U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

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SAFE AND DRUG FREE SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE

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MEETING

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MONDAY,

AUGUST 21, 2006

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The above-entitled matter convened at 9:00 a.m. in the Barnard
Auditorium, 400 Maryland Avenue, Southwest, Washington, D.C., David
Long, Chair, presiding.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:

DAVID LONG Chair

KIM DUDE Member

FREDERICK ELLIS Member

MONTEAN JACKSON Member

RUSSELL JONES Member

SHEPPARD KELLAM Member

TOMMY LEDBETTER Member

SETH NORMAN Member

MICHAEL PIMENTEL Member

DEBORAH PRICE Member

DENNIS ROMERO Member

BELINDA SIMS Member

MARY ANN SOLBERG Member

HOPE TAFT Member

HOWELL WECHSLER Member

MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES:

DONNI LeBOEUF Representing J. Robert Flores, Department of Justice

MEMBERS UNABLE TO ATTEND:

RALPH HINGSON

OFFICE OF SAFE AND DRUG FREE SCHOOLS:

CATHERINE DAVIS Designated Federal Officer

WILLIAM MODZELESKI

PANELISTS

MIKE HERMANN Executive Director, Office of School Health, Safety and
Learning Support, Tennessee Department of Education

JOHN BYNOE Associate Commissioner, Center for Student Support,
Massachusetts Department of Education

JEFF BARBER Safe and Drug Free Schools Coordinator, Indiana Department
of Education, and President, Network of Safe and Drug Free Schools
Coordinators

MONA JOHNSON Program Supervisor, Washington State Department of Public
Instruction, and Vice President, Network of Safe and Drug Free Schools
Coordinators

CLARENCE JONES Coordinator, Safe and Drug Free Schools, Fairfax County
Public Schools

ELLEN MOREHOUSE Executive Director, Student Assistance Services
Corporation

ARTHUR DEAN Chairman and CEO, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America

PANELISTS (CONT.)

GUS FRIAS Coordinator of School Safety Programs, Los Angeles County
Department of Education

PETER REUTER Professor, School of Public Policy, Department of
Criminology, University of Maryland

ZILI SLOBODA Senior Research Associate, Institute for Health and Social
Policy, University of Akron

CHRIS RINGWALT Senior Research Scientist, Chapel Hill Center Pacific
Institute for Research and Evaluation

EDWARD RAY Chief, Department of Safety and Security, Denver Public
Schools

LORRAINE ALLEN Director, Office of Safe Schools, Florida Department of
Education

JON AKERS Executive Director, Kentucky Center for School Safety, Eastern
Kentucky University

CYNTHIA L. TIMMONS Director, Children of Promise Mentors of Hope,
University of Oklahoma Outreach

A G E N D A

OPENING STATEMENT AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 5

INTRODUCTIONS OF PANEL: STATE EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE 7

PANELIST PRESENTATIONS 9

Mike Herman - Executive Director,

Office of School Health

John Bynoe - Associate Commissioner,

Center for Student Support

Jeff Barber - Safe and Drug Free Schools

Coordinator

Mona Johnson - Program Supervisor

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS: COMMITTEE TO PANELISTS 68

BREAK 95

INTRODUCTIONS OF PANEL II: LOCAL EDUCATION PERSPECTIVES 95

Clarence Jones - Coordinator,

Safe and Drug Free Schools

Ellen Morehouse - Executive Director

Student Assistance Services Corporation

General Arthur Dean - Chairman and CEO

Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America

Gus Frias - Coordinator of School Safety

Programs

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 141

LUNCH 172

PANELIST PRESENTATIONS 175

Peter Reuter - Professor, School of Public

Policy

Zili Sloboda - Senior Research Associate

Institute for Health and Social Policy

Chris Ringwalt - Senior Research Scientist

Chapel Hill Center

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 211

BREAK 248

INTRODUCTIONS OF PANEL IV: SCHOOL SAFETY AND PREPAREDNESS

PERSPECTIVE 250

Edward Ray - Chief

Department of Safety and Security

Lorraine Allen - Director

Office of Safe Schools

Jon Akers - Executive Director

Kentucy Center for School Safety

Cynthia Timmons - Director

Children of Promise Mentors of Hope

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS 307

SUMMARY AND CLOSING REMARKS 338

ADJOURN 343

P R O C E E D I N G S

(9:06:39 a.m.)

DR. LONG:  If we could have everyone find their seats, we\'ll go ahead
and get started. As we get started, first of all, I would like to
welcome everyone. Also, a reminder for those on the committee, and those
that will be on the various groups that will be presenting to us, please
make sure that your microphone is on as you speak because this is all
being recorded.

I would like to, as we get started, just mention something. I\'m going
to re-mention it because I\'ve talked to a few of the folks on the
Advisory Committee, and also for the folks that are going to have the
first panel, and those in the audience. We see this as an extremely
important day and a half, and we also - I think of all us realize that
when we get to the State Grant Program and what we\'re going to be
talking about here for the next day and a half, that it\'s extremely
important that we understand that we need to have some changes, be
thinking about some changes. It isn\'t status quo, and it will not, and
cannot be same old-same old, so that\'s why it\'s so critically
important with that thought in mind that as we listen to the experts,
starting with the group of four in front of us right now, that we as a
committee be thinking about and hone our questions so that they\'re very
sharp, and that we can get at the information so that we can start to
synthesize the information to get some very creative ideas and solutions
to present to the secretary. So with that in mind, if we can, we\'ll go
ahead and start with the first panel.

I do want to remind as we do that, that if we have anyone that has any
degree of hearing impairment to please let us know, because we have some
assistance for those folks. So if you do, would you please indicate that
to Catherine, who\'s sitting right at the end here, and we\'ll make the
appropriate adjustments. None? Okay, thank you.

Before we start with the first panel, the reminder to you about the
agenda for the day, the introduction of the panel will start in about
one minute. We\'re going to stay right on time. Introductions are 9 to
9:05, it is now 9:05, and you can see it on the screen behind you for
those of you in the audience. We\'ll start with that introduction. And
for those of you on the panel, and we have the information that you
sent. We want to hear all of your expertise. We are designed for the
first panel to go from 9:10 to 10:10, and then questions and answers
10:10 to 10:40. So if we could ask that the panel members, the
individuals\' presentations about eight to ten minutes, then we\'ll hear
the information. We\'ve read it, but we want to get to those questions
so we can have that interaction so we can really get your thoughts, if
that makes sense. So I\'ll be the person that will be watching, and if
it\'s getting close, what I\'ll do is stand up and wave my arm, so if we
could get your help with that.

First, I want to introduce the individual panel members for our first
panel, \"The State Education Perspective\". First of all, Mike Hermann,
and Mike serves as Executive Director of the Office of School Health
Safety and Learning Support within the Tennessee Department of
Education. His background in the prevention field began more than 20
years ago when he was hired to help implement the recommendations of
then Governor Lamar Alexander\'s task force on Youth and Alcohol and
Drug Abuse. He currently oversees all activities within the State
Department related to health and safety, as well as after-school and
extended learning. I was talking to Mike earlier. Actually, I think he
runs everything in that department. I think you said you even drive a
bus.

Next to Mike is John Bynoe, and John is the Associate Commissioner for
the Massachusetts Department of Education. I think the important thing
about John is that he\'s been with the Department for 25 years, and has
now risen to the position of Associate Commissioner. And he runs all
kinds of programs, we were talking about it earlier. John - Health
Safety Drug Free Schools, Career Voc Tech education, school and student
secondary support services, so again, someone with a lot of years of
experience and depth of expertise.

Next is Jeff Barber, and Jeff is a Safe and Drug Free Schools
Coordinator for the Indiana Department of Education, as well as the
President of the National Network of Safe and Drug Free Schools
Coordinators. The mission of the National Network for Safe and Drug Free
Schools and Communities is to act as an advocacy group for the Safe and
Drug Free Schools and Communities program, and to enhance communication
between federal, state, and local agencies.

And lastly, certainly not least, Mona Johnson. I was going to introduce
you first, I want to say that up front. Mona currently serves as Program
Supervisor for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in
Olympia, Washington. And Mona manages state and federal grant programs
related to prevention and intervention services, Safe and Drug Free
Schools Supportive Learning Environment, with many years in Student
Assistance profession prior to joining OSPI, Mona continues to work as a
consultant providing training in the areas of professional wellness.

Thanks to all of you for being here, and we\'re looking forward to
hearing from you. Mike, if we could start with you.

MR. HERMANN:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I want
to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you this
morning about the State Grants portions of the Safe and Drug Free
Schools program. I consider this to be a very important meeting, and I
want to get right to the heart of my remarks. I\'ve tried roughly to
follow the outline of the questions that were laid out for the Advisory
Council.

Let me start with strengths first. The State Grants program is the only
source of funding for alcohol and drug education, and violence
prevention that reaches into virtually every school district in
Tennessee. Without the State Grants program, the overwhelming majority
of our schools simply would not be able to address these two issues in
any kind of systematic or ongoing way.

Second, and I think equally important, the State Grants program provides
an infrastructure at both the state and local level for school-based
policy and practice in these two important areas. When Tennessee began a
major methamphetamine initiative last year, this infrastructure enabled
us to reach the education community and those that could make things
happen quickly and efficiently.

Similarly, last year when our Homeland Security folks wanted to develop
an initiative to improve the security and preparedness of our schools,
we worked through that same infrastructure. Both of those initiatives
have relied very heavily upon the infrastructure that was created.

Last November, this infrastructure was particularly important when a
student of our\'s entered a school and shot three administrators,
killing one. The infrastructure that we had in place and the
relationships that we had with the U.S. Department of Education enabled
us to respond very quickly, and to restore the learning environment. I
know that very similar things occurred in Mississippi following
Hurricane Katrina, and in Minnesota following the shootings at Red Lake.

The State Grants program is the only universal funding stream that
addresses some of our most significant barriers to learning. The ability
of students to learn and teachers to teach is directly related to the
safety of our schools, and to the health and wellness of our students.
This program is as much a school improvement process, as it is an
alcohol and drug, and violence prevention program.

In terms of challenges, I think the State Grants program clearly has its
share of challenges, most notorious of which is undoubtedly the
difficulty we have in demonstrating effectiveness. Because each local
program is different, it\'s almost impossible to develop a universal set
of outcome indicators. And most of our local managers are educators,
they\'re not evaluators. The small amount of funding most districts
receive is frequently cited as being too little to implement
research-proven programs. I would submit to the committee that there are
many effective strategies that actually require very little funding to
implement.

The real challenge with small amounts of funding is that the manager at
the local level probably doesn\'t have the time or the training to
really do the job that we would like to see done. Another challenge, I
think, is certainly one of perception. Too often in education and
government circles we perceive importance and funding to be one and the
same. As a result, at the state and local level, and I\'m sure at the
federal level, our managers must be very strong if they\'re going to be
heard in the current environment.

I think the overwhelming question is, is the State Grants program
effective in promoting safe and drug free schools? In our state, I
certainly think so. Our most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey data
indicates consistent and significant declines in almost every category
of drug usage. The number of guns in our schools has declined every year
for the past seven years.

By using our discretionary funds to cover out-of-pocket expenses, over
1,200 of our schools have implemented research-proven programs like Life
Skills, Second Step, and Olweus. Three of our four urban school
districts have long-running Student Assistance Programs that have been
able to use State Grants funds to leverage strong fiscal support from
their communities. In Nashville, every dollar of State Grants funds is
matched by a dollar and a half of local funding.

A lot of work has gone into developing the specific indicators that will
be a part of the uniform management information system. The adoption of
those measures will be invaluable in allowing us to compare apples to
apples across districts and states, and to draw attention to the extent
of our challenge. However, I\'m afraid that they will be of limited
value in demonstrating effectiveness.

It would be nice to be able to tie changes in humors indicators to
actions taken with Safe and Drug Free Schools funds, but with funding
that hovers in the five dollar per student range, I just don\'t think
that\'s a realistic expectation.

I think a more productive and practical option would be to identify the
specific strategies that we know from research and experience are tied
to the outcomes that we desire. We can support and document the adoption
of research-proven practices, particularly when federal and state
resources are directed toward strengthening the knowledge and skills of
our local managers.

I think one of the most important items this committee can look at is
how to transfer what is learned from research and national programs to
the local level. So much of what is needed to be done is not dependent
upon funding, but rather upon changes in policy and practice. Action is
more important than programs. The State Grants program can and should be
the legs of our national strategy relative to education, and that
strategy should be built on specific proven activities, not what is
currently popular.

In terms of structure of the State Grants program, I think it\'s
important to continue making funding available to every school district,
but I think across the board we need to be more prescriptive about how
the program is administered. This would probably mean that some
districts, and possibly some states, would choose not to participate.
But at the same time, I think we\'ve got to provide a strong network of
training so that all schools, including those schools that choose not to
pursue funding, can receive assistance. This can be done when federal
and state resources are combined. I think it would also require that
additional flexibility for states be allowed in the awarding of funds,
including the ability of states to set aside a larger portion for
statewide initiatives.

Just a note about emergency management issues. Our schools have been
significantly impacted by events like the terrorist attacks on September
the 11^th^ and Hurricane Katrina. Much of the basic planning and
response procedures that have been followed were developed as a result
of a series of school shootings that began more than 10 years ago. One
important change, I think, is that we now realize the role that schools
can and must play in the overall community response process. Public
information, emergency sheltering, feeding and transportation are tasks
that schools are uniquely prepared to provide for the community, but in
order for that to happen, we have to, once again, be sure that we have
this infrastructure in place that includes federal, state, and local
players.

In closing, let me just say that I think to a large extent many of the
questions that will be raised today come down to a question of will. Do
we have the will, particularly at the federal and state level, to make
this program work? I know that everyone sitting on this panel can
provide you with examples of districts that are doing outstanding work
with very limited funding. We can hold everyone to those higher
standards if we are prepared to provide the necessary leadership. The
last several years have been difficult for the State Grants program, No
Child Left Behind, major budget cuts, and an ongoing threat of
elimination have been difficult to weather. But despite it all, we still
have an experienced and committed cadre of folks out there that are
ready to do what needs to be done. They deserve a long-term commitment.

I encourage you to recognize the important role that the State Grants
program must play if we\'re going to be serious in our commitment to
safe and drug free schools and communities. Thank you very much for
allowing me the opportunity to speak.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Mike. We appreciate that. Again a
reminder, as we start down this path, that we\'ll hear the presentations
from each of the panelists, and then we\'ll open it up for questions,
and have a dialogue back and forth with the committee and the panelists.
And we set this up as a reminder to have a call go off to remind all of
us that we need to shut our cell phones off so that we don\'t have
interruptions, so if you\'d please shut those off or turn them on
vibrate, it would be appreciated. And with that, we will move to Mr.
John Bynoe. John.

MR. BYNOE:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, also, would like to thank the
committee for providing me this opportunity to give you my thoughts on
the Safe and Drug Free School State Grants program. One of the problems
of following Mike is that Mike and I have been joined at the hip for
about the 15 years I\'ve been involved with drug free schools. We\'ve
been on about 15 panels in those 15 years, so much of what Mike has
said, I would just say ditto to; but I also would like to give you the
Massachusetts spin on many of those things.

In Massachusetts, as my notes indicated, we have set up a system where
we have specific liaisons to districts. In Massachusetts, only 280 out
of 380 districts actually take the funds; again, because of the amount
of money that\'s available. Usually those districts don\'t have high,
low-income populations, and they get the minimum amount, the per pupil
allocation, which in Massachusetts is less than five dollars a child. I
think, also, the fact that we use the Census data and low-income data, I
think different states get different amounts, so the per pupil
allocation is not even uniform across the country; because I look at my
per pupil allocation for this coming year. If you are a district that
does not have a Title 1 population, it\'s three dollars or less a child,
so I know even more districts are going to refuse to take the money.

