members responded from throughout the state. Teachers and other school staff needed firsthand information on how to deal with traumatized children and, more importantly, how to get the classroom back to "normal" as quickly as possible.

The tragedy propelled our community into action. Ultimately, these efforts have gained national attention for our district, and I have been privileged to serve on several national school safety committees. In April 1998, I was appointed to a presidential task force to study the causes of youth violence and discuss preventive measures that could be shared with educational leaders and others nationwide. Ironically, the school shooting in Springfield, Ore., last spring occurred on the first day of the task force's inaugural meeting.

Analyzing Causes

That first meeting of the Presidential Task Force on Youth Violence, hosted by Attorney General Janet Reno and her legal staff, focused on analyzing the causes of violence in the schools. Three key questions were raised:

* Is there a trend between recent school shootings?

* What can the federal government do to help schools deal with gun violence?

* What commonalties were present in the recent school shootings?

As we reviewed the most serious schoolyard shooting incidents of the 1997-98 year, the common factors about the perpetrators emerged rather quickly:

* All were boys;

* Each shooting was over a relationship problem;

* All had experienced childhood depression;

* About 85 percent had been sexually or physically molested.

Subsequently, the task force was invited to the White House to meet with the president and his cabinet for a roundtable discussion on school violence. During a three-hour meeting the president listened intently to the task force's recommendation for federal funding for early prevention and intervention programs in schools.

It was clear to me that our federal leaders are beginning to understand the need for early intervention programs at the local level in our elementary schools, as well as after-school programs and holistic services for students today.

Federal Support

At the first White House Conference on School Safety last October, President Clinton announced his intent to place 100,000 teachers in K-3 classrooms during the next seven years and provide $600 million to redesign and fund the U.S. Department of Education's Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Project. Teachers know that smaller class sizes are essential to a safe learning environment at this age.

The U.S. Department of Education issued its first annual "Report on School Safety" at the conference (available over the Internet at www.ed.gov/pubs/ AnnSchoolRept98/). Other materials on safe schools and early warning signals are available at www.ed.gov/offices/OSERS/OSEP/earlywrn.html.

Federal initiatives include a number of funded programs and policy directives that local school leaders can apply to their own violence prevention work:

* Enforcing zero tolerance for guns on school property by enacting state laws while promoting blended sentencing for juvenile offenders tried as adults. This is being advocated by educators and law enforcement agencies;

* Providing support for civic, community and faith-based organizations to initiate a values-based violence prevention initiative;

* Providing safe after-school opportunities to half a million children a year;

* Cracking down on truancy;

* Encouraging schools to adopt school uniform policies;

* Supporting curfews at the local level;

* Developing a comprehensive anti-gang effort;

* Supporting stricter enforcement of laws to keep weapons away from children and for legislation that places child safety locking devices on guns; and

* Providing $143.5 million to help community coalitions rid their streets of drugs and combat youth alcohol and tobacco abuse.

A Shared Experience

The White House summit concluded with the pledges by the president, vice president, attorney general and education secretary to provide funding for early intervention, smaller class sizes, well-prepared teachers, replacement of deteriorating school facilities and after-school programs.

As principal of Margaret Leary Elementary School, I witnessed the horror of school violence and shared the terrible experience of the loss of a child. Yet today I am honored to be able to apply this experience to help other educational leaders improve school safety for all of our children, here in Montana and nationwide.

Kate Stetzner is superintendent of the Butte Public Schools, 111 N. Montana St., Butte, Mont. 59701. E-mail: [e-mail] She is the only school leader appointed to the Presidential Task Force on Youth Violence. Stetzner's article is based on an earlier publication of the Montana Prevention Resource Center.

Butte's Comprehensive Tack on Violence Prevention

Five years after the fatal shooting of a 5th-grade pupil at school, the Butte Public Schools have not relinquished their violence prevention efforts.

In fact, just a few days before tragedy struck Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., Margaret Leary Elementary School in our district was selected as one of 10 schools in the nation for a site visit by the U.S. Department of Education's School Safety Recognition Program. The department is recognizing us for the comprehensive leadership role we have taken, working cooperatively with other community agencies, to deal with childhood depression, the access to weapons by youngsters and creative approaches to keep our children safe.

Many of these initiatives started soon after the tragedy. Others have been added more recently.

The No. 1 target this year in our 5,000-student district is reducing student truancy. The school district attendance officer and the elementary school resource officer make home visits as often as necessary when children are unexcused from school for more than five days. These officers work closely with the county attorney's office, which aggressively pursues fines against parents who fail to send their children to school. We also provide mentors to these families to work on parenting skills.

