School Violence Prevention in Pennsylvania

Juvenile Justice Achievements in Pennsylvania Fall 1999 School Violence Prevention in Pennsylvania by Patrick Griffin Vol. 6, No. 4 Nothing that could be described as a motive for the shootings has ever emerged. By all accounts he was just another quiet, nondescript, apparently harmless 14-year-old with no school disciplinary record and no previous involvement with the law a boy who, as a State Police investigator later put it, was average in every respect I can think of until he took his father s.25- caliber handgun to an Edinboro, Pennsylvania banquet hall on the night of April 24, 1998. But when he was through shooting, the party being held there, for eighth-graders graduating from nearby Parker Middle School, was over. Three people had been injured; a fourth, veteran science teacher John Gillette, a 48-year-old father of three who was acting as chaperon, lay dead. And everything had changed in Edinboro. School doors are locked now in this town of 7,000 in the northwestern part of the state. Strangers don t enter school buildings without specially issued name-tags. Disciplinary policies have been toughened up. At special events like proms and commencements, guests may be met with airportstyle security systems. And a community coalition of parents, public officials and religious leaders have pushed for further changes. As one coalition spokeswoman told the press last summer, The murder was so horrible and senseless that we had to find some way to make good come of it. We ve turned it into a wake-up call for people to get Pennsylvania Progress is a publication of the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) the research division of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. It is distributed to juvenile justice professionals within the Commonwealth and nationwide to acquaint them with important achievements of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Technical Assistance materials and additional information on the topics presented are available from NCJJ at (412) 227-6950. involved with their children, their schools and their community. All over the country, incidents like the Edinboro shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, Thurston High School in Springfield, OR, Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, AR, Heath High School in West Paducah, KY, and elsewhere have provoked similar anxieties, and inspired similar resolves. This issue of Pennsylvania Progress will acquaint readers with some of the efforts being underwritten or assisted by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) and its partner agencies to promote safety and prevent violence in schools all over the Commonwealth. SCHOOL VIOLENCE: THE PROBLEM Obviously, events like those at Edinboro and Littleton are isolated tragedies, not trend indicators. If anything, the larger trends run the other way: the best available data indicate that serious violent crime in schools is not on the rise in fact it has been declining slightly. (See The Good News About School Crime and Violence. ) The same is true of overall in-school crime. Even in-school homicides have become somewhat more rare in the last few years, not less. But that doesn t mean America s parents, educators, and juvenile justice professionals don t have reason to be concerned about school violence generally. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s 1997 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, 15% of U.S. high school students reported involvement in a physical fight or fights on school property in the preceding year. A third had had property stolen or vandalized in school. Seven percent had been threatened or injured with a weapon. At least one day in the previous month, 9% reported having carried a weapon on school Juvenile Advisory 1 Committee Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency

THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT SCHOOL CRIME AND VIOLENCE School crime has been falling. Between 1993 and 1996, the most recent years for which complete data are available, the per capita school crime rate actually declined, from 164 crimes per 1,000 students (ages 12-18) to about 128 crimes. Most of these crimes (62% of the estimated total in 1996) were thefts. But violent in-school crime (including simple assaults as well as more serious crimes) also fell during this period, from 67 crimes per 1,000 students in 1993 to 49 in 1996. Homicide in school happens rarely. A 1996 study concluded that, during the 1992-93 and 1993-94 school years, 63 students were murdered in America s schools. By way of rough comparison, during the combined 1992 and 1993 calendar years, more than a hundred times that number 7,357 school-age young people were murdered altogether. Most serious school crime is concentrated in a minority of schools. According to a survey of school administrators, only 10% of all public schools about 1 of every 5 high schools and middle schools, but only 1 in 25 elementary schools had to report a serious violent crime to the police during the 1996-97 school year. Source: Snyder, Howard N., and Sickmund, Melissa. (1999). Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. property, and 4% had been too afraid to come to school at all. There is reason for serious concern in Pennsylvania as well. John Gillette s death in Edinboro was the state s tenth school-associated violent death since the beginning of the 1992-93 school year, according to a rough running count kept by the National School Safety Center. During the 1997-98 school year, according to figures compiled by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in its Annual Report on School Violence and Weapons Possession, Pennsylvania schools reported 10,076 assaults on students and 2,133 assaults on school staff members. Students were found with weapons usually knives, blunt instruments, and the like, but occasionally guns in 5,830 reported cases. Law enforcement agencies had to be contacted by school officials 10,365 times, resulting in 3,110 arrests. A total of 27,693 students received out-ofschool suspensions or expulsions for these offenses, and an additional 1,579 were reassigned to alternative education programs. In other words, here as elsewhere, making schools safe and orderly places to learn will take work not to mention imagination, resources, and conspicuously dedicated people. Fortunately, in Pennsylvania, none of these have been lacking. SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS One of the most direct ways to keep crime out of the schools may be to bring law enforcement into them. School Resource Officer (SRO) programs around the Commonwealth are doing just that. As uniformed police officers stationed directly in school buildings, SROs are obviously in a position to deter would-be offenders and provide a rapid response to threatened violence on school property. But SROs provide much more than armed security, advocates of the program say serving as mentors, counselors, educators, and role models as well as guardians of the law for the students they see every day. If calmer, safer schools are the result, it may have less to do with the guns and badges SROs bring to work with them than with the relationships they form when they get there. Beginning with support for six local SRO programs in 1998, the PCCD is now funding SRO programs in 20 communities around the state, and will commit a total of nearly $2 million to SRO programs in the next few years. In Bensalem Township, just outside Philadelphia, Officer Val Ridge, one of the original class of SROs hired with PCCD support, is now in her second year as SRO at Bensalem High School. With regard to school violence prevention, Ridge agrees that her job is a bit more complicated than armed deterrence: I have a role in the education end of it. Just about every day she appears in classrooms, she says sometimes by prior arrangement with instructors, sometimes just popping in to make presentations and answer questions on crime and law-related issues. Students might hear from her about everything from underage drinking to date rape, she says, but one persistent theme in her talks is weapons and particularly what to do if you know somebody who has one. Ridge has a mailbox in the school where she sometimes receives anonymous tips. She also has an office for confidential meetings with students, and she uses it. I have kids coming to see me 2

every day, she says. In Ridge s view, one of the primary ways the SRO program works to prevent serious school crime is that it bridges the gap between police and students. In fact, one of the first questions she asks when entering a classroom is, Who in here doesn t like cops? And hands do go up. I respect that, Ridge says. You might have had a bad situation with a cop somewhere along the line. But it doesn t take much exposure to Ridge s humor, her caring, and her candor We talk to them at their level, she says, not like we re high and mighty to change most students minds. Some of Ridge s fellow police officers have had their minds changed as well. When she first moved out of the local stationhouse and into the high school, she says, I was called Kindergarten Cop and everything else by Bensalem police who doubted the value of the SRO program. But now Ridge s colleagues have come around to seeing the benefits of her close contacts with local youths: I get calls from street cops all night long, [asking] Do you know this kid? she laughs. Ultimately, of course, Ridge can t say precisely what her presence at Bensalem High School for the last year and a half has meant for the safety of students, teachers, and staff there. She s never had to draw her gun. But she s never been without it, either. If I m in uniform, this is part of my uniform, she says simply. Nevertheless, she knows the job of protecting children takes more than just hardware; if a school s not safe, no metal detector will make it safe. (Anyway, she points out dryly, Bensalem High School has ninety-three doors. ) Rather, preventing school violence has to be a matter of engaging, understanding and helping troubled kids one by one. That s why, Ridge says, I hope everybody in the state of Pennsylvania gets an SRO. SCHOOL-BASED PROBATION School Resource Officers are not the only representatives of the law working in Pennsylvania s schools these days. Some 150 juvenile probation officers are currently stationed in schools in 46 of the Commonwealth s 67 counties, thanks in large part to substantial funding from the PCCD and the Juvenile Court Judges Commission s grant-in-aid program. They are there primarily because that s where their probationers are while standard probation supervision may entail no more than a meeting or two a month, school-based probation officers can and often do have contact with their whole caseloads every single school day. But many observers say school-based probation yields benefits that go beyond more effective probation monitoring, including more impact on at-risk as well as delinquent kids, better communication between WHO S WHO IN PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL VIOLENCE PREVENTION Governor s Community Partnership for Safe Children: Created by executive order in September, 1995, chaired by the First Lady of Pennsylvania, and made up of the Chairs of the PCCD and the Juvenile Court Judges