That said, there are strengths of the program. I think one of the major
strengths of the program is the issue of objective analysis of data.
Most people think this is new, but this has been in place since drug
free schools. There always has been a needs assessment, there always has
been measurable goals and objectives, so the Principles of Effectiveness
have always been in place. The only thing new in the principle of
effectiveness that people missed is the science-based research-proven
effective strategies, so four or five out of the Principles of
Effectiveness have always been in place, but they never have really been
legislated. But those in place now, districts now do a good data
analysis in order to determine what are putting kids at risk of either
substance abuse or violence. It also is helping them identify other
risks factors preventing kids from being successful.

I think as Mike has mentioned, one of the strengths of the program I
could say could be, because I don\'t think a lot of districts recognize
that it is truly part of school improvement. A lot of districts in
Massachusetts, we\'re still having conversations about how it fits in
school improvement.

One of the concerns I have is that I\'m not sure we as a nation
understand the importance of prevention, because when I look at the
goals for NCOB, safe and healthy school environment always seems to fall
off the table. We focus on the academic, the standards, but I never
really hear anybody talk about safe and healthy environments, so I think
that\'s a strength that\'s being missed, an opportunity being missed.

I think a strength in Massachusetts is also the collaborative efforts
that is going on between state, local, and community agencies. I now sit
on several statewide task forces with the Lieutenant Governor around
substance abuse. Anything that goes on in terms of substance abuse,
prevention of violence, I\'m there in the state, so the Department of
Education is a key player at the state level; whereas, before, in years
past we may not have been. Grantees have a larger selection of eligible
programs that could be using, but at the same time, I think that list
could be expanded. I think science-based is a good idea, but also in
terms of funding, it\'s not realistic for many districts, even though
the fact that I can have a waiver process, even districts can often meet
that waiver process because I\'m asking for three to five years worth of
evaluation data to prove that the program is effective. So I\'m not sure
how to make a balance of giving them opportunity of doing home-grown
programs, but at the same time, making sure that those programs work
without them being sold the program of the month, so to speak, because
oftentimes, the district will go to the last vendor heard because this
vendor says it will work, but oftentimes we know those programs are just
passing through, or someone is trying to make money.

I think what\'s meeting the elements of the meeting the needs of
students and schools today, again, as I said earlier, is community
collaboration and community networking. The grant forces districts to
coordinate and utilize all these resources fully to address their needs
because they are finding that the little bit of money they do get from
safe and drug free schools, they now have to figure out how to leverage,
and how to bring partners in in order to do prevention. It enables them
to tap into local resources to provide violence prevention programs and
evaluate services to school districts.

Again, the use of research-based programs that are based on local data
is another thing that\'s working. And in terms of us working as a state,
the simple meeting the parent program piece, having districts understand
the issue of parenting and the participation of parents in programs
around prevention.

The way we determine assistant program reviews, we have what we call a
program called \"The Assurance Reviews\" on a regular basis in
Massachusetts every year. Safe and Drug Free Schools annually has been
part of that review. Unfortunately, this year because, again, the loss
of resources, Safe and Drug Free Schools reviews will take place, but
they\'ll have to take place in a different way. But what they have done
in the past, was able to go out not only to recognize whether or not
programs are in compliance, but to understand where program weakness is,
and able to write technical assistance around program planning and
improvement.

In terms of difficulties in remote areas, such as our rural setting, is
that because these settings are usually large regional school districts
with a variety of communities, there is usually not one central
community agency, or one central place. Every one of these may have
several little elementary school, and one regional high school. And they
don\'t necessarily allocate all their funds in one pot. Everybody wants
to take their little bit of money, so there is no systemic, or
systematic service delivery system there, and so the programs may not
match. Somebody may be doing Second Step, somebody may be doing Alert,
some may be doing something about alcohol, maybe something about
violence, so there\'s no uniform programming going on. And, oftentimes,
the money is so small, I\'m more concerned whether or not programs are
being implemented fidelity, or they\'re just doing pieces of programs.

They also have a hard time around being able to do evaluation; again,
because even if they come in as a unified district, they\'re trying to
evaluate multiple programs with little more money. One of the things
that we have done, though, is to work with the Governor program. Our
Governor\'s program and either our Governor\'s representative and
myself, and my Safe and Drug Free School Coordinator are talking on a
regular basis, so we make sure that where programs go in the
communities, whether large or small, they are coordinated, that Safe and
Drug Free Schools governor awards are coordinated with Safe and Drug
Free Schools SCA awards, to make sure that the programs are not
competing, but working together.

I think one of the things, or mechanisms that could be posed that would
help determine if a program is being supportive, and these funds are
effective in meeting the programs. I think right now we don\'t have a
requirement on the end-of-the year narrative. We ask for evaluation
results, but we don\'t ask what do those results mean to the districts.
I\'m not sure if we want to add another requirement given the little bit
of money, but I think it would be interesting to have districts really
take a hard look at what they think the issues and concerns are, giving
their pre and post data.

I think emerging facing students in school today that\'s not addressed,
and should be addressed in STA state grants. I have one answer for this
giving my statement, but recently, I just, as I was telling people, I
took my son to South Carolina, and this actually gave me an awakening. I
thought about Massachusetts, I thought about Boston, I thought about my
urban centers, I thought about the recent wake of violence and what\'s
going on. And these kids may or may not be in school. I mean, the teen
homicide rate in Boston for this summer is off the charts, but these
kids are out of school. But at the same time, when I was in South
Carolina, as I often do, I watch the local news to see what\'s going on.

I don\'t know if anybody heard the report about what\'s going on in
South Carolina this past week, where there was going to be an armed
assault at a football game. But the armed assault was going to
perpetrated by the Crips, but members of the Crips were also in the
\-- there was four U.S. Marines who were members of the Crips, who were
going to participate in this armed assault. So I\'m saying that to say,
you know, basically, these are emerging issues that are facing students
today in terms of gangs. These gants, the tentacles of the gangs are
reaching where we never would expect their reaching. I was actually
shocked that there were four U.S. Marines who were now members of the
Crips, who were now going to take their training and put it back on the
streets.

Also, they were alleging that the kids in South Carolina were in these
gangs at the third-grade level, second or third grade level.

In Massachusetts, one of the facing issues are the new barbiturates, the
opium, the heroin, the meth, OxyContin in my part of the state. This is
what\'s facing kids today. Prescription drugs are facing - these new
prescription drugs where they can go into their parent\'s cabinet. They
no longer have to go on the street, they go in their parent\'s cabinet,
or their grandparent\'s cabinet, somebody with a bad back of recent
surgery, and get OxyContin, chew it and they\'re high, and they\'re
hooked. This became more prevalent as kids I know, kids that my children
knew were in high school who have been addicted. So I think kids are
facing more and more issues. Why my - like Mike says it\'s going down,
but those are kids who are in school, or it\'s kids who are in school
that day, because the kids who are high probably weren\'t in school, so
they\'re probably not responding. So while we may be seeing a decrease
in violence, and a decrease substance abuse on the survey, my reality
says that\'s only a survey. If I go in the streets, I see something
totally different, working with my District Attorneys and my other law
enforcement agencies in the state. Kids are at greater risk in terms of
new substances than they\'ve ever been before, because these substances
are prescription drugs are what\'s out there.

The plan about keeping schools safe - I think that language is
sufficient, but I think we need now to go on about emergency
preparedness and crisis management. One of the things that are on the
agenda of the world today is the pandemic preparedness. I think what
I\'ve been saying in Massachusetts is not pandemic preparedness, it\'s
pandemic preparedness and all hazard planning, because the pandemic is
the flavor of the month. The truth is, the schools need to be prepared
for anything that comes their way, so I think we need to change the
discussion to all hazard planning, and use such things as FEMA, in my
state MEMA, to work with schools around crisis planning, around incident
command systems, and how to respond, and how to be prepared for anything
that comes their way, so that we forget what the flavor of the month is,
but we do real training around crisis management and planning. But the
question, can that really be funded under Safe and Drug Free Schools,
the safety and crisis management. We say 20 percent, 20 percent of a
little bit is not much, but at the same time, as Mike says, it doesn\'t
take a lot of resources, it just takes time. But it also takes time away
from something else, which schools are not willing to give, which is
standardized testing. So, again, this discussion goes back to how do we
make sure that we understand programs such as Safe and Drug Free School,
education in general as part of school improvement. It\'s not something,
a set aside, but it\'s an important key component.

Is the structure of the SDA Grant program a good structure? Yes, it is.
I think it\'s the only structure. I think because the schools look to
the state for leadership, as we look to the federal government for
leadership. I think they need someone to go through that will help them
understand what is a good program, how to find good technical
assistance. Now if we have the resources to provide technical assistance
ourselves; I have just recently put my whole center, which is much
larger than Safe and Drug Free Schools through the whole training round,
Addressing Barriers to Learning, so that they could look at issues that
get in the way of kids learning, and so they look at all the programs
that I administer, which as the Chairman of the Center, includes career,
vocational, technical education, nutrition, feeding, nutrition commodity
programs, academic support, remedial programs, migrant education, formal
education, the list goes on, but how all these programs are support
programs for kids, and how they all work together, that they\'re not
stand-alone programs, but they come in and how they work together as a
service delivery system. I think that\'s the same language you need to
work with schools about those academic programs, not Safe and Drug Free
School programs, but other support programs out there, how they are part
of school improvement, and how they\'re important, because if we don\'t,
No Child Left Behind would just be a dream, and 2014 will be a lie,
because children will be left behind.

Is the balance between flexibility and accountability contained in the
statute working. Well, flexibility is an interesting thing, because some
schools actually take the flexibility, they transfer the money say to
Title 5, and then they go ahead and use programs that wouldn\'t allow
them to use it under Title 4, but they flex the money out to Title 5,
and Title 5 is school improvement, and so it makes it difficult when
that happens. But at the same time, I hold their feet to the fire about
meeting the Principles of Effectiveness under Safe and Drug Free
Schools, in general, so there is a conflict there.

The tension between Principles of Effectiveness and funds that we spend
on research-based effectiveness, I think the reality with that is
research-based effectiveness is a good idea, but I think we need to go
from programs to strategies, identify those strategies, because again,
there\'s not enough funding to fully fund programs and implement a
program for fidelity if you\'re a small district. But I think helping to
educate people about those strategies within a program that are proven
to be effective, and how to translate those strategies into many
programs, or into some sort of working with students, the strategy of
parent participation, how is that done well. Parent involvement, what
does that really mean? It means more than the parent coming into school
to hear about their child\'s grades, it means about the parent being
active in their child\'s life, knowing where their child is, taking a
little PSA. It\'s 10:00, do you know where your child is, and taking
that to heart, and I say why that\'s important. So a lot of it can be
discussion, and a lot of it could be strategies.

So with that, I think I\'m done, because I\'m interested in your
questions, because if you have questions, I\'m pretty sure I have some
answers. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, John. We appreciate that, and there is
no doubt in my mind that you have those answers. Next we\'ll turn to
Jeff, Jeff Barber from Indiana. Jeff.

MR. BARBER:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. As was
stated prior, I\'m certainly pleased to be here, and honored to have the
opportunity to speak to you. I think many of the things that I\'ll have
to present certainly connect with what you\'ve heard prior. I think that
we all see many of the same things, both in the areas of strengths and
in areas that could be improved, so there are many connections between
the states, so I think that commonality of the presentations certainly
speaks to the strength of what\'s being said today.

Just to begin with, one of the things that I think was mentioned before
by Mike is that Safe and Drug Free Schools really does offer the
opportunity to engage every school district, every school, and every
student throughout the country. There\'s no other opportunity like that,
and to me, that has a huge amount of power, and I think that we need to
make sure that we use that to its most beneficial effect. And I think if
you take the Safe and Drug Free Schools money away, if that wasn\'t
there, where is the slack going to be picked up? And it\'s not going to
be picked up by the states, it\'s not going to be picked up by the
locals. It really is an opportunity, and we need to take advantage of
that.

Another strength that I see really is, are the Principles of
Effectiveness. They were codified with No Child Left Behind, they were
in place prior to that, and I think the codification of them certainly
provides strength for the Principles of Effectiveness. The principles
really are a sound planning structure for any program, whether you\'re
talking about a prevention program, whether you\'re talking about school
improvement. It really is a process you must do in the needs assessment.
You must have goals and objectives, or performance measures that make
sense and relate back to your needs assessment.

You need to pick program strategies, efforts, activities that link back,
and you know will have an effect on those performance measures, and then
you have to evaluate, and that evaluation really needs to be an
opportunity, looked at as an opportunity to strengthen what you\'re
doing, and not just to prove that the program is effective from a
funding point of view. I mean, really the point of the evaluation is for
the school systems to look at it and say this is working or this it not,
or maybe we need to strengthen our evaluation efforts. There are many
answers that you can get from an evaluation.

The Principles of Effectiveness also provided me an opportunity at the
state level to do training. And I think one of the things that state
money is there for is for us to build capacity at the local level. And
I\'ll speak a little bit more on this in connection with the strategic
prevention framework, state incentive grant. We are a recipient of that
in Indiana, and there\'s a very tight connection between the two, and I
think that\'s another important point for the committee to look at, is
how all these federal programs connect. And I\'ve seen a real \-- in the
last five years, I\'ve seen federal agencies really coming together and
coordinating at a much more effective level than was occurring in the
past. I think that\'s occurring at the state level now, and that
leadership from the federal level to the state level then can encourage
those kinds of connections at the local level, so all of these things
are connected. And you take one element out of this, and it\'s certainly
going to have a big effect, and it won\'t be positive. I can almost
guarantee that.

One of the issues with Safe and Drug Free Schools that often comes up is
the amount of allocation per school system. It certainly is very low for
some, but what I have seen, I have very few districts - actually, no one
in Indiana refuses. We have some who don\'t follow-through as they need
to to receive the funding, but I haven\'t had anybody, even school
systems who receive \$500, say they don\'t want it. And they have to
fill out an application, they have to do all the same things that a
school system that receives \$200,000 does. So if schools are willing to
do that, school systems are willing to do that, to me, that says
something. If they\'re willing to take the \$500, do all the work that
comes with it, and implement programs to the best of their ability with
that funding, there is a message there, I think, from the school
systems.

I think it also provides an opportunity for the schools, even with
funding at very low levels, to bring something to the table. They are no
longer having a situation we often see where things are being done to
them. They are then a partner. They could say look, we can put this
money in the pot. What can you provide from the community level? We have
county level organizations that do address issues related to prevention,
treatment, and enforcement of drug use, so what this does is it brings
the school to the table, say here\'s our money, you have money, you have
resources, how can we work together, as opposed to the people from
outside the school setting coming in and saying here\'s what we want to
do. I mean, the school is not really having as much voice, I think, in
the matter without something to bring to the table.

Another important point with Safe and Drug Free Schools is it, I think,
has provided school systems a new opportunity to be effective in the
competitive grant process no matter where the funding comes from. And I
really think it has provided a foundation for the national programs to
be effective. At the state level, we have a communication system. I use
list serve, I have mailings, I have a list of Safe and Drug Free Schools
coordinators. I can get information out, so I think that increases the
pool of applicants for the national programs or other grant
opportunities that we certainly provide the information to the locals
on.

I think it also really does provide an opportunity for the school system
to take the foundation that was built with the State Grants program, and
build on that through the national grant program. And I think without
that foundation, the pool of applicants will certainly decrease, and I
think the quality of those applicants will decrease, also, because you
won\'t have that foundation. Once you take that away, the system will
dry up, Safe and Drug Free Schools if the money was to no longer be
available, you really would have to try to rebuild that whole system,
the capacity of the schools who offer high quality programs to be able
to apply for grant opportunities, and I think that needs to be something
to look at. It is a foundation. It is not the answer, the only thing,
but it is a foundation and needs to be supported as such.