The key features of school safety in Butte are the following:

* A child study team intervenes with at-risk children, who have been referred by their teachers. The intervention involves the child and the family. This is a critical component of the school safety team.

* Crisis drills, intruder drills and other safety-related exercises are practiced consistently throughout the year.

* All school counselors in Butte now teach the Second Step School Anti-Violence Curriculum to children in grades K-6.

* Conflict resolution groups allow children to be part of the Peer Patrol, and parents conduct schoolyard conflict facilitation groups.

* An after-school daycare program, running from 3 to 6 p.m. daily, has been instituted.

* Bus stop patrollers have received training. Patrollers are women enrolled in the Career Futures Program for welfare recipients who wish to learn job skills.

* A model alternative education program for K-3 is in its second year. This program, funded by the state education agency and the Board of Crime Control, targets children who exhibit severe behavioral problems in the regular classroom setting. The children are taught how to behave properly before they are returned to the regular classroom.

* School resource officers have been hired for the high school and middle school.

* A review panel for our zero tolerance policy for weapons on school grounds was developed. This process allows families to plead on a case-by-case basis, leading to alternative education or early re-entry for students who are expelled for 365 days.

* VISTA volunteers working districtwide in mentoring programs, and volunteers from the Foster Grandparent Program and Big Brothers and Big Sisters are paired with at-risk children in grades K-6. These mentors receive training before being matched with a teacher and students.

* Parent Academies and Parent Resource Centers are being opened in the elementary schools. Mothers are being encouraged to learn parenting skills, work with their children, learn how to read and become part of the educational process.

* Legislative lobbying to support the new gun laws, reduce access to guns by children and demand blended sentencing for youth offenders that includes rehabilitation with accountability. We also seek increased funding for school-based services at the local level, for work with at-risk, violent children and for health care for these children.

* Through a partnership with Western Montana College, we make graduate-level college courses available to school administrators, teachers and student teachers through which they can learn how to detect violent behavior, find resources to deal with violent children and learn how to develop conflict resolution skills, classroom management skills and crisis planning procedures.

Resource Centers on Safe Schools, Youth Violence

School leaders may contact the following organizations that deal with various aspects of school safety and youth violence. These were suggested by the Casey Journalism Center for Children and Families, based at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

Center for Schools and Communities, Lemoyne, Pa., 717-763-1661, www.center-school.org. Seeks effective solutions to problems that disrupt the educational process and affect school safety. Provides training, technical assistance and a clearinghouse of video and print materials to help schools.

Center for the Prevention of School Violence, Raleigh, N.C., 800-299-6054 or 919-515-9397, www.ncsu.edu/cpsv. Keeps national statistics on school violence and prevention practice.

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, University of Colorado, 303-492-1032, www.colorado.edu/cspv. Provides assistance to groups committed to understanding and preventing violence, particularly adolescent violence.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Violence Prevention, Atlanta, Ga., 770-488-4362, www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dtp/dvp.htm. The division has four priority areas for violence prevention: youth violence, family and intimate violence, suicide and firearm injuries.

Family Life Development Center, Cornell University, 607-255-7794, child.cornell.edu/fldc.home.html. Works to improve professional and public efforts to understand and deal with risk factors in the lives of children, youth, families and communities that lead to family violence and neglect.

Institute for Violence Reduction, University of Connecticut, 860-570-9177, vm.uconn.edu/[sim]wwwswk/violence.htm. Works with policymakers to develop more effective approaches for violence reduction in schools and communities.

National Alliance for Safe Schools, College Park, Md., 301-935-6063, www.safeschools.org. A not-for-profit research, training and technical assistance organization dedicated to reducing school-based crime and violence.

National Association of School Psychologists, Bethesda, Md., 301-657-0270, www.naspweb.org. Represents more than 17,000 school psychologists and related professionals.

National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention, Washington, D.C., 202-393-7731, www.usakids.org/sites/nfcvp. Supported by several foundations to implement youth violence prevention programs.

National School Safety and Security Services, Cleveland, Ohio, 216-251-3067, schoolsecurity.org. Publications on gangs, elementary and secondary school violence, school safety and security, crisis preparedness and management, security assessments and other topics.

National School Safety Center, Pepperdine University, 805-373-9977, www.nsscl. .org. Tracks school violence reported in news accounts and collects data on school-associated violent deaths.

Safe and Drug Free School Program, U.S. Department of Education, 202-260-3954. Annual Report on School Safety can be found at www.ed.gov/pubs/AnnSchoolRept98/.