Commission, the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, the Secretaries of Education, Health, Welfare, and the Budget, and a number of other State and local officials, the purpose of the Children s Partnership is to assist local communities in developing effective violence reduction programs and services; to increase awareness and knowledge among Pennsylvanians concerning the causes of youth violence; and to identify existing model prevention strategies that can be replicated throughout Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Department of Education s Center for Safe Schools: The Center handles many of the violenceprevention duties delegated to the Department of Education by the Safe Schools Act in 1995. It trains schools and communities in effective violence prevention; provides technical assistance to school districts regarding implementation of school safety legislation; collects and disseminates resource information to assist schools wishing to develop their own violence prevention programs; and helps administer Safe Schools Grants and other school violence prevention grants. Pennsylvania Department of Health: In the 1980 s, the Department s Office of Drug and Alcohol Programs provided the original seed money for Student Assistance Programs in Pennsylvania, and the Department still participates in statewide coordination of Student Assistance Services. In addition, in fulfillment of its injury prevention mission, the Department is involved in a number of other school safety initiatives, including (as co-sponsor) the Violence-Free Youth Challenge program. Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare: Like the Department of Health, the Department of Public Welfare cosponsors the Violence-Free Youth Challenge program, and, through its Office of Mental Health & Substance Abuse, participates in the statewide coordination of Student Assistance Services. 3

KEY SCHOOL SAFETY LEGISLATION IN PENNSYLVANIA Act 26 of 1995, known as the Safe Schools Act, provided for the one-year expulsion of students in possession of weapons on school property. The measure also established the Department of Education s Office of Safe Schools to coordinate anti-violence efforts to and assist in the development of local violence prevention programs. Finally, it imposed reporting requirements regarding incidents of violence and weapons possession on school property information that is now collected each year by the Department of Education and published in The Annual Report on School Violence and Weapons Possession. Act 30 of 1995 amended the Pennsylvania Juvenile Act to require juvenile probation departments to disclose information to school principals regarding students who have been adjudicated delinquent. Act 30 of 1997 toughened up background check requirements for prospective school employees and established a procedure for appointment of school police officers. Act 36 of 1999 expanded the range of activities that may be funded through Safe Schools Grants to include, among others, the development of district-wide school safety plans, alternative education programs for disruptive students, referral training for Student Assistance Program team members, the purchase of security technology and equipment, and the institution of student, staff and visitor identification systems. key youth services institutions, and safer and more orderly schools. There is no doubt that on-site observers believe school-based probation in Pennsylvania is contributing to the effort to make schools safer. One survey of the state s school-based probation officers, school administrators, and students on school-based probation, conducted under the direction of Dr. David Metzger of the University of Pennsylvania beginning in 1996, found strong support in all three groups for the view that the program was effective in reducing misbehavior in school. Of 52 Pennsylvania school administrators surveyed by Metzger, 33 (63.5%) said that school-based probation officers had been very helpful in maintaining order in their schools, and another 16 (30.8%) found them at least somewhat helpful (See "Evaluating Pennsylvania School Safety Initiatives"). It makes sense. Not only are school-based probation officers in a better position to reach the sometimes violent kids on their caseloads. Not only are they capable, as officers of the juvenile court, of reacting instantly to threats, fighting and other delinquent behavior on the part of other students, often performing intake processing right on the spot. But their day-to-day involvement in the life of the schools where they work as caring adults as well as representatives of the juvenile justice system, as classroom presenters and assembly speakers, volunteer athletic coaches, tutors and advisors as well as adjunct disciplinarians tends to expand their influence outward. Essentially, what it gives them are opportunities: to engage, understand, and decisively influence troubled and potentially disruptive young people, wherever they find them. STUDENT ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS School-based probation officers throughout Pennsylvania are specially trained to work alongside school social workers, counselors, teachers, administrators, and other school professionals in Student Assistance Program teams another broadbased effort both to help individual students in need and to ensure that Pennsylvania schools are safe and orderly places for learning. Coordinated by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in collaboration with the Departments of Health and Public Welfare and the PCCD, the Student Assistance Program (SAP) creates formal structures for identifying students in trouble and offering them and their families access to whatever professional help they may need. SAP teams are now operating in over a thousand public and private schools in Pennsylvania. Referrals to these teams may be triggered by signs of substance abuse, by erratic behavior, by misconduct of various kinds, by sudden changes for the worse in school performance or attendance. A good student suddenly stops caring. An easygoing kid can t seem to get along with anybody anymore. It may be nothing. But usually someone notices that something isn t quite right, in the words of Sherry Peters, Mental Health SAP Coordinator for the Department of 4