I just wanted to go over a few things, just to kind of give you an
example, and this is just very briefly what Safe and Drug Free Schools
offers Indiana and what is really provided from an outcome perspective.
I\'m not a researcher, never claimed to be, but we certainly look at how
we can evaluate the effectiveness of the program. If we had millions of
dollars, we certainly would do research to tie the dollar exactly to the
outcome, but it would take a great deal of research to do that, and we
don\'t have that kind of funding. But what we do have, we do have a
survey that the majority of the school systems in Indiana participate
in. They get local data, which is a perfect opportunity for them to
learn about what\'s going on in their schools, in their communities
related to drug use, and violent behavior with their students, but that
data then is compiled at the state level, and so we can look at data
that\'s directly connected to school systems and tie it back up to the
state level. This survey has been conducted since 1991. Every year over
100,000 students are surveyed, and I think it\'s really an opportunity
for us to look at risk and protective factors, as well as drug use
rates.

Just a couple of slides on the trends on, I guess, the big three, as I
seem to sense those. This is just a look at alcohol use rate since 1991;
and although you see some bumps up and down here and there, for the most
part you can see that the trend has been going down over time, and
continues to do so. And certainly, what I think you see with this data
is partly an effect from the Safe and Drug Free Schools money. You
can\'t bring five and a half million dollars into the school systems in
Indiana for drug use prevention, for violence prevention, and not see
some kind of positive effect.

The next one is cigarette use among Indiana students, and these are all
monthly use rates. And as you can see, we had an increase during the mid
to late 90s, and we\'ve consistently had a reduction since then, so over
time these rates continue to drop, continue to decrease. Finally, we
have the monthly use rates for marijuana among Indiana students. And
once again, we did have a spike in the early to mid-90s, which has then
trended down since then.

The next slide, and one of the questions - the question was about rural,
is it working in rural areas? Is it working in suburban and urban areas,
and so I just wanted to touch on a few examples, and I just pulled these
from our files. Every school system is required to submit their
performance measures for the year with their application. The following
year, they report on the outcomes of those performance measures, and so
these are just a couple of examples that I have.

This LEA is North Montgomery Community Schools. They have an enrollment
of 2,160, and in fiscal year 2005, their allocation amount was \$3,704,
and I would show you the difference between that and \`06, it\'s
significant. We had decreases because of the decrease at the federal
level. Among the LEAs, I basically kind of looked at all of them, and we
had anywhere from 9 percent to a 32 percent reduction in allocations, so
this amount would be significantly reduced for \`06. But as you can see,
the percentage of tenth graders reporting alcohol use in the past 30
days, and this is in one year, it decreased from 30.5 percent to 26.7
percent.

Also among tenth graders reporting marijuana use in the past 30 days
decreased from 16.5 percent to 9.9 percent. And certainly, there are
other efforts going on within the school system, but that \$3,000 had an
impact, and you can see that with the data. Not on the slide that you
have presented, but I did want to also mention Adams Central Community
Schools, they had several looks at their performance measures, and they
included annual alcohol use among high school students which declined
from 45 percent to 42.5 percent, annual marijuana use among high school
students declined from 14 percent to 9.8 percent. Annual cigarette use
among high school students declined from 22 percent to 20.1 percent.
Annual alcohol use among middle school students declined from 19 percent
to 14.9 percent. And finally, annual cigarette use among middle school
students declined from 7 percent to 5.2 percent.

At the suburban level, our system of how we put \-- what level we put
schools at is a little bit different, but it relates to the suburban
population, as far as numbers of students. We have an LEA, Brownsburg
Community Schools, which is near Indianapolis, has an enrollment of
6,726. Their allocation was 17,379, and their 2004 performance measure
results, they had daily tobacco use by tenth graders decrease from 15.8
percent to 8.7 percent, daily tobacco use by eleventh graders decreased
from 22.7 to 13.5, daily tobacco use among twelfth graders went from
25.1 percent to 15.5 percent. I\'m not going to read through all of
these because I don\'t want to take up too much time with this.

We also have Greater Clark County schools, and I put them in here for
two reasons. One, they have had great outcomes, but they had an
administrator who was working with the Safe and Drug Free Schools
program. She was also the Title 1 coordinator, and she did the most
magnificent job of connecting safe and drug free schools to academic
achievement, and really got her school on board. They implemented a life
skills program, and she sold their school system on the fact that they
had to do this, because they needed to increase their test scores, their
academic achievement. And one of the keys to that was reducing drug use
and violent behavior, and they saw dramatic changes.

They also had a huge amount of buy-in from the staff at the school level
because of her work, so she was a great leader, unfortunately retired
this year, but I\'m expecting that what she put in place is not going to
just go away. She certainly has had a long-term impact on that school
system, but you can see that the rates for this school system for
monthly marijuana cigarette use among eighth and tenth graders has
decreased significantly, so I think that is a testament to her work, and
also was provided \-- they were provided the opportunity through the
Safe and Drug Free Schools program for that.

At the urban level, we have Kokomo-Center Township Consolidated Schools
with 7,027 students. They have \$48,000 allocation in 2005. Their 2004
performance measure results, you can see they reduced expulsions for
possession, use of drugs and alcohol, among sixth through twelfth
graders by 10 percent, expulsions for violent behavior for six through
twelfth graders was reduced by 58 percent, and then suspensions for
disruptive behavior in grades six through seven was reduced by 24
percent. They implemented Student Assistance Programs in Too Good for
Drugs, which is a Mendez Foundation program.

Vigo County School Corporation, and this system has certainly seen
\-- well, this county has seen a huge problem with methamphetamine
that\'s been probably at the highest level for all the counties in the
state, so they have a big issue that they need to deal with. And they
have provided the funding that they use, Safe and Drug Free Schools,
they provide the Too Good for Drugs and Project Alert program. They also
use it for Student Assistance Programming.

In 2004, with their performance measures, they saw decreases in monthly
cigarette use, out of school suspensions for grades nine through twelve
decreased by 5 percent, reductions in monthly alcohol use among twelfth
graders, and then students who missed one to two days of school due to
school safety concerns decreased by 14 percent, so once again, decreases
are improvements in their outcomes across the board.

A couple of things I wanted to mention, the mechanisms to assess the
effectiveness of Safe and Drug Free Schools. I think probably the most
important thing is to look at the program from the bottom up, from the
LEA level to the federal level, because that\'s where the program
operates, so that\'s where the evaluation should begin. I think the
outcome data should be fed to the state, and then the federal level, and
this would provide the best opportunity to assess program effectiveness.
With the requirements for Safe and Drug Free Schools plans, the
Principles of Effectiveness to be developed based on an assessment of
local need, then the measures of effectiveness must be generated at that
level. Also, the system that measures the effectiveness of the program
should include process data that ties the implementation of the
programs, strategies, and activities using the Principles of
Effectiveness. And this really must assess the adherence to all elements
of the Principles of Effectiveness.

One of the things that I have experienced, I am actually on the SPFSIG,
as they call it, the Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive
Grant Advisory Committee at the state level. One of the things that I
found through that is the system, as I\'m thinking of it here, really is
being put in place through the SPFSIG process. And one of the things
that they are measuring is the capacity, is capacity to offer high
quality programs to assess the problems in the community, to evaluate
those problems, is that increasing? And I think that should be part of
any program, or any evaluation of Safe and Drug Free Schools. It
shouldn\'t just be about reducing drug use, which is the bottom line
piece, but it also should be about developing a program, a structure, an
infrastructure really, and assessing that infrastructure, because that,
to me, is as valuable and more long-lasting of an effect, and so we need
to look at that and make sure that we are assessing that.

Some of the emerging issues - I really don\'t see any emerging issues
from the sense that - and I think that John mentioned this, you don\'t
want to end up chasing your tail going for the new flavor of the month,
the problem of the month. I think what Safe and Drug Free Schools really
offers is that breadth. You could look across the spectrum, and through
the systems that have been set up, through the funding partially, but
also really more than anything, through the system that has been set up.
You have the opportunity to address any problem that may occur, no
matter what it is, so I think basically, it is flexible and is
sufficient, the breadth of the program.

The Principles of Effectiveness really by design require districts to
monitor their needs, so they should be able to recognize when they have
a problem and when they need to maybe make an adjustment in their
program, programmatic approach. I think the crisis plan with the
guidance and the language related to that is sufficient, and that
schools really are prepared to address any kind of emergency that comes
their way.

The current structure of the Safe and Drug Free Schools program, I
really think that one of the strengths is that it provides an
opportunity for state level leadership. That leadership comes from the
federal level, and is filtered down to the states, and it really
provides us the opportunity, and I mentioned some of the trainings that
we do. My training, I don\'t focus on a programmatic training for life
skills or this program, or that program. I really focus on this
development of capacity, do they have the ability and understanding to
evaluate, to do a needs assessment, to offer programs and put them in
place in a way that is effective, as opposed to just saying here\'s a
program, put this in place and you\'ll be fine. There\'s no magic
bullet. I think the magic bullet really is that capacity, that
understanding. It has a much longer-lasting effect.

I also believe the school systems typically respond more to SEA input
than they may from a federal level input. Not always the case, you heard
the story of I\'m from the state, I\'m here to help, and the laughs
occur upon saying that. But honestly, I have had no resistance, no sense
that people don\'t want the state to be involved, don\'t want state
leadership. And I think that they really look to the state to provide
whatever leadership they may provide, and Safe and Drug Free Schools
certainly gives us that opportunity.

I also think the closer the supporting resources are to the end user,
they increase the effectiveness of that program, whether you\'re talking
about the SEA or the Governor\'s program. I think it needs to be closer,
and certainly, federal level leadership is very important, but your
ability and resources to effect change at a local level from the federal
level is certainly going to be taxed, if not nearly impossible to make a
huge impact with that kind of a distance between the two systems.

To continue in the current structure, I think the funding also provides
an opportunity for leverage for the SEA to be part of a bigger picture.
The Department of Education in Indiana has been brought to the table in
many areas. I mentioned the SPFSIG Advisory Committee. We also
participate on the Governor\'s Commission for Drug Free Indiana. We have
a Meth Free Coalition now in place, and the Department of Education is
at the table there. There are many other examples of that basically
across the board, whether we\'re talking about our single state agency,
and their advisory committees and groups to our Governor\'s Commission
on Drug Free Indiana.

All of those agencies engage the Department of Education, and I don\'t
think it\'s wholly because of Safe and Drug Free Schools, but it
certainly makes it much more likely that we\'re going to be at the table
because we have resources that we can bring along with that.

I think that also the system allows initiatives and communications
related to Safe and Drug Free Schools to flow to the local level. I
don\'t know exactly how effectively even the Safe and Drug Free Schools
could communicate directly to LEAs without the SEA being engaged in some
way. And without the Safe and Drug Free Schools funding, those of us in
the position of Safe and Drug Free Schools players, we may still be at
the Department, but we may be there in a different capacity, and it may
not be that individual or that organization within the Department of
Education to pass that information along. And certainly, there\'s a lot
of vital information. You look at the school safety issues that have
occurred related to the shootings in Columbine and other locations, and
the initiatives that have come from that. Also, the initiatives related
to Homeland Security, I think the system that\'s in place because of
Safe and Drug Free Schools has provided an opportunity that would not
have been there otherwise.

The Principles of Effectiveness requirements and other authorized
activities there certainly is a disconnect between the two. Some of the
authorized activities, there are 27 of them, don\'t have a great deal of
research to back them up, so I think that some concerted review of those
activities to really look at it through the lens of research, and make
sure that what\'s on the list has solid evidence to back it up, solid
research to back it up, I think is vitally important.

I believe that using the foundation of the collaboration has been
fostered at the federal level would be an opportunity that we could use
in this effort, and I know that SAMHSA has their model programs list,
which is a great opportunity for school systems to really look at
programs that have been assessed and evaluated, but I also think that
there needs to be an effort to move toward a look at strategies as
opposed to what I always call program in a box, because at the state
level when you\'re looking at a list of programs, these are all
supported by people that are selling a product. And while those products
may be wonderful and great, it\'s very hard for us at the state level to
say here, you have to use this product, because in a sense, we\'re
endorsing that at the state level, and that really puts us in a
difficult situation. And I think if you took those programs and really
looked at the strategies and activities within them, you\'d see, and you
will see consistency across them. They use role plays. They use various
strategies to engage students beyond just some kind of didactic
presentation. All of these things are elements of an effective program,
so let\'s take a step back and look at those strategies, the upstream
piece, as opposed to the end product, which is oftentimes something that
someone is selling for profit.

I think that once the review of the authorized activities was completed,
then we could just look at just having a list of strategies and
activities backed by solid research. And then I think from the federal
level to the state level, to the local level, we could really provide
great training around the strategies. How do you implement them? What
strategies work? Which strategies really do address the problems that
you have within your local community. So with that, I will close, and
thank you very much for the opportunity.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Jeff. We appreciate that. And next
we\'ll move to the State of Washington, Mona Johnson.

MS. JOHNSON:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I\'d like to thank the
committee for the opportunity to speak this morning, and I will try to
be very brief. I\'m looking at time and want to honor that. Behind me
you can see my Power Points really quickly, the strengths of the Safe
and Drug Free Schools program. My colleagues have reiterated that very
well this morning, and I\'ll say the same thing.

One of the things about this funding stream is the only funding stream
available to every LEA. That\'s critical for the Foundation of Substance
Abuse and Violence Prevention. I think part of the power, and Jeff
touched on this, and so did my other colleagues, is that it\'s the SEA
administering the presentation or, excuse me, the program to the locals
providing a level of leadership, which I think is very important.

Having a point of contact in every district that\'s specifically
identified to deal with substance abuse and violence prevention - those
of you in education know how big that world is. And to have a point of
contact that we know can be that key person we work with at the District
level to address these issues is another strength of this project. And,
also, it is the foundational funding stream. I think much of the work
that we\'ve done over the time and the span of Safe and Drug Free
Schools really has set the structure of the foundation for programs
around violence prevention and substance abuse prevention that our
districts have been able to leverage to get additional resources, either
at the state, local, or national level.

We do do a state survey in Washington State. I didn\'t really want to
share with you the state survey results, because what\'s most relevant
to me in my state is what is the money being spent on related to Safe
and Drug Free Schools, and how can we tie what we\'re doing to Safe and
Drug Free Schools in those outcomes, so that\'s what this slide is to
illustrate.

I wanted to share with you in the State of Washington that 74 percent of
our total sum of Safe and Drug Free Schools money that comes into our
SEA funds our State Student Assistance Program. We call it the Student
Assistance Prevention and Intervention Services Program. The other 26
percent of the program is used by districts for other authorized
activities, and you can see behind you a list of the other authorized
activities, which aren\'t surprising.

We only have one district in our entire state of 296 school districts
that has a waiver to do a program outside of the authorized activities,
or within science-based programming, so we spent a lot of time doing
training, as Jeff mentioned, around capacity building and comprehensive
prevention planning. That\'s the beauty, in our opinion, of the
Principles of Effectiveness. It\'s a beautiful guide to help district
build capacity around comprehensive prevention, and it marries, and
mirrors, and dovetails really well with the strategic prevention
framework and CSAP\'s work, et cetera.

One of the things I wanted to say, too, about our State Student
Assistance Program is, I mentioned that 74 percent of that money is
funded by Safe and Drug Free Schools. It is also matched in our state by
tobacco settlement funds, and also matched by the prevention block
grant, the CSAP Prevention block grant. So really for the one dollar
spent on Safe and Drug Free Schools, we also have two other dollars from
two different funding streams that are being leveraged at the state, and
the regional, and the local level to provide our Student Assistance
Program. So let me share a little bit about what we mean, and what
we\'re looking at in our State Student Assistance Program in terms of
mission.

Essentially, what our goal is, is to provide prevention, intervention,
and support services for kids who are struggling with academics, and
we\'re looking at behavioral issues, and those issues cropping up. It
can be anything from detention, to skipping school. You guys know all
the behavioral issues that happen in schools, so those are the things
that are critical indicators that we train staff to be aware of, and
those kids become noticed in a school district and become a part of the
Student Assistance Program.

Our goals are to, at minimum, across the state, and each of our regional
folks have adopted these goals, and even gone further with them - 10
percent reduction each year in alcohol use, tobacco use, and marijuana
use. And we also have set for ourselves a goal of 10 percent increase in
school bonding, and we collect data on all of these things which I\'ll
mention in a second.

What we are able to document through an online documented online data
collection system, as well as through pre/post tests are the number of
universal prevention activities that we are providing through our
Student Assistance Program. And then more specific, the individual
students selected and indicated services that are being provided. And
this last year in this state, it\'s just fresh, so I\'m wrapping my arms
around it. We have a meeting in September for our entire state team to
go over this and take a look at it, but in the last year, we saw 18,446
kids individually as a part of the indicated selected prevention work
that we do in our Student Assistance Program. You can see that\'s three
or more visits that a student has with someone who is a Student
Assistant Specialist, and then we start documenting the services.

Outcomes - I\'m proud of these outcomes, really proud of our state for
our hard work in putting together this data collection system and the
pre/post testing that we have going on. Reductions in use across the
board, which also mirror, by the way, our state survey. All right? But
this is, again, really specific to the work that we\'re doing tied to
Safe and Drug Free Schools funds. It\'s pretty self-explanatory. I
don\'t think you need me to go through it.

Other outcomes, not just related to use, are outcomes related to
behavior. I almost didn\'t want to show you the slide, as I said,
because it\'s fresh data that I just got for this presentation that
we\'re going to discuss in September, but do you notice anything?
There\'s something glaring that stands out to me in the slide, in this
slide. Three percent increase in school skipping, I really didn\'t want
to show that slide. All right? What we did see is changes in all kinds
of other behaviors, trouble at school, skipping school, suspended, but
we did see an increase in skipping of school. And why I decided to show
you this slide, because I wanted our State of Washington to look really
good, and this isn\'t necessarily good - why I decided to show this is
because what we know about comprehensive prevention planning is, when
you do true evaluation, you learn things about programs that you may or
may not like. I like the good touchy-feely things that make me feel good
so we can keep doing what we\'re doing, but we also learn some things
sometimes that we need to take a look at. And you can bet this is going
to be a huge point of discussion at our meeting in September when we get
together. What is this about? What does it tell us about our program, et
cetera? But it\'s still something to be proud of in terms of changes in
behavior.

And then, also, we have changes in protective factors. For us, that\'s
also very important to measure, the connection between risk and
protective factors, and you can see some of the things that school
bonding increases, guidance, nurturants, all of those things that are
critical and important. Again, this data is collected through individual
online data collection systems and then pre/post testing with kids into
their first sessions with their Student Assistant Specialist, and then
at the end of their time in the program.

I also wanted to share with you a little bit about how our LEAs use
this, so I\'m talking about it at the state level, but I also wanted you
to understand how our LEAs are using Safe and Drug Free Schools funding.
Specifically in the area of leveraging, there\'s a couple of quick
examples. We have a district called South Kitsap School District. There
are 10,400 students and they get \$48,000, approximately, of Safe and
Drug Free Schools funds. You can see that they decided to target their
money toward the Student Assistance Program, and look at their
reductions in use. They went well beyond the 10 percent reduction in
use, and did a 22 percent reduction in alcohol, 7.5 in tobacco, and look
at the marijuana reduction use in that district specific to the students
who are part of the Student Assistance Program, then an increase in
school bonding, also.

And then another little teeny, we talked about the small sums of money
that are available for this program, very small district, Queets Clear
Water School District, 40 students in that entire district, a grand sum
of \$1,521 of Safe and Drug Free Schools funding, but look at what they
were able to do. They decided that we\'re going to target our funding on
our best practice. We\'re going to train our staff in Second Step, and
look at the increases in behavior in terms of the kids and their
performance, et cetera, so something to be proud of, and some of the
different ways that the flexibility within the program allows us to work
within the scope of the Principles of Effectiveness and the framework.

One of the things we think that\'s really critical in Washington State,
and I think we would echo this, and we all have said this in our own
ways, is the leadership from the state education agency. We really see
our job to be the providers of technical assistance to those who need it
at the local level. Connecting what we do to the larger mandates of No
Child Left Behind, as my colleagues have mentioned, providing
professional development, facilitating local and state prevention
planning, collaboration and coordination. With the variety of funding
streams that are out there, again, the leveraging of resources is so
very critical, people have to understand the science of prevention and
how to do comprehensive planning.

We also feel that our role at the state is to develop a statewide data
collection system. That should be our job, to set up a statewide data
collection system so we can articulate to people what are we doing with
these funds, how are using them, what does it look like? And then, also,
to assist and maintain accountability at the state, local, and regional
level.

You\'ve heard this - one of our biggest challenges is the reductions in
funds. It was an interesting task to go back and look at what\'s
happened over the last 10 years in Washington State. Overall, we\'ve had
a 37 percent reduction in Safe and Drug Free Schools funds over the last
10 years, which is pretty significant. What is amazing to me is the
resilience of our communities, and of our schools. And even with
decreased resources and increased accountability, our communities,
although they\'ve been stretched, have still been able to maintain
programming, and have been able to, to the degree that they can, to
address the issues that are specific to kids. They\'ve had to narrow
what they focus on and be very clear about that needs assessment and
targeting what they\'re doing, but they\'re able to do it, and they\'ve
really risen to the occasion, in our opinion, in Washington State.

We really need to continue the coordinated effort at the federal level.
As my colleague, Jeff, mentioned, the discussion among the different
federal agencies has really been supportive to us at the state education
agency level, so that we can assist our folks in understanding all of
this, and how it fits together. And then, also, we need to tie the
larger - continue to tie the larger body of what we do to No Child Left
Behind, and the supportive learning environment and academic achievement
piece.

Our recommendations, increased funding. We\'ve love to see that. Really,
our schools could use more, not less. I know you know that, and I really
don\'t need to say it, but it really is the truth of the matter. If we
don\'t get increased funding, though, we\'re still going to do the best
that we can with what we have.

Maintain an emphasis on the Principles of Effectiveness - I keep
mentioning that, but the capacity building and understanding the science
of prevention is so key to making this work. I hope when I\'m not at the
Department of Education any more that this program continues because of
the capacity that\'s there. There are people in place at the local
level, and maybe someone - I don\'t know - who could take my role at the
state maybe, or not, but this stuff can continue so it isn\'t just
specific to a person, but the capacity is there, the science is there,
the program is there, the strategy is there that\'s very relevant.

Provide a coordinated effort at the federal level in terms of
leadership, guidance, and technical assistance. I think those of us at
the state are very open to having dialogues and getting guidance and
assistance in the way that we need it to help us do our jobs better. And
then continue to evaluate the program in the context of No Child Left
Behind, really tying what we do in the true sense in the academic
environment to student achievement, and assessing and assisting, and
reaching out to disenfranchised youth. I think that\'s our biggest
challenge.

I often say to many of the people that I work with in the field, we have
our legs in at least two arenas. We have to understand the social
service arena and the science, and prevention, and strategic prevention
framework, and all of that planning, and then we have to understand the
education world, and all of what education is about, and make that link,
and tie it together. And I\'d like for us to focus on, I think one of
the recommendations is that we continue to focus on how to build that
bridge stronger as locals, as states, and as a nation. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Mona. And thank you, Jeff, thank you,
John, thank you, Mike, for all of the information. Now, as we indicated,
we\'ll be turning to a very important part of this segment, and that
will be where the committee members can ask, so that we can have a
dialogue, and draw on your expertise and experience. So the floor is now
open for questions of the panelists, so that we can delve into this a
little further. Remember as you ask, that you hit the microphone so that
it can be recorded.

DR. JONES:  Yes. First of all, thanks so much or your very exciting and
informative presentations. Just had a couple of questions to start out
with, in terms of data collection. I think Jeff, both you and Mona,
presented data with downward trends. And, I guess, the first question
is, are the significance \-- none of the levels of significance were
reported in terms of nice decreases in undesired behavior?

MS. JOHNSON:  I\'m not sure I \-- 

DR. JONES:  The question I\'m asking is, there were drops in behavior,
drug usage and that kind of thing. I was wondering if those drops were
significant.

MR. BARBER:  They certainly were. I mean, if you look at the data, the
reports that we get from the Indiana Prevention Resource Center that
does the survey for the state, they don\'t report things. I mean, if
it\'s not significant, they\'re not going to put it in their reports,
and these were all statistically significant.

DR. JONES:  Okay. I would just suggest that those significance levels be
reported when you present the data, .05 level, .01, et cetera, it\'s
very helpful. Also, in terms of the data, are there breakdowns in terms
of race, socio-economic status and gender? I didn\'t see that there.
I\'m assuming that those data are there, but it would be very
interesting and informative to actually see that breakdown.

MS. JOHNSON:  In our state survey, we certainly have it broken down in
that way, and I also have it broken down specific to our Student
Assistance Program. In the interest of time, though, I didn\'t feel I
could get into that level of detail. That\'s pretty fascinating data to
look at, and it certainly tells us a lot about program, and it is
available.

DR. JONES:  Yes, good.

MR. BARBER:  We also have the same breakdowns, and anybody - if there\'s
any interest in our state reports, we\'d be glad to get those to you, if
people want us to look at the data in total, as opposed to a short
presentation.

DR. JONES:  Okay. Just one follow-up question. John, I thought you made
a very good point, that even though they are great reductions in
undesired behavior, et cetera, I think you made the point that those
data simply reflect the kids that are in school versus those that are
not. Could you say a little bit about that?

MR. BYNOE:  Well, for my state it\'s the YBS, which is usually grades
nine through twelve, so oftentimes, we\'re moving to work with our
Department of Public Health now to do YBS combined with the public
health survey, which is six through twelve. But at the same time, it\'s
those kids who are in school on that day and time. Those kids who are
truant, those kids who are skipping, those kids who have dropped out are
not necessarily included in the survey, and how do you get at those
students. Even students who are there, you have the opportunity in my
state to opt out of the survey, because of the certain questions that
are there. So even though it\'s a representative and it\'s a valid
sample of students by the students who are in school, I\'m concerned
about the students who don\'t go to school on a regular basis, kids who
have dropped out, and what\'s going on with those children. But at the
same time, I look at in terms of what\'s actually going on in the
street.

I happen to be a basketball coach and I\'ve been a basketball coach in
my community for about 12, 15 years now. And talking in the real world
to students, what\'s going on, working with the District Attorney\'s
office and what they see, listening to what happened - this is not only
urban, this is suburban, rural, et cetera, so it\'s not just one area.
In fact, my kids went to a suburban school through school choice. You
know, OxyContin or heroin was prevalent for some kids, was the choice
drug for some kids in their school. I just found this out the other day
in a conversation with some other adults about kids that I actually knew
who are now addicted to heroin or OxyContin. I mean, in the City of
Peevey, for example, OxyContin is prevalent. A Jeff Judah, I think his
name is, who was a high school baseball player, who now just was again
found OD\'d in Lynn on heroin, who has had OxyContin. A former
superintendent\'s son was on OxyContin, so these drugs are there, and
there\'s kids who are not in school. And I\'m not sure how we get to
those children, because we\'re now in our state, we\'re talking about
drop-out prevention efforts, and re-entry efforts to get kids back in
school. How to keep them in school becomes the concern.

One of the things that\'s happening now also in my state, and I often
joke about it, and I mention this to you, the Commissioner made me an
Associate Commissioner so that prevention and safety could be on the
table at all times, and it\'s now truly part of our state strategic
plan, around safe and healthy schools is a key point in our strategic
plan, so that\'s how we\'re trying to wrestle it to the ground.

MR. LEDBETTER:  The common thing that I\'ve heard each of you say this
morning is that there\'s no commonality between the programs within the
states. It appears to me that each state, at least for the four of you,
your programs are somewhat varied from state-to-state. Mike, in your
statement you said because each local program is different, it\'s almost
impossible to develop a universal set of outcome indicators. That
appears to be a problem, to me. What could be done to change this? Do
you have any suggestions, or do any of you have a suggestion?

MR. HERMANN:  I think part of what we could do is, you could narrow in
the scope of the program. I mean, that\'s one option. Personally, I
would sort of hate to see that happen. I think you can identify
indicators that will be universal, but recognize the fact that for this
particular program and the focus of what this local district chose to
do, this indicator about say the climate of the school may not be a
particularly appropriate indicator, and may not be a particularly
appropriate measure of effectiveness for that program.

I think the question is being able to have a set of indicators, as
opposed to three or four that every program is measured on. Does that
make sense? So we give people some flexibility in terms of the
indicators that they use, and recognizing the fact that not all
districts are going to be focusing on the same issues.

MR. BYNOE:  I think to even simplify it even more, if districts are
focusing on substance abuse, particularly alcohol, the use of alcohol,
and the indicators - and alcohol is only one indicator, talk about
bullying or school climate, they may not show good results on bullying
or school climate, because that\'s not what they\'re addressing with
Safe and Drug Free Schools money, they\'re addressing alcohol. So unless
you build in a system to say specifically what are you using your Safe
and Drug Free Schools money for, and that\'s the indicator that you\'re
going to be evaluated on, but if you put out a set of indicators, I
mean, one thought is the Uniform Management Information Reporting
System - how can you redesign that system from a warehouse system, which
is what it is, just a warehouse of data under the law, because all we do
is report it on a school-by-school basis. There\'s no requirement of
analysis or use of that data, except we do require districts to use it
locally in terms of our school safety and reporting system, which feeds
into Humerus, but as a state, we just report on a school-by-school
basis. But if you use that information as - somehow work with that
information, and have schools individually take those pieces of that
information to use for their indicators with some guidance, but I don\'t
think a set of standard indicators, because as Mike says, if you\'re
talking about those indicators based on Safe and Drug Free Schools
funding alone, that funding usually has a small piece of the pie, not
the total picture that they\'re focusing on.

DR. LONG:  Okay. Shep, and then Hope.

DR. KELLAM:  Yes, I\'m impressed. I thought many of the points you guys
made were really very, very powerful. One of the points I got was that
it takes multiple levels of support to make this thing go at all, and
that means that the federal, state, local levels, and at the school
building level with the principal and the teacher.

One of the questions that I thought was important that I was surprised,
Mona, you didn\'t raise, and that is, economic analysis, that is,
cost-benefit analysis. Washington State, Steve Allison and the crowd,
have evaluated and shown the level of dollars saved by the very programs
that you listed up there, and others, as well, so that\'s an important
dimension that we ought to think about, too.

I was struck by the fact that we\'re calling on you to somehow be
accountable, and all of you have mentioned that that\'s not what you do
for a living, in a sense. I mean, they\'re not researchers. You\'re not
out there, in fact, trained in sampling, nor should anybody expect you
to be. But then the question is, have you tried, or would it not be wise
for us to strongly urge, in general, for partnerships to be formed
between the states, the locals, and the local or otherwise research
groups. You know, partnerships which, in fact, allow academic
achievement to be part of the model, as well as behavior, but which, in
fact, tie-in at least in some local districts with state partnerships,
with research groups, and I wondered whether you had any experience with
that.

MS. JOHNSON:  I\'d like to comment on that. Yes, we have had experience
with that. We\'re blessed to have the University of Washington \-- 

DR. KELLAM:  I recognize Social Bonds and a few other of our friends and
relatives.