Public Welfare s Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. Following a referral, the SAP team will assess the situation and, if the case seems to warrant it, contact the student s parents to solicit their cooperation, learn more about the causes of the trouble, and eventually recommend and arrange for services counseling, tutoring, treatment, mediation and the like to help. Sometimes, from a school safety perspective, early interventions like these can make all the difference. Before the introduction of the SAP team concept to Pennsylvania in the mid- 1980 s, and the expansion of the program throughout the Commonwealth by the early 1990 s, students with serious but subtle problems fell easily through the cracks in the system sometimes with tragic results. Since Student Assistance Programs have been implemented in school settings, Peters says, the chances of identifying kids who need help are much, much greater. Of course, this is by nature a high-volume business. In the 1997-98 school year, SAP teams in Pennsylvania received referrals regarding 59,578 students, according to data from SAP reporting forms submitted to the state and compiled in the annual SAP Performance Report. The most common reasons for referral at most grade levels were drug and alcohol issues, behavioral problems, poor school performance, and truancy. A total of 47,289 cases were judged serious enough to warrant further action. Inevitably, given this volume of referrals, some will be false alarms, according to Renee Urick, a Regional SAP Coordinator based in Washington, PA. But most are pretty serious. The job of an SAP team, she says, is to sift, to listen carefully, to react quickly to get kids on the first behavioral indicators, as she puts it. And hope nobody gets overlooked. We will never get every kid, Urick admits. Some of them mask so well. Seeing that troubled students get the help they need before their troubles escalate into violence takes more than vigilance sometimes. It takes luck. And you may never know when you ve been lucky. You know if you don t get treatment for folks that really need it, Urick says, they re going to go down the hill. But you can only guess at what you prevented. SAFE SCHOOLS GRANTS AND THE BLUEPRINTS PROGRAMS This school year, funding for Student Assistance Program training and expansion in many school districts in Pennsylvania not to mention new violence-prevention curricula, district-wide risk DEVELOPMENTAL PATHWAYS LEADING TO VIOLENCE The Pittsburgh Youth Study, an ambitious longitudinal research project sponsored by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention s Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency, has yielded some interesting insights into the ways young people typically go wrong and where to begin looking for signs of trouble. The study followed 1,517 inner-city boys from Pittsburgh over more than a decade in an effort to identify risk factors associated with delinquency and protective factors associated with positive development and law-abiding behavior. For school administrators, educators, and others interested in early intervention and violence prevention, the most important finding documented by the Pittsburgh Youth Study is that school-age boys tend to follow one of three common developmental pathways in their progress from mere misbehavior to serious delinquency: The Authority Conflict Pathway begins before age 12 with various forms of stubborn behavior, followed by disobedience/ defiance, followed in turn by such acts of authority avoidance as staying out late, skipping school, and running away. The Covert Pathway begins with minor covert misconduct such as lying and shoplifting, which may be followed by property damage such as vandalism and firesetting, and eventually by such property crimes as fraud, burglary, and serious theft. The Overt Pathway begins with bullying or other forms of minor aggression, progressing to individual and group fighting, and finally to violent physical attacks. According to Pittsburgh Youth Study researchers, one lesson that emerges from their work is that help should be sought as soon as possible for children who show signs of embarking on any of these pathways. For more information, see Kelley, B.T., Loeber, R., Keenan, K., and DeLamatre, M., 1997. Developmental Pathways in Boys Disruptive and Delinquent Behavior. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 5