MS. JOHNSON:  And the evaluation that I whipped through very quickly up
there is generated by an independent evaluator we\'ve been working with
since 1994 in our program, so this is an outside person whose expertise
is in evaluation, and it\'s been a wonderful challenge to work together
with a large group of practitioners and this researcher to help us
develop, number one, an evaluation system that was relevant to what we
were doing. And number two, to kind of make it practical so people would
complete the evaluation. But I am not a researcher by training, I\'m
primarily a social work educator by background. However, this job in the
last 10, 12-ish years has very much forced me to understand evaluation
in a way I never thought I ever would. And sometimes I even scare myself
by the questions I ask that are very specific to evaluation and
outcomes, based on that experience.

MR. BARBER:  I think one of the things kind of with your point and the
question prior - looking at the fact that the program, any program, if
you\'re going to do a good quality evaluation, you really have to begin
with an evaluation in mind, and that\'s not, necessarily, the case the
way legislation works, so I think that may be part of it. If the
legislation maybe was developed based on the concept of what is going to
be the outcome, or how are we going to evaluate that, I certainly think
that would build a stronger program overall. Sometimes it\'s kind of
like we\'re evaluating after the horse is already out of the barn, and
asking people to come back and tell us things that the legislation
doesn\'t provide the opportunity for, and I think there are \-- part of
it with this, with any system, and being from a local school, you
understand that the idea of local control, and I think oftentimes
education funding goes out based on this concept of local control. And
there needs to be some flexibility, people need to be able to meet their
own needs. If we tell people what they\'re going to do, they\'ll address
a problem that may not be a problem in their community, so there has to
be that ability for there to be flexibility or opportunity for
differences among the programmatic approaches so they can address their
needs. But then there also has to be the idea of how can we evaluate
that in some reasonable fashion. And really, I think the leadership does
have to come from the federal level on that. We don\'t necessarily get
the level of funding that we can engage a researcher in the efforts,
even though we would love to do it. And, basically, I have one and a
half me, a half-time person who work on the program at the state level,
and so you have to try to find your focus. And we\'d love to all do
research level evaluation, but we do what we can with the resources that
we have.

MR. BYNOE:  In the past, particularly at the local level, we work with
schools, and Howell, you may \-- because I use my CDC evaluator to
provide training to local schools around various evaluation models. One
simple evaluation model we use, if you can picture the objective
analysis, the need, begins an instant evaluation process, because you
start with the objective analysis of needs, you go with your measurables
of objectives, you do your process evaluation, your outcome impact
evaluation, and in then that takes you right back to objective analysis
and need, so it\'s a very simple model that we\'ve been promoting in the
schools over the years in terms of local evaluation.

At the state, in terms of school improvement, we\'re beginning that.
We\'re beginning that because we are now understanding that even though
Massachusetts seems to be a leader around academic achievement with
NAPE, our standardized tests, et cetera, senior staff at the department
now realizes that even though we\'re in 85 percent first round, 95
percent after the second round, 5 percent is not going to make it, and
the question is why. If you give them all the resources, you give them
all the academic training and remedial programs, you still have to drill
down and find out why these kids are not being successful, and school
districts are going to have to take a hard look at what\'s going on in
the districts, because there are children being left behind, as I said
earlier. So that\'s going to cause them to evaluate their district in
terms of school improvement and prevention now is going to be a part of
that, the social services part that Mona talked about will not be part
of the school improvement. I think that\'s going to happen through the
evaluation process that we\'re going to begin to develop at the state
level to work with schools, especially under-performing schools.

DR. LONG:  We have nine minutes left, and the order of questioning,
Hope, Fred, Dennis for right now. I just wanted to \-- 

MS. TAFT:  I want to thank you all for coming and pointing out very
clearly that a little money can go a long way in school districts, and
that it\'s very important to have the state link between the federal
government and the local government. I also have two questions.
Hopefully, you\'ll keep your answers brief. But one I want to ask first
and get the answers for a second so that you can have a chance to think
about it. We\'ve been charged by our chair to think outside the box, to
reinvent this program, and I\'d like to know your recommendations for
doing that in a way that would allow us to get positive results. And
then, Jeff, you mentioned that you thought an evaluation program should
start at the bottom at the local level and build up, and I wondered if
you had any more thoughts or details on a program developed in that
manner that you could share with us?

MR. BARBER:  I think the structure really, I mean, it really could
build-off, and I actually was reading on the way out here yesterday the
strategic prevention framework evaluation design. And, to me, this is,
maybe, at least, even though that\'s a little different program in that
it\'s competitive. It\'s not having the breadth of coverage that the
Safe and Drug Free Schools program has, but one of the things they
really do is they provide here are outcome measures at the national
level. We want you to measure those at the state and local level, but
you also have the opportunity to add to those, and look at other
measurements that you want to effect change in. And the concept they
also look at is measuring a process evaluation. How are things changing
at the local and at the state level based on this funding being in
place. And really, the funding is only a small part of it. It really
isn\'t an issue that brings people together at the state and local level
to work toward a common end, so I think that this may be something for
the committee to look at, as at least a concept of how an evaluation
might work at the local level, and building up through the state to the
federal level. So without \-- I think the structure is certainly able to
be put in place. I don\'t think there\'s any question about that.

MS. TAFT:  Thank you.

MS. JOHNSON:  May I add a comment here?

MS. TAFT:  Yes.

MS. JOHNSON:  I have a concern when we say evaluation being developed at
the local level. What has worked for us, and this is one state out of
50, is that the local level folks come together with state level folks,
and we develop an evaluation system that fits, to the best of our
ability, across the board. And I think that that\'s \-- I want to make
that point, because it really makes me nervous when we start talking
about local evaluation, because that can be very different. It doesn\'t
mean that \-- I mean, the state framework has to be general enough that
it encompasses those needs, but then it allows the flexibility for local
people to collect the data that\'s very specific to their area that they
need, so I would add that in conjunction to what Jeff shared.

MS. TAFT:  So it\'s really local data that feeds into a system that\'s
larger than just the local.

MS. JOHNSON:  Exactly, and it\'s developed together. And that is a very
painful process that we have some first-hand experience with in our
state, but it is really powerful when you can pull all those players
together and do something like that.

MS. TAFT:  Thank you.

MR. BYNOE:  In terms of your question about how can this program
reinvent itself, well, I have a very simple answer. The program needs to
mirror the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. The Office of Safe and
Drug Free Schools is not about Safe and Drug Free Schools community act
any more, because you have the Phy. Ed. Program, you have the mental
health program, you have the Safe Schools Healthy Child program, so the
Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools has expanded beyond just violence
and substance abuse prevention to the whole child, those issues that get
in the way of kids learning, so this program in itself, and I jokingly
have talked to, I hate to say his name, but David Quinlan, and Bill
Modzeleski, actually, the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, actually
going to conferences, health education in terms of what the office is
now when you look at the grant programs coming out, so that this program
\-- so simply, to me, is that Safe and Drug Free Schools and Community
Act becomes more a conference health education model, because it\'s part
of the conference health education. I think sitting out there alone is
what\'s causing it to be heard.

MS. TAFT:  Okay. Any other suggestions?

MR. HERMANN:  Along those same lines, I think part of the real challenge
in terms of being heard, and in terms of really being able to get to
outcomes that we desire, at this point, the program is attached to NCLB.
It\'s one of the titles. There are all sorts of issues with, when you
get to the state level and local level, with when the program gets
squeezed into the consolidated application process. It\'s very hard to
be heard, and it\'s very easy for priorities to get shifted and
manipulated. And it\'s an issue of having strong leadership, I think, at
the state level, strong leadership at the federal level. I think
probably the cadre of folks that are working in the National Safe and
Drug Free Schools office in the 20 years that I\'ve been involved, I
think it\'s probably the strongest bunch of people that I\'ve ever seen,
so clearly, the expertise is here. I think the question becomes, is the
leadership engaged, because at the end of the day, I think it really
boils down to what are the priorities, and is it being pushed from the
top.

MS. TAFT:  Mona.

MS. JOHNSON:  That\'s a huge question. A couple of things come to mind
for me. I think the direction that we\'re going in, in terms of coming
together, I will speak from my experience in the last year or two,
between the federal and state, and then the state and local level, to
me, is good. The direction, the communication, the guidance, the
technical assistance, the support has improved incredibly. I know that
that allows me to be able to do what I do better, and more effectively.

I think narrowing, I might regret saying this, but narrowing the scope
of what we do, when you look at that list of authorized activities,
although they\'re really wonderful, there is a lot of room for a variety
of different things, and it\'s very difficult to evaluate all of those
things, because evaluation looks different for many of those. So
narrowing it to a degree that works and is reasonable, not restricting
and choking, but narrowing it to a degree that is supportive and
helpful. And then I think encouraging outcomes and evaluations to the
degree that those work, and accountability. I don\'t feel that there\'s
anything wrong with that, but allowing states to work with local folks
to articulate what they\'re doing, and I think we need to continue to
communicate at the state and local level with federal authorities about
what we are doing, that is working, and be more clear about that, and
have the opportunity to share and articulate our message, so those are
the first three things, Hope, that come to mind. That\'s a very powerful
question.

MR. BARBER:  I\'ll be very brief. And once again, it is a big question
of ponderance, and something that I\'ve certainly thought about. But I
think narrowing the scope, I mean, it\'s really difficult to evaluate
something with that wide of a focus, and I think that would be very
beneficial and helpful.

Also, I think maybe some requirements around training within the program
that support this idea of capacity building. I think, to me, it\'s more
than just putting a program in a classroom, or an effort in a school
system. It\'s really helping people understand how to put a system in
place that is flexible and functional, and has an opportunity to make
changes, and to address the issues that are in place in that school
system. So, to me, I think there should be more of an effort around
that, and more focus on that within the legislation.

MS. TAFT:  Okay. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  We now have two minutes, which leaves one minute for Fred,
and one minute for Dennis.

MR. ELLIS:  I\'ll try to make this quick. One of the things I heard from
all of you was that the breadth of the program, the Safe and Drug Free
Schools is one of its biggest strengths. Some would submit that it\'s
that same breadth that is a real weakness to the program. They\'ve
referred to it as being a mile wide and inch deep. One of the examples I
think both Mike and John referred to in the positive was emergency
management/crisis management issues, in terms of school systems being
recognized as having many resources and bigger player in emergency
management issues. So my question, particularly to both you gentlemen,
is it appropriate, is it fair, is it right for Safe and Drug Free
Schools to be, again, the only agency providing any funding whatsoever
to local school systems that I\'m aware of for emergency management,
crisis management issues. And they are, by definition, limited to
planning, not so much in terms of equipment. Should FEMA, DHS, some of
the other agencies play more of a role, should Safe and Drug Free
Schools start focusing, again, on some of the core subject matters of
what their expertise is, and perhaps some of the other federal agencies
step up with the dollars that are needed at the local level?

MR. HERMANN:  Quickly, I think other folks do need to step up and help
schools. FEMA comes immediately to mind, Homeland Security. But I think
at the same time, it\'s important that we don\'t reinvent the wheel. I
think it\'s going to vary from state to state in terms of how involved
the Safe and Drug Free Schools program is. In Tennessee, I serve on the
state\'s emergency services coordination body, so it\'s kind of a
logical fit there. But I think in other states, it\'s probably going to
be different.

MR. BYNOE:  My answer is yes, those folks need to step up. But at the
same time, I\'m stepping up with MEMA, my emergency management group, to
offer training this year around all hazard planning to local school
districts. As I said, the catalyst for that was the whole issue around
the pandemic preparedness Avian flu, but we\'re telling them they need
to be prepared for any type of disaster issue, so that\'s how we\'re
going to do it.

MR. ROMERO:  Thank you very much. I was absolutely amazed and
enlightened by your presentations from the panel this morning. I would
like to just make an offer to the committee, as the Director for Center
for Substance Abuse Prevention, I\'d be more than happy to provide the
group with an overview of the strategic prevention framework, and how it
ultimately is a vehicle for galvanizing both at the state level, as well
as in the community level, on a prevention approach to the addictions
and issues that plague the communities. So I heard a plug there for me
in the presentation, especially from you, Jeff, but I do make that
offer.

Secondly, to Jeff, your comment about NREP, and I think it\'s a very
good comment to begin to focus more on the strategies than on the actual
programs. And I think, Mona, you would agree with that. And that\'s
something actually that I have been aware of, and we are, just as an
FYI, a letter has been sent out to all of the SSAs across the country
under my signature making it very clear with the revised NREP what it
is, and what it\'s not to be. It cannot be used as a decision tool for
funding, but rather, as a mechanism to help communities identify
programs that can be used at different levels.

My question, Jeff, to you, is with regards to the SPFSIG. You mentioned
that an area of interest is the capacity building. Can you give me an
example of how in your state you are placing a lot of emphasis on that?

MR. BARBER:  Well, I\'ll just touch on it from the standpoint of what
we\'ve done through the SEA, and do that very briefly. One of the things
that I\'ve really looked at when I first started with Safe and Drug Free
Schools in 2000 was the fact that we had the Principles of Effectiveness
on the table, that schools are supposed to plan their programs through
that, but if you just say here are the Principles of Effectiveness, go
forth and do good work, you\'re not going to get a very good return on
that investment. So my concept was that we need to teach them how to do
those, not just tell them they\'re there. And so, really went out and
started very basic levels. This is what they are, this is why they\'re
important, and we built on that over time, because people in the school
systems, they could put a curriculum in place without any problem, but
you ask them to plan a prevention program, and while they have the
capacity to do that with training, they can\'t just go out and do it. I
mean, it\'s just not in their professional background, necessarily. It
may be, but not necessarily, so my idea was that we needed to look at
how can we develop that for those folks that are in the school system,
and so we\'ve done that. We kind of start out, like I said, basic, doing
some regional trainings around the Principles of Effectiveness, and kind
of move forward in asking people what were the highest needs. We
actually were doing a needs assessment at the state level to effect
changes, but we looked at one of the big things. Everybody wanted to
know how you do an evaluation, and we actually did an evaluation, and we
actually did an evaluation training that was based around a logic model.
And from that, we have stepped forward to the next stage, and we did a
training, and then trained those people to be trainers so that they
could offer the SAPS training, which is really the foundation of the
strategic prevention framework. So we\'re looking at that, and we want
to make sure that they not only have the knowledge of planning, but also
what are the basics around good solid prevention, understanding risk and
protective factors.

DR. LONG:  In closing this segment, this first segment, all of us - I
want to thank on behalf of all of us sitting up here at the table, your
depth of experience and breadth of expertise. We deeply appreciate you
coming here. We are charged with coming up with some, as Hope mentioned,
some creative ideas to present to the Secretary. You gave us a great
first step. I learned - people say I took a whole page of notes and
ideas on things that we can start to synthesize, and it was because of
you. And I think the biggest thing, I think perhaps the best stroke and
compliment we can pay to a fellow educator is thank you for your passion
for our children, it came through. Thank you very much. We will take a
break and come back at ten of. Let\'s thank the panel.

(Applause.)

(Whereupon, the proceedings went off the record at 10:48:26 a.m., and
went back on the record at 10:58:47 a.m.)

DR. LONG:  If the panelists would be so kind as to take the seats,
we\'ll go ahead and get started on time. Okay. We\'re going to go ahead
and get started so that we stay on time, and that\'s out of respect of
all the fine things that the panelists have. If you happen to have not
been in the audience when we started this first round, we are doing this
to hear your expertise, and then at the end, we will then have a
question and answer period back and forth with the committee members, so
that we can again draw on your expertise, and to get some ideas.

First of all, to introduce our second panel, and the second panel,
\"Local Education Perspective\", and on my right, for those of you in
the back there on your left, Clarence Jones, and Clarence has been the
Safe and Drug Free Schools coordinator for Fairfax County Public Schools
since 1999, and has been widely recognized for his work in the field.
Mr. Jones received the 2006 Distinguished Citizenship Award from the
Arlington Fairfax Elks Lodge, and the 2006 Advocate of the Year Award
from Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. He received his BS from
George Peabody for Teachers, and his MS from Vanderbilt. Thank you,
Clarence, for being here.

Ellen Morehouse - Ellen is the Executive Director of Student Assistant
Services, a non-profit substance abuse prevention corporation in
Tarrytown, New York. My wife is from about five miles from Tarrytown.
She\'s the creator of three national model alcohol and drug abuse
prevention, early intervention programs, the Westchester Student
Assistance Program, the Residential Student Assistance Program in
schools using coordinated community efforts to strengthen students. Her
undergraduate degree is from Cornell, and her Master\'s Degree is from
New York University School of Social Work. Ellen, thanks for being here.

Next is General Arthur Dean, became the Chairman and CEO of Community
Anti-Drug Coalitions of America in 1998. He has been many awards, with
the highest being two awards of the U.S. Army Distinguished Service
Medal. General Dean has served as a member of many boards, and currently
serves as a member of the Defense Science Board Human Resources Task
Force, a member of the Board of Advisors for U.S. Army Recruiting
Command, and Chairman of Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America Board
of Directors. Thank you so much for being here, General.

And lastly, certainly not least, and Gus, we just talked last week on
the phone, didn\'t we? Gus Frias is Coordinator of School Safety
Programs for the LA County Office of Education. In this position, he
helps educators to develop comprehensive violence prevention initiatives
to make schools safe and secure learning environment. Mr. Frias\' work
experience includes stints as a management analyst at the LA Police
Department, program manager at the Orange County Department of Ed, and
academic specialist to the United States Information Agency. Gus, thanks
for being here.

And with that, we will get started with the panel. Approximately nine,
ten minutes each, and that will allow us plenty of time to go back and
forth with those important questions and answers. Clarence, if we could
start with you, please.

MR. JONES:  Thank you very much. I will make this really brief, because
my foot is throbbing, and I will need to take my medicine here very
shortly. First of all, good morning. I am pleased to be here today to
share my thoughts from the LEA perspective. The role of the LEA under
the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Community
Act is a critical role. In this position, LEAs from across the nation
must adhere to the ongoing political changes, as well as provide Safe
and Drug Free programs for their schools and communities. Regardless of
the size of the school or the community, LEAs from across the country
continue to find ways to help make their small part of the world safe
and drug free.

As an advisory committee, I encourage you to look beyond numbers, but
look into your own hearts and help the United States Department of
Education Safe and Drug Free Office find a way to express the wonderful
work that hundreds of LEAs and SEAs are doing across this great land of
ours.

You sent out several questions that you wanted us to respond to, and I
will respond to those pretty quickly. But first, I want to say this
right here. If I ask the question how many of you all could tell me
what\'s written on the walls outside of this room, very few of you
probably remember some very key words, so I will remind you of what
those words are. \"Ensure Equal Access\", the way the Safe and Drug Free
program is set up now, the mission of the Department of Education states
on those walls, \"Ensure Equal Access\".

The way the program is now is ensure equal access across the board with
all the programs from the small ones to the big powerful one. And I\'ll
take a look very carefully at some of the strengths real quickly.
Funding from the Safe and Drug Free program has provided at the LEA
level the option to use a combination of science-based programs. This is
from K through 12^th^ grade, and beyond. Fairfax County Public Schools,
we have gone a little bit beyond that. We have found that you cannot
solve the programs - well, drugs and violence prevention issues just in
the schools. You have to reach out to the communities. And in Fairfax
County Public Schools, we have done that.

The key strength of the State Grant program is it enables schools and
communities to organize to combine their effort to expand their
prevention programs. Through this channel, schools and communities are
able to reach sections of the community where adults without school-age
children, which is the largest portion of most communities, we get those
people involved in our schools. We get them involved in being leadership
roles, and also through mentoring.

Also, both large and small school systems have the ability to provide
their students and staff the most up-to-date prevention strategies, the
ability to train together, to share resources across schools,
communities, and local agencies. And the key here is to leverage these
resources to enhance these programs. I\'ll give you a very good example
of that.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, there is a little city called
Petersburg. They receive less than \$5,000 a year on Safe and Drug Free
Schools funds. They contacted the State Department, their SEA, and said
hey, we have little monies, but we have a really bullying and gang
program going on. What can we do? They decided to take their money and
buy Too Good for Drugs and Violence kits, and then they contacted other
jurisdictions around, like Fairfax. We sent trainers down there, local
agencies sent people down there. They worked together, and by them
working together over these past years, the numbers of bullying
incidences, those things continue to drop. That is leveraging, reaching
out to other people using a small amount of monies.

One main element of the LEA responsibility, you heard several times
today, the Principles of Effectiveness. This book right here contains
the Principles of Effectiveness. Ann Atkinson down in Richmond,
Virginia, is the author of this book. From this book right here, it
talks about how the Principles of Effectiveness are set up. Every school
system in the Commonwealth of Virginia is given this booklet when they
come to a workshop. We sit down, we learn what the Principles of
Effectiveness are, how to use them, how to do the evaluation process,
and we go on from there. And if you want a copy, I\'d be glad to get you
one. But in Fairfax County, we have taken it one step further than that
right there. We have taken the Principles of Effectiveness and we have
\-- we took a look at what\'s going on in Fairfax County. It\'s one of
the richest counties in America, but I can tell you one thing about that
county. We have just as many problems when it comes to alcohol and other
drugs as any other community in America. We do have gang problems in our
county, as well. But from that, we took the Principles of Effectiveness,
we did our surveys, we did our \-- we took a look at what\'s happening,
and we took a look and decided to change things around a little.

Right now in Fairfax County Public Schools as a LEA, we instituted
several years ago Second Step in the elementary school, every elementary
school in Fairfax County, over 137 of those. Once they graduated from
there, they go to middle schools where they get \"Get Real About
Violence\", which is done through the school day and many after-school
programs. From there, they go into high school, where they go to \"Too
Good for Drugs and Violence.\" We didn\'t stop there.

As I mentioned earlier, we get parents involved in this. We have parents
program throughout called \"Guiding Good Choices\". For those who don\'t
know, every last one of those programs are science-based programs, and
we use those pretty readily in Fairfax County.

One of the other things you asked is, is the State Grant program working
effectively to promote Safe and Drug Free Schools? In Fairfax County,
the answer is yes. In many jurisdictions across the United States,
whether small or big, the answer is yes. In Fairfax County, we continue
to prove our programs are working, and right here I have with me, and
I\'d be glad, as I said, to get a copy of this booklet for you, is a
survey that we just took. We do a survey every two years in Fairfax
County. I want to give you some of the stats out of this book right
here.

For instance, the past 30-day frequency of use, for eighth grade is 21
percent to this past year, 16 percent; dropped from 36 percent to 29.5
percent. For twelfth grade it\'s 53 percent, down to 47 percent. For
binge drinking, which is a major issue in Fairfax County, for eighth
grade dropped from 7.5 percent to 5.3 percent, 10 percent of the tenth
graders from 17.3 percent down to 11.3 percent, and in twelfth grade
from 31 percent down to 26.1 percent. So yes, it\'s working. The answer
is absolutely yes, it\'s working.

The effectiveness of these programs can be attributed to the schools and
community agencies working together to form school community coalition,
to expand the prevention efforts that we have. It is through these
coalitions that we engage individuals who normally would stand on the
sideline and get those individuals involved. The most difficult part in
this system-wide approach is a political issue in getting a survey
accomplished. It took us almost nine years to go through the political
if, ands, or buts. But for the last seven years, we\'ve been doing a
survey every other year, and those surveys has been showing that the use
of drugs and alcohol are dropping in our county, and we are below the
national average right there.

The Virginia Department of Education, I have to give them kudos for a
lot because we work very closely with our SEA there. The Department of
Education right here I hold in my hand, all of the Safe and Drug Free
programs in the Commonwealth of Virginia, right here in one booklet. It
is required when you submit an application, that that application come
in to Richmond, and a peer review committee, as stated by law, will
review your application. Your application must meet the Principles of
Effectiveness, must have the ABCD format in order to have your goals and
objectives, must have all of these laid out. If they do not, it is sent
back to those individual school systems, and they must resubmit until
they meet that right here.

Once that is accomplished at the end, the application is approved and
it\'s sent out. One of the things that we have at the end of the regular
school year, which I have to give back and do here very shortly, is to
do our yearly progress report. This report, it\'s mandated that we have
to turn that in. And that progress report is put together to take a look
at all the different evaluations, and from that, this booklet right here
is devised, so you know what\'s going on in the Commonwealth of
Virginia.

You also asked one of the things about the emerging issues facing
students and students today about the Safe and Drug Free Programs, and
should they be addressed, and how can they be altered? Let me share
something with you.

In Fairfax County, when the gang situation took over, a lot of people
quit looking at alcohol and other drugs. In our office, we did not. We
continued to look at alcohol and other drugs as it was going on, and by
using POE, Principles of Effectiveness, we evaluated everything that we
were doing. We worked with our state, and we decided we wanted to change
some of the things we had in our original application that was approved,
and we wanted to move more into violence prevention. We\'re still doing
a tremendous amount with the other organizations that support us, but
now we have alcohol and violence prevention combined together. It\'s
just not a school system. We have community people, parents, legal,
medical, you name them, they\'re on it, and also students are part of
this committee to work with us.

One of the other things that you asked about, and I will not go through
all of those right here - you asked, is there a balance between
flexibility and accountability? I have real concern on that part right
there because the ability of the LEA to be flexible has allowed the LEA,
which is me, to pinpoint the issues within their own communities. With
the continuation of increased funding, and that\'s what we\'re facing,
this flexibility has given us the opportunity to step back as money
decreased and decide hey, we\'re not going to have enough, so what are
the real critical issues that we need to do? Because of that
flexibility, and using the Principles of Effectiveness that we have used
so much, we are able to take a look at those.

My concern is this - additional core requirements, if you notice, with
the decreasing funding source would not be advised. As the money keeps
dropping down here, the old saying is out there, do more with less.
Well, I tell you what - I have 24 years in the United States Military,
I\'ve been in wars. Can we do more with less for those guys over there?
I think the answer is not. We have a war on the home front right here,
and we need to address those issues right there, and we will.

One key component of the Principles of Effectiveness seems to be
overlooked in many discussions, is including meaningful and ongoing
consultation and input from parents. That is something that is not
talked about that much. This element alone brings so much accountability
to the LEA program, when parents, community, and other agencies are
adopting programs that is evaluated and has been proven to make a
different in the community, then that is the key. When everyone comes
together on the same page, they\'re talking, that is the key.

You can have all the science-based programs that you want, and we do
have a lot in Fairfax County Public Schools, but we get community
members involved in those programs, so when we say we are making a
difference, it\'s not just the Safe and Drug Free program in itself,
because we have coalitions that have come together with many factors to
make that worthwhile.

I want to share this with you right here. My grandfather once told me -
I had to write this down because sometimes I get teary eyed when I think
about my grandfather, such an influence on my life, but I had to write
this down. My grandfather once told me that the pendulum swings both
ways, so when it swings against the flow that you\'re headed, have your
house in order, for that is when real integrity and honor is seen. The
financial pendulum, when it comes to Safe and Drug Free Schools,
community and State Grant Program funding has thrown back against the
many efforts that has helped make this land of ours a better place to
live, learn, and play. But what is ironic is the fact that the LEAs
across this nation has followed the POE, the Principles of
Effectiveness, and have the data to prove that the programs are making a
difference, tons of data. This is just nothing compared to what\'s out
there. They have that data, yet their voices are not heard as one in
Washington. That is a problem.

As an advisory committee, LEAs from across the country are putting their
trust in you to assist the US DOE in finding a way to let the data that
we have been collecting for years on how effective our programs are
doing, be known to the folks in Washington, so we can stop wondering if
we can continue to help our children stay safe and drug free, regardless
of what part of the country we\'re from, whether low or high.

To close, I would like to use a word a young lady by the name of Ashley
Azappana - she\'s a 2005 graduate from Robinson Secondary School in
Fairfax, Virginia. She had the opportunity to testify in front of
Congress along with me back in 2005. She said these words, and it\'s
very powerful. \"While the President continues to cut back Safe and Drug
Free funding, I doubt drug dealers are doing the same.\" Thank you for
giving me this chance to share from an LEA perspective.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Clarence. We appreciate that. Ellen,
next. New York perspective.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  Well, I appreciate the opportunity to present my views,
and I\'ll be speaking primarily from my perspective in a county of about
one million people. I also am going to organize my response based on the
questions that I was asked. So for the first one, in terms of the
strengths of the State Grants Program, I see the strength as providing
the flexibility for LEAs and states to respond to local needs, and I\'m
from a very diverse county, so we have very diverse local needs. It also
assures that every LEA is providing substance abuse prevention and has a
crisis team. It encourages LEAs to use evidence-based programs and
practices, and provides funds for non-public schools.

I\'d like to now speak to the whole issue about effectiveness. In New
York State, our state government believes that the program is so
effective that the New York State legislature and Governor added
approximately \$1.3 million, New York State tax dollars, to the New York
State budget this year to compensate for the federal reduction in
funding for the Governor\'s portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools. I
want to underscore that that money was not from our block, but it was
pure local, state tax dollars.

In New York State, the Governor\'s portion goes to our State Office of
Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, which funds many
community-based organizations like mine. Our state has a lot of history
of collaboration between community-based substance prevention
organizations and local school districts.

As you mentioned, I\'m the Executive Director of one of those
organizations, and I currently partner with 28 separate local
educational school districts in our county. We\'re providing
evidence-based prevention programming currently in 57 secondary schools.
I\'m also the developer of some model programs. Most of the 28 LEAs use
their Safe and Drug Free School funds to match with local school tax
dollars to contract with our community-based organization.

You heard from other presenters about leveraging. Let me give you a
specific example. One of our school districts receives approximately
\$13,000 in Safe and Drug Free School, and that\'s a school district
that has approximately 2,600 students. They use \$97,000 of their own
local tax dollars, not state, not federal, but local tax dollars. And
then our state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services puts in
another \$50,000, and that creates \$160,000 worth of prevention
programming, but that \$13,000 of Safe and Drug Free Schools money
really is the glue that holds this formula together.

In our economically depressed school districts, where they don\'t have
the extra local school tax dollars, 100 percent of their substance abuse
prevention program is used to match with our state tax dollars for their
drug prevention programming, so in a city like Yonkers, which is the
fourth largest school district in New York State, if Safe and Drug Free
School funding was cut, there would be a direct cut in their substance
abuse prevention programming, because they\'re not able to make up for
that reduction.

Without federal Safe and Drug Free School funds, our economically
disadvantaged school districts not only would not have the funds to
implement evidence-based programs, but the evidence-based programs would
become diluted because a full-time person might be reduced to part time,
money that would be needed for training and materials would not be
available.

I would like to give a local example of the effectiveness of
approximately 2,000 Westchester students who would be considered
selected or indicated students in seventh through twelfth grade that
received four or more individual or group sessions of our evidence-based
program. Is the Power Point up? Yes. Okay. Ninety-six percent of these
secondary school students increased their perception of the risk of harm
associated with alcohol or other drug use, or maintained their high
perception of harm. Ninety-two percent of the students who reported any
use of alcohol or other drugs reduced their use, became abstinent, or
did not increase their low level of use. Ninety-one percent of the
students who reported associating with peers involved in delinquent or
deviant behavior decreased those associations, and 88 percent maintained
or increased their associations with peers not involved in delinquent or
deviant behavior. And finally, 94 percent of the students who
participated in delinquent behavior decreased their participation in
delinquent behavior.

In terms of the difficulties in determining the effectiveness of the
program, I see that there are three main difficulties. The first is the
lack of funding for evaluation, and a lack of funding for full program
implementation with fidelity. The second is the requirement for active
parent consent for student participation in surveys in some LEAs. I\'m
aware of one school district where only 30 percent of the high risk
students signed consents to allow for survey participation. And third,
most LEAs lack the expertise in evaluating program effectiveness.