EVALUATING PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL SAFETY INITIATIVES Completed and ongoing efforts to evaluate Pennsylvania school violence prevention programs include: School Resource Officer Program: The PCCD is funding an evaluation of SRO programs it has supported in six police jurisdictions since 1998. Evaluators will be collecting data on incidents of violence, weapons possession, and other offenses on school property, both in SRO schools and in a selection of demographically matched non-sro schools. Pre- and post-program juvenile arrest data will also be evaluated to determine SRO impact on juvenile crime in the communities in which SRO programs operate. Finally, pre- and post-intervention surveys of student attitudes will measure program effects on such matters as the fear of crime and violence in schools. Student Assistance Program: A recently completed evaluation of the SAP conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and based on an analysis of SAP performance report data, a statewide SAP team member mail survey, a telephone survey of county administrators, site visits and focus group discussions reached seven broad conclusions about the program. Among them: the SAP referral and monitoring process is generally operating smoothly; parents are being systematically contacted and involved in the process; and School-Based Probation Officers are increasingly important members of SAP teams in schools where they are present. (See Fertman, C., Evaluation Report: The Student Assistance Program in Pennsylvania, July 1, 1998 June 30, 1999, Harrisburg, PA: PCCD, 1999.) School-Based Probation: A study of school-based probation in Pennsylvania found that school-based probation officers, school administrators, and students on school-based probation across the Commonwealth strongly believed that the program was effective in boosting attendance and academic performance and reducing misbehavior in school. A comparison of 75 randomly selected school-based probation clients with 75 regular probation clients matched on age, race, gender, crime, and county of supervision revealed that school-based probation clients spent significantly more time in the community without being charged with new offenses or placed in custody. When new charges were filed against juveniles on school-based probation, they were less likely to be for serious crimes. The resulting placement cost savings were projected at $6665 per school-based probation client. (See Metzger, D., and Tobin-Fiore, D., School-Based Probation in Pennsylvania: Final Report, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, Center for Studies of Addiction, October 1997.) assessments, conflict resolution and peer-to-peer mentoring programs, and a variety of other locally managed school safety promotion initiatives is being provided through Safe Schools Grants from the Department of Education s Office for Safe Schools. In all, during 1999/2000 more than 400 public school districts, charter schools, intermediate units, and vocational technical schools will be receiving some $20 million in Safe Schools Grants. The money is paying for new visitor-screening and identification equipment purchases and the hiring of security guards and greeters as well as for new training and program implementation and expansion. But the intent behind the grant program, according to Ellen Adler of the Center for Safe Schools, was to encourage long-term, comprehensive, research-based, collaborative efforts to come to grips with school violence at the local level. That was the essence of what we hoped people would do with this money, Adler says. Act 36 of 1999, which amended Pennsylvania s Safe Schools Act to broaden the purposes for which Safe Schools Grants may be made, specifically added language authorizing grants for development and implementation of research-based violence prevention programs that address risk factors to reduce incidents of problem behaviors among students. A good example would be PATHS Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. PATHS is one of the ten Blueprints model violence-prevention programs, each of which has been demonstrated to be effective, practical, replicable, and capable of forming the nucleus of a national violence-prevention effort. The rigorous Blueprints program selection process was undertaken in 1996, with funding from the PCCD and other sources, by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder. This year several Pennsylvania school districts will be using Safe Schools Grants to implement the interactive PATHS curriculum, which is designed to reduce school violence by teaching grade school children self-control, emotional literacy, interpersonal competence, and social problemsolving skills. PATHS can be implemented by teachers after a three-day training workshop, and is 6

capable of being adapted to special needs as well as mainstream children. Matched control studies have shown that PATHS works to improve students self-control, enhance their ability to tolerate frustration, and decrease overall in-school aggression and misconduct. According to PATHS co-developer Mark Greenberg at Penn State University s Prevention Research Center, PATHS is now being implemented in a number of school districts across the Commonwealth, including Erie, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Bellefont, Tyrone, and Mecklen, among others. PATHS is not the only Blueprints program that focuses directly on in-school violence. Another is the Bullying Prevention Program, which aims to increase awareness of bullying among primary and secondary schoolchildren, provide support and protection for its victims, and recruit parents and teachers into the effort to discourage it. Based on a model originally developed and tested in Bergen, Norway, the program has been shown to result in radical reduction of bullying and other anti-social behavior and improvement in school social climate. Five York County schools, with assistance from the PCCD and the Governor s Community Partnership for Safe Children, are implementing a Bullying Prevention program; hiring, training, planning and committee work are going on now, with implementation in the schools scheduled for the fall of 2000. In fact, Governor Ridge's FY 99-00 budget includes $4 million to fund research-based violence prevention SCHOOL VIOLENCE PREVENTION ON THE WEB The Center for Schools and