Next, are there mechanisms that could be proposed that would help
determine if programs supported by Safe and Drug Free School grants
programs funds are effective? Yes. What I propose is that there be
increased level of funding to implement programs with fidelity, but
also, public domain availability of survey questions that could be
selected by LEAs. The federal government has contributed to the
development of many wonderful national surveys that school districts now
have to purchase in order to evaluate their program. I would like to see
some of these questions made available to recipients of Safe and Drug
Free School money for free, and I would like free scoring of the
questionnaire results.

Next, are there emerging issues facing students in schools today that
the grant program does not address, and should? There are additional
issues. I think in my county, the number one issue is stress, but I
don\'t think the Safe and Drug Free Schools funding should be addressing
that.

The focus on safety - the language currently is sufficient to address
the concern for crisis management regarding individual students. The
programs cannot and should not address the safety-related issues for
natural and large scale disasters. That should be FEMA and Homeland
Security. My county is the home to the only large nuclear power plant
for the New York Metropolitan area. While many of our school districts
stock potassium iodide pills, and have all kinds of evacuation plans, we
all know that if something happens to that nuclear power plant, that
everyone from Hartford, Connecticut to Southern New Jersey will not have
a chance to take those pills.

Is the structure of the Safe and Drug Free Schools grants program the
most effective mechanism for the use of these funds? The current
structure provides for maximum flexibility to address local concerns, as
well as statewide priorities. However, the effectiveness could be
increased if there was increased funding to pay for required
collaboration between the local education agencies, and the single-state
alcohol and substance abuse programs.

We are lucky in New York that we have a very large network of
community-based providers, as I mentioned, that work very closely with
our single-state agency, our state education department, and our local
school districts, but some financially strapped school districts don\'t
have the funding to even pay for transportation to our state capitol in
Albany. Additional funding would allow for additional collaboration.

In some states, my colleagues in community-based organizations are
required to address certain prevention priorities determined by their
single-state substance abuse agency, and are not able to respond to the
identified needs of the local education authorities. If there was
coordination, I think that problem would not exist.

Another issue of concern is the structure in the way non-public schools
and special act public schools receive their funds. Consideration should
be given to these schools receiving direct funding from the state
education agency based on the number of students enrolled, and not
necessarily have their funding coming from the local education
authority. I am aware of many non-public and special act public schools
that do not have even one student who lives in the public school
district where they are located. It is unfair to require LEAs to give
their Safe and Drug Free School funds to these schools, just because
they\'re physically located in the same geographic area. In some cases,
the vast majority of students do not even live in the same county where
the non-public school is located.

In terms of the balance between flexibility and accountability, I think
it\'s working. I think it could be enhanced with additional funding for
effective program implementation, administration, and evaluation.
Additional core requirements without additional funding would dilute the
program, reduce effectiveness, and cause local education agencies to
forego their funding. LEAs should continue to be allowed to spend their
funds on assessed local needs which often can, and do, change.

In terms of the tension between the Principles of Effectiveness, the
tension can be resolved by understanding that there isn\'t research yet
on every authorized activity, but local evaluation of effectiveness for
those activities can justify their existence. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Ellen. And next we will turn to General
Dean. General.

GENERAL DEAN:  Well, good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to
address you. I think the mission that this advisory committee has is a
very significant, and a very important one. My slides up? Okay.

Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America came out of a Presidential
commission in 1992, and we are a private association representing more
than 5,000 community anti-drug coalitions. And we work closely with the
LEAs and SEAs as it relates to the substance abuse, the Safe and Drug
Free Schools and Communities program.

My first slide is talking about the implementation of the program. The
program, we believe, ensures that even local education agencies, LEAs,
and you\'ve heard this already, with minimal funding, have someone
responsible for addressing the impact of alcohol, drugs, and violence on
the school learning climate. And we think that is critical. The program
provides effective services, including peer resistance and social skills
training, student assistance, parent training, and education about
emerging drug trends, and we think it\'s critical to do that. Next
slide.

The Principles of Effectiveness are being implemented, we believe, in
their entirety by LEAs regardless of the funding constraints to meet
their local identified needs. LEAs are data-driven, and we think that\'s
important, and they use school surveys to determine their community
needs and track progress over time, and you just heard an example from
Fairfax County. LEAs use these funds to leverage other state funds,
local and private funds, and you\'ve also heard that, to enhance the
scale and scope of their programs so they\'re able to deliver the
services that are critical at the local level.

We believe that the program works effectively in all settings; that is,
rural, urban, and suburban, and we think that\'s important because the
issues are significant in all. We believe, by design, the program is, in
fact, data-driven. It links schools and community partners and leverages
funds from other sources to address drug and violence prevention, and
intervention.

Program funds are being used effectively and can demonstrate measurable
results, and I give you one example, but I\'ve provided you several
examples in my written information to you. In the State of Wisconsin,
the Stevens Point School District has utilized Safe and Drug Free
Schools and Community Act funds to develop a prevention and intervention
infrastructure for violence, mental health and addiction issues. The
district has been able to decrease the number of students reporting past
day, 30-day use of marijuana by 5 percent between 2003 and 2005.

LEAs are receiving a small amount of money. They can develop a
consortium to pool their resources and to raise additional funds, and we
think it\'s very creative that many local small LEAs are, in fact,
coming together. Twenty-four school districts in Ohio received a total
of \$751,874 in their funds, but by partnering with outside
organizations and individuals, these school districts have leveraged an
additional \$686,000, nearly doubling the amount of money that they had
received.

In a recent survey or study done in the State of Ohio by Dr. Bonnie
Hedrick, determined that LEAs are, in fact, implementing all of the
programs of effectiveness. Regardless of the amount of funds they
receive, the LEAs surveyed indicated that 86 percent have conducted a
needs assessment as the basis of their programming, that 88 percent of
them had indicated that they had monitored alcohol and other drug use
through surveys and disciplinary referrals, 84 percent indicated that
they use research-based programs, so these examples represent what LEAs
throughout the country are accomplishing, and we are very proud of their
work.

Efforts to determine the effectiveness of the program nationally, we
believe, must be built from the LEA level up through the state and
federal levels in a uniform manner, capable of connecting inputs, what
is actually implemented with the funding to outcomes, including the core
data set, so we think that data-driven from the bottom up through states
to federal is the way the program should be managed.

Yes, the Uniform Management Information Reporting System should be
implemented across all states to collect both input, what is being
implemented, and outcome data from the LEA level in a consistent format
with consistent data, and information elements. A uniform system needs
to be adopted and developed by all states and LEAs, and collected by the
Department of Education. We believe that this system needs to collect
and aggregate information about what the program is accomplishing in
terms of both implementation of the POE, and how that relates to the
core data set.

We believe that currently, as implemented, there are already too many
mandates on the program. Therefore, it should not be diluted by any
further. No issues and mandates, we believe, would strengthen or would
help the program; and, therefore, should not be added.

The other question you asked concerning the program on safety, I chose
not to provide a formal response based on the area of interest that we
work with the LEAs on. But on your next question, we believe that yes,
because every LEA needs funding to provide all of Americas school-aged
youth with programs and services dealing with drugs, alcohol, and
violence. If states did not fund all LEAs within their boundaries, many
schools would not receive funds, and no thought would be given, or at
least any real organized thought would be given to preventing the
negative impact of alcohol, drugs, and violence in these schools.

The leveraging of scarce resources is why LEAs that seem to have
insufficient funds are able to implement effective, comprehensive
programs and, in fact, are doing this across the nation. And I think
that\'s a very important point, that you would look at the dollar
amounts and assume that they cannot do anything effective with that, but
you\'ve heard an example about Petersburg, Virginia. In fact, the
leveraging process is what causes these LEAs to be effective.

The Governor set-aside has been very effective in enhancing local
efforts to address alcohol, drugs, and violence issues, as well as
dealing with emerging drug trends, such as methamphetamine. The Governor
set-aside also enables LEAs to leverage additional funds for the
program. And you heard from Washington State, but I will use them as an
example. Their Governor\'s program grant was \$1.4 million, enabling
LEAs to leverage an additional \$1.7 million in state funds, and nearly
\$1.9 million in local matched cash and in kind during the 2004-2005
fiscal year, so you can see that this core money allowed for a lot of
leveraging. The 20 percent Governor set-aside should be maintained.

The Department of Education, in our view, needs to provide uniform
guidance to the states and the LEAs concerning information and data
collection to enhance the program\'s ability to show it is accountable
to OMB and Congress. There is a misconception that the States Grants
portion of the program is not accountable, and that the funds are not
used to implement science-based programs. In fact, states and LEAs have
taken the requirements of the POE very seriously, and are implementing
best practices and science-based programs, as well as monitoring their
progress in reducing youth drug use through student surveys.

The POE will authorize as a complete process to be implemented in their
entirety. It is the POE in their entirety that have made LEAs
data-driven, and we are concerned that the Department of Education is
focusing, and we mean this \-- is focusing exclusively on whether or not
LEAs are implementing science-based programs, rather than if they are
implementing all of the elements of the POE. I hope I didn\'t confuse
you there. We\'re concerned that all of the elements of the POE are
implemented, not just science-based programs. Okay. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, General. And we\'ll now turn to Gus
Frias. Gus, as we indicated, is from the Los Angeles County Office of
Ed. Gus.

MR. FRIAS:  I\'d like to begin by thanking our creator, Chairman Long,
and every single one of you for the opportunity to present to you the
brief following information.

I start with a quote that reads: \"It takes the best in each of us to
bring out the best in all of us. In a world of change and uncertainty,
this includes being the first to think, to see, to hear, and do whatever
is wise to ensure the health and safety of our kids. Whoever our rivals
are out there, we need to be wiser than them in overcoming whatever
challenges they pose to us.\"

I represent the Los Angeles County Office of Education, a county with
over 10 million residents, 80 school districts, 7,300 K-12 schools, and
1.7 million students. The challenges that confront us on a yearly basis,
I guess, are documented in the California State Schools Assessment
Report, and we average over 4,000 drug and alcohol offenses, 3,000
batteries, over 500 assault with a deadly weapon. We have numerous
homicides, and over 15,000 possessions of a weapon. The majority of the
weapons in our locale were handguns, and over 8,000 property crimes.

Another big challenge that we have is our tremendous problem with
multi-generational street gangs. LA County has approximately over 1,000
street gangs, with 79,668 reported gang members, over 75,000 are males,
3,000 are females. We have over 2,604 taggers. These street gangs,
again, come in numerous shapes and sizes. We have 217 Crip gangs, 74
Blood gangs, 550 Hispanic gangs, 63 Asian gangs, 24 Pacific Islander,
and 63 White gangs.

In the past 20 years, these gangs have been responsible for committing
over 10,000 gang-related killings, and over 100,000 serious physical
injuries. In 2005, we recorded 553 homicides, 585 attempted homicides,
and 4,330 felony assaults. And mind you, attacks on police, we had 168
attacks on police. Matter of fact, this week we had a gang member who
just got out of his car and sprayed one of our police cars with an
AK-47, shot it over 20 times. And this is something that, again, in many
cases is routine.

Our street gangs are transforming into international terrorist
organizations. LA County street gangs are acting as mother cancer cells
replicating across the United States, and throughout Latin America, and
other parts of the world. What you have up there are names that are
associated with terrorist organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas,
Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, but we have our counterparts,
counterparts in many aspects, we have similar qualities and are
responsible for committing tremendous crime and violence, the Aryan
Brotherhood. And mind you, these are gangs of gangs. Aryan Brotherhood
acts as the umbrella for a lot of Nazi low-rider organizations and other
white-based gangs.

The Mexican Mafia - the Mexican Mafia is a gang of gangs that has the
control of thousands and thousands of southsider street gangs all over
Southern California and beyond California, across the states. Mara
Salvatrucha is a gang that, again, started in LA, and now it\'s all over
Latin America, and throughout the United States. The Crips, again,
they\'re all over the United States, and beyond the United States. There
are Crip chapters in South Africa, for instance. And the Whah Chings,
you can find Whah Chings in every single Chinatown throughout the United
States, and beyond the United States in China. So along those lines,
what I wanted to do, is share with you a two-minute clip that I selected
as part of my presentation. Can you put it up, please?

(Video presentation.)

MR. FRIAS:  As you can see, this is real. This presentation is about
keeping it real, so I wanted to share that with you because it is real,
folks. Our state prisons right now are run by a lot of the groups that I
just described to you, and they are indoctrinating so many youngsters
into being part of this, it\'s becoming very racist, so all the blacks
are on one end, with all their modules. All the whites on one end,
browns on the other end, and Asians on the other end, and then they are
creating alliances. For instance, the Aryan Brotherhood has aligned with
the Mexican Mafia to take on all the Crips and Bloods in the California
penal system. That is impacting the state penal system, but it is also
impacting our streets, and it\'s impacting our schools. So let me focus
on the schools.

To address the challenges in our schools, we have led in developing the
following school safety mandates. Our California Constitution Article 1,
Section 28(c), basically states that: \"All students and staff have the
right to attend schools that are safe, secure, and peaceful.\" Our
California Education Code also mandates that \"every single school must
establish comprehensive school safety plans\", and these school safety
plans need to be in concurrence with the Principles of Effectiveness.

California government code also requires that all school safety, routine
school crisis response plans must integrate a standardized emergency
management system. And now, since we have NIMS, NIMS is also going to be
mandated as part of this. We also have a new law called the California
School Safety and Violence Prevention Act, which mandates that all the
schools need to take preventive steps against hatred, against hate
motivated behaviors in the schools.

One that\'s not listed is another mandate that comes from the state,
mandating that all the schools need to be part of a Safe Schools
Assessment Report, that documents school crimes that take place on an
annual basis. I can tell you that a lot of this all sounds good, but
when it comes down to implementing them, a lot of them don\'t come with
sufficient resources to do that.

Lessons Learned - we have learned that in the area of school safety, our
county Offices of Education need to lead. We are the closest to whatever
is going on in the streets and the schools, and our county Offices of
Education need to be more active in leading and bringing together the
respective multi-agency representatives from law enforcement,
community-based organization, faith community, our local elected
officials, and others. So, therefore, what we want to recommend based on
our lessons learned, is that every single initiative needs to establish
some type of Safe Schools coalition that brings together all these
folks.

Next, we need to be realistic in developing a master plan on school
safety, and I\'ve included a copy of our master plan on school safety in
your packets. School safety plan that needs to be, again, very real.

In California, we mandate that all schools basically go through Safe
Schools planning training, and so as part of that, we have School Safety
teams composed of educators, parents, students, law enforcement
officers, and other community leaders, and we put them through
comprehensive training. Again, as part of this training, we address the
Principles of Effectiveness. The training for the School Safety teams
goes beyond the Safe Schools planning, because then we get into issues.
We have a program called TABS, Teaching Alternative Behavior
School-wide, that focuses on classroom management and student
discipline. Along with that also comes SEMS, the Standardized Emergency
Management System, and other related types of trainings.

To address America\'s war on terror, our county Offices of Education, we
have learned that our county Offices of Education must work with our
local terrorism early warning groups to share intelligence in a timely
and secure manner. And sharing intelligence is not easy, ladies and
gentlemen, particularly when it comes down to sharing intelligence
related to terrorism. In the past, our military did not really share
their intelligence with our local law enforcement agencies, and our
local law enforcement agencies did not share their intelligence with the
schools. Today, we have a system in placed called TEW, and this TEW
concept is being replicated across the United States. We believe that we
need to be part of the equation, and we need to also share with them
whatever intelligence is out there to make sure that we act on it in a
timely and secure manner.

Next, we need to identify and replicate effective research-based
initiatives, such as those in character education and conflict
management. We also need to provide specialized counseling and case
management services for selected students and their families.

We\'ve learned that we also need to engage students and their families
in leadership development, after-school recreation, and cultural
activities. We also need to provide career and employment services for
students and their families, design specialized programs to address
urgent challenges, such as street gangs. And we need to foster positive
relations between students and police officers.