Communities/Center for Safe Schools http://www.center-school.org/ The Center for Safe Schools is funded by a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Education to provide training, technical assistance, program evaluation, research and resource development on school safety issues to Pennsylvania s schools and school districts. Visitors to this site will find descriptions of the Center s extensive resource lending library and on-line access to Center publications, including Developing Good Crisis Plans. National Resource Center for Safe Schools http://www.nwrel.org/safe Operated by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory with start-up funding from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, this site features a school safety-related events calendar, access to several resource databases, FAQ and Facts & Figures pages on school violence and violence prevention, and extensive links to other websites devoted to school safety issues. National School Safety Center http://www.nsscl.org/home.htm The highlight of this site, a creation of a nonprofit association affiliated with Pepperdine University, is the School Associated Violent Deaths Report, which gives a capsule description, based on contemporaneous newspaper accounts, of every homicide or suicide occurring in or near an America school since the start of the 1992-93 academic year. The listing is continually updated. Most entries include the date of the incident, the name and location of the school, and the names and ages of those involved, as well as weapons used, motives, and other particulars regarding the circumstances. National Association of Attorneys General/National School Board Association, Keep Schools Safe Program http://www.keepschoolssafe.org This relatively new site contains lots of good information relating to school security plans, crisis management, environmental design, drug and alcohol prevention, gangs, school discipline matters, and a host of other subjects relating to school safety, as well as plenty of links to other web resources. Center for the Prevention of School Violence http://www2.ncsu.edu:8010/ncsu/cep/previolence/ Perhaps because North Carolina has emerged as a leader in School Resource Officer programs in recent years, the most interesting feature of this site, which is operated by the Raleigh-based Center for the Prevention of School Violence at North Carolina State University, is its web conferencing forum for SROs. The forum gives SROs from around the country a chance to exchange views, information, and advice on the stresses and challenges of working in schools, their equipment and training needs, and everything else that relates to their jobs. 7

strategies administered by the Partnership through the PCCD. OTHER EFFORTS The above discussion has hardly scratched the surface of school violence prevention and intervention activity in Pennsylvania. No one newsletter could do more. Especially in the current climate, there are scores if not hundreds of highly focused local initiatives that have not been mentioned like the Checkmate program operated by Impact Services in Philadelphia, which targets its tutoring, advocacy, and life skills instruction efforts at high-risk students in a single urban middle school. There are broader-based regional programs like Hands Are Not For Hurting, a set of violence prevention/intervention curricula for grades K- through-12 that was originally developed by a Pittsburgh-based domestic violence agency with PCCD funding, and now has been successfully implemented in schools in 10 counties. There are promotional efforts like the Pennsylvania Medical Society Alliance s SAVE (Stop America s Violence Everywhere), SAVE Today, and Talk It Out programs. There are contests last spring 23 Pennsylvania schools competed in the Violence- Free Youth Challenge sponsored by the PCCD, the Governor s Community Partnership for Safe Children, the Departments of Health and Education, and Highmark Inc., under which prizes of cash and equipment were awarded to creative violenceprevention programs designed by the students themselves. And of course there are the widespread and substantially funded Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) and Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) programs, for which the PCCD handles training and grant administration, and which are consciously aimed at teaching Pennsylvania students to resist the lure of violence as well as those of drugs and gangs. All these Pennsylvania school violence prevention efforts represent elaborate variations on a theme but the theme itself is simple. Governor Tom Ridge put it pretty well in August of this year, during his announcement of a new round of Safe Schools Grants, when he stated what he called the bottom line : any level of violence in our schools is simply unacceptable. Our students deserve to learn and to grow in a place that is safe. Our teachers deserve to work in a place that is free from the threat of violence. And our parents deserve to know that from the moment their kids step on the school bus they re protected from danger. National Center for Juvenile Justice P.O. Box 1167 Harrisburg, PA 17108-1167 BULK RATE U.S. Postage P A I D Permit No. 901 Harrisburg, Pa. ATTENTION: RECIPIENT If label is incorrect, please make corrections and return label to NCJJ. This project was supported by subgrant #98-J-05-8576 awarded by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). The awarded funds originate with the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions contained within this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent any official position, policy or view of PCCD or the U.S. Department of Justice. 8