I\'ve got news for you, folks, in many of our schools, our students hate
the police. And they in no way are going to cooperate with the police.
And they have a word that they use a lot against positive healthy
relationships, and that is \"snitching\". No one wants to be labeled as
a snitch. Well, we need to take that on, and we need to change that. In
your packets is our Students and the Police guidebook, which is part of
a students and police project, that\'s a collaboration between our
office and the LAPD, the LA County Sheriff\'s Office, as well as the LA
County Police Chiefs Association. We believe that, again, we need to
foster these relationships in our schools among our kids.

And then we need to, I guess basically again, echo what everybody else
has said, and that is, when it comes down to evaluation, we need to
truly address it in a comprehensive manner, and attach resources to it,
because if we don\'t, then we will continue to produce evaluations that
have a lot of shortcomings.

Along those lines, let me focus briefly on recommendations.
Recommendation one, is we recommend highly that you need to modify your
funding streams and formulas. The County Office of Education, we get
approximately \$83,000 per year from the Safe and Drug Free Schools
program. That money, again, is leveraged in numerous ways, but I can
tell you that if you really put the County Offices of Education at the
center of gravity in terms of local activity, we can make the most out
of all the monies that come down the pike.

Focus on helping every student, attending local schools, particularly
the walking wounded and the walking dead. And if you don\'t know who
those kids are, those are the kids that oftentimes carry tremendous
baggages with them on a daily basis. I often encounter cases of the
walking dead of kids who basically throw the finger at the world, and
they come into our classes with gang tattoos on their bodies, and now
all of a sudden the educator has to address that challenge; a kid who
oftentimes has a lot of enemies who want to kill him or her, so these
are real cases.

Again, require a master plan of school safety. Direct the County Offices
of Education to lead, coordinate, monitor, and evaluate school safety
services. LA County gets a lot of resources from this program, Safe and
Drug Free Schools. Resources, for instance, to implement the emergency
management and crisis response program, resources for the Safe Schools
and Healthy Students initiative, but our office really is not getting
these resources. These monies are going to school districts, and if we
have 80 school districts in Los Angeles County, and you give the money
to one school district, that school district is going to take care of
business for itself. But if you give it to the County Offices of
Education, chances are that we\'re going to bring together a diverse
group of stakeholders to make sure that we impact more than one school
district, so we need to find better ways to accentuate the role for the
County Offices of Education.

Again, to address America\'s war on terror, no ifs, no buts, we need to
find better ways to share intelligence. And if DHS is doing anything, we
need to collaborate with them. I am often called by different
representatives from DHS to address the gang challenges, but I\'ve got
news for you, for whatever reason, the U.S. Department of Education
really doesn\'t have a solid comprehensive initiative to address the
issue that I just presented through the video.

In California, by legislation, we established the California Gang Risk
Intervention Program, and allocated \$3 million to address this problem
in our respective schools. But even \$3 million was not a lot;
nevertheless, it was an effort, and this is something that we should try
to emulate. The United States Department of Education needs to lead.
Anything that impacts our schools, we need to make sure that we lead.
Law enforcement agencies can play a role in supporting us. DHS can come
along and help us in our respective schools, but we at US DOE and in
County Offices of Education, we need to lead. Again, direct the counters
of education to be the work of the Safe Schools and Healthy Students
grants, emergency response, and crisis management grants. And then we
need to revive the community services grant program. As you know, that
program came and went, but that program was a fantastic program that was
addressing the needs of kids who are suspended or expelled from school.
We need to find a way to bring that program, and build on existing
lessons learned.

Beyond that, again back to gangs, we need to establish new funding, and
really develop a stream of resources that can assist our schools that
are having some very difficult challenges.

Lastly, again back to accountability systems, in one of our school
districts that got millions from you, the mayor died, the chief of
police retired, and the superintendent of schools got himself into a big
mess and was fired. The monies were just sitting there. We need to find
better ways to make sure that those monies that you allocate to school
districts are used for the intended purpose of helping our kids. We
believe that County Offices of Education can assist to do that. Thank
you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Gus. And thank you, General; thank you,
Ellen; thank you, Clarence. We appreciate that. We now get to the
portion that I find extremely interesting. And as I indicated earlier,
to draw on your experience and expertise, and from these fine committee
members, so we will open that up. And my job will be to monitor time and
I\'ll keep you advised of that so that we stay right on task. Questions
from the committee. Hope.

MS. TAFT:  Again, I would like to get your ideas on how we could
reinvent or change the program, make it new and fresh, based on the
charge that our chairman gave us at the beginning of the day. So if each
of you would take a few minutes and quickly outline what you would
recommend that we do, I would be most grateful.

MR. FRIAS:  I\'ll start if off very briefly. If our political leaders at
the federal level are willing to invest billions of dollars to ensure
the health and safety of individuals in the Middle East, we need to do
the same thing at home. And the monies that are allocated to US DOE at
this time for this program, we need to find a way to document our
tremendous need, and put it in the context of the war on terror, and get
DHS to share its billions. It\'s got billions and billions, and yet,
here we are, to a degree, asking for less than a billion. We should be
asking for billions, and then as part of the compromise, settle on
billions.

GENERAL DEAN:  Mrs. Taft, what I would like to suggest is, first of all,
I think that we, at the national level, can do a better job, and it\'s
not to be pejorative or critical, in ensuring that the uniform guidance
is provided to states and LEAs as it relates to data collection and the
program itself. If we took a survey of states and LEAs, I think that it
would be \-- the great majority would say that they have developed that
guidance themselves without national guidance, which prevents the
program from having the uniformity that it deserves.

Secondly, we have worked with LEAs and states on evaluation, and we have
just recently published a primer that outlines how to do local
evaluation built around the strategic prevention framework. And we think
that\'s an area that they can benefit from, and it\'s not a lack of
will, or lack of desire, it\'s simply providing clarity and helpful
information on the evaluation. I think that we are getting a phenomenal
amount of help out of this program that goes unrecognized, and that\'s
unfortunate. And it could, in fact, be improved, but I\'m here to tell
you that we get far more out of this program than is put into it in the
form of dollar support.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  Your questions makes me think of the phrase that
\"sometimes old is good.\" And I think of the Polio vaccine and the
tetanus vaccine, which have been around forever, and they\'re terrific
and they still work. I think the Safe and Drug Free Schools program, the
State Grants portion, is terrific and it works. And you\'ve heard today
wonderful examples of it.

The only thing that I would add is just what I\'d mentioned before,
evaluation. I really think the federal government can provide public
domain questions and scoring, so local school districts will not have to
use their small amount of money to pay for evaluation. Every survey that
I\'m aware of that\'s recognized nationally, was developed through
research with federal funding.

When a school district, like you saw, only gets \$1,000, and then they
have to pay \$2 per questionnaire, and \$300 per report, that takes
money away from programming. I\'m not saying there should be a standard
questionnaire, but there should be a list of possibly 100 questions
taken from various questionnaires, so local education agencies can pick
and choose which ones will evaluate most effectively their programs.

One thing I just want to mention with Mr. Frias\' comments, not every
state has county, local education agencies. So, for example, in New York
we don\'t have county Departments of Education.

DR. LONG:  Intermediate agencies, BOCEs. Yes, I think even though he was
referring to county offices, from state to state there would be some
form of intermediate agency. I think in New York, it would be BOCEs,
yes.

MR. JONES:  I agree with my peers on the evaluation component is the
major one. The real question here really is, how can we get to OMB, how
can we let them know what we\'re doing is effective? If they came to
look at Fairfax County\'s program, they\'ll go my God, you would score
extremely high. But there\'s hundreds of programs like this, but we need
a set of evaluation tools that we can use nationwide that can
effectively measure what we\'re doing, because I\'ll be very honest, if
you thought that you sense frustration in my voice when I was talking,
because as an LEA on the front line, we are frustrated because we\'re
busting our tookuses out there, providing the data, working hard, doing
the evaluation, doing what we were told to do, turning it in, and then
we find out we\'re going to get cut more because what? We\'re not doing
what we\'re supposed to do. I\'ve got it right here.

MS. TAFT:  Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Shep.

DR. KELLAM:  Well, in many ways, what you\'re saying is a very powerful
message, and it should bring us together to think about what are we
talking about when we talk about evaluation? And we need a common
language to understand that. And I\'m also assuming that you don\'t mean
that you want the federal government to fund an evaluation on a
nationwide basis that tells you a lot about the nation, and nothing
about local communities, and what\'s working for whom, and where,
because that would be a huge disaster. But we have a tendency to do
that. We don\'t do it with the weather report, you don\'t get a national
survey on the weather, you get local reports, but there\'s a common
language. So along that line, I guess what I\'m asking is, have you made
efforts to team up with local universities, or research groups, and have
you had any successes or failures in coming to common cause with
research groups so that they understand your mission, and don\'t use
kids as guinea pigs and so forth?

MS. MOREHOUSE:  I\'ll start off by responding. My community-based
organization has partnered very successfully with many independent,
well-known researchers and research groups, not on Safe and Drug Free
School states\' portion funds, because the cost for those evaluations
when we team up with those university researchers are 50, 75, 100,
125,000 dollars a year. For our Safe and Drug Free School funding, when
we use surveys, and I\'m not advocating a national survey, but if you
use the Communities that Care survey, if you use the Monitoring the
Future from I think it\'s Western Michigan State University, or the
American Drug and Alcohol Survey, and I could go on and on; those
surveys have a cost. And when you survey a lot of students, that\'s a
lot of cost. And then there\'s a cost for writing up the report, and
people need to get paid. And that syphons money off from programming. No
one does anything for free any more.

DR. KELLAM:  Can I follow-up? Yes, so for I don\'t know how many years,
45 years or so, I\'ve been one of them folks that\'s been getting
research grants from people like Dr. Sims, and others sitting around the
table. So the question is, I guess, as much can we restructure science,
as it is restructuring Safe and Drug Free Schools. In other words, if
there was grant money that would be provided specifically in
partnerships with the research funders, private and federal, state, such
that there was a premium put on teaming, on developing a partnership
which would allow you to do rigorous evaluations of programs, for whom
it works, and for whom you need more, how to line up backup services,
the universals, and so on.

The new initiatives we\'re talking about may well, in fact, require
fixing science, as well as fixing the program for Safe and Drug Free
Schools, getting them closer into intimate common interests. And I\'d
like your thoughts about that.

MR. JONES:  Let me just answer this here. In Fairfax County, we did
several years ago, and I mentioned, we didn\'t have a survey for many
years, we got together with George Mason University which sits right in
our backyard, and we worked with them, and through their efforts working
with county agencies, the medical people, the religious, the faith
leaders, and parents, and everyone - we all came together at the table
and sat down, and we got the Community That Cares survey, and then used
that particular survey. And we had to pay a lot for that, but since that
happened, we found out a way that we can make it a little cheaper
because now our county government actually pays for the survey and the
printing of this document that you see here.

Now they pay for that right there. It does cost a little, but not near
as much as we would go out to other organizations, or vendors and have
that to do, so to bring all these people together, that\'s been in the
language for years, to bring all these people together to make a
difference. And we are doing that, along with many other school systems,
so that is happening.

DR. LONG:  I\'m sorry.

MR. FRIAS:  I\'m sorry. Let me add that in your packet, I included a
copy of a brand new manual on gang violence prevention and intervention.
And on page 75, you will find a one sheet evaluation form that we
require from all of the funded projects. This took a while for
representatives from the university, from the California Department of
Education, from local areas, to come together and agree that this
evaluation form was adequate. And when you look at it, it lists X number
of program process measures, and program outcome measures. For CDE,
based on the limited resources, it felt that this was adequate. What
I\'m telling you is that we need more than this. This is a nice form
that people can fill out, but we need more than this. And the
universities, again, when they come to the table, they\'re also limited
on the resources available to them, so there\'s only so much that they
can do. The worst case scenario is that they\'re working alone, and
doing it wrong.

A case in point, USC got a \$1 million grant from one of the federal
agencies, and after the one year was over, they couldn\'t come up with
some solid findings, because their experimental and control groups in
one form or another were contaminated. So when they try to do it alone,
believe me, it doesn\'t work.

DR. LONG:  The order, and I apologize, Russell, I missed you - Russell,
and then Tommy.

DR. JONES:  Yes. One thing that I\'m hearing consistently across the
panel is the need to work together, and the need to partner, the need to
bring parents in, et cetera. And I\'m just wondering the extent to which
you are practicing what you preach. And what I mean by that is, I\'ve
heard a number of very good things that folks are doing, the leveraging
of funds, bringing in almost double the amount. I think, Arthur, you
mentioned that, and just a number of very good things. And I\'m just
wondering to what extent is there sharing of good things that work, the
lessons learned, for example, as well as best practices. Because all you
guys are doing very good things, but in a situation where there are so
many needs - and, Gus, I was really struck by the number of gangs and
the enormity of the task there in LA. Again, I\'m just wondering the
extent to which there\'s that cross-fertilization in terms of learning
from each other.

GENERAL DEAN:  I\'ll start. The answer to your question is absolutely.
We work diligently to share best practices with the people at the local
level, the state level, as well as our national friends, and we do that
in numerous ways. First of all, we have large training seminars around
the country. We probably have had five different ones this year, ranging
from 250 people, to 600 people, to 3,000 in Washington, D.C., so the
answer is through training facilities and training seminars, through
publications. I talked about the one concerning evaluations that we have
developed, so I believe that the national organizations, the state level
organizations, the local level organizations are, in fact, working with
each other, partnering with each other, involving universities in their
data and evaluation. I think, all candidly, that at the national level,
it is not known the extent of what\'s happening out in the states and in
local levels. And I think you all would be totally shocked, and somewhat
blown away to know exactly what is happening out there, the goodness
that\'s going on out there. Now can it be improved? Absolutely. So I
guess what I\'m suggesting is that you need to somehow, through a
system, have the good work that\'s going on, and the data that\'s being
collected, the evaluations that\'s going on locally and state filtered
up, so you can have a good understanding of what\'s really happening, so
that you are not necessarily recommending modifying, without having all
of the good information that\'s happening out there. So we are working
together and sharing information. Clarence and I have been together on a
regular basis. Ellen has been to our trainings, the people that you
heard from this morning, also, so it\'s happening.

DR. JONES:  Yes. Just a follow-up question; are there mechanisms in
place to track and trace the extent to which folks are following up on
the excellent recommendations that are being made, or the trainings that
are being carried out? I mean, what\'s the follow-up from that? I mean,
it sounds like very good practices.

GENERAL DEAN:  We put together annually for OMB and others, the impact
of the Safe and Drug Free Schools, and give them with documented
examples and books that are this big, what\'s happening across the
country. So it is being compiled, it\'s being documented, and it\'s
being shared at the national level.

DR. JONES:  And is there feedback given to you based on the collection
of all of these good data, of these good things going on, et cetera?
You\'re saying that you compile large books, are there data being given
back or feedback given back to you from the \-- 

GENERAL DEAN:  The answer is yes.

DR. JONES:  And is it helpful?

GENERAL DEAN:  Yes.

DR. JONES:  Yes.

MR. JONES:  I was just going to say, from an LEA perspective, we get the
opportunity to go out not just in the surrounding counties in Virginia,
but as far away as Montgomery County, some parts of Maryland, D.C., and
up to Pennsylvania, and other places to talk about how we set up our
different programs. And one of the requirements I have in my office, if
one of my specialists is required to go out to a place to do a program,
they must return within one year to take a look at that program and see
where they are, because we\'re just not going to go out and do something
and say life goes on. We want to make sure that what we did, that we
spent out time and money wisely. And as General Dean pointed out, is
that a lot of people come together at the national forum, and then we
have the opportunity to share a lot of the different programs we have
with people all over the nation. And right now, we\'re trying to figure
out a way how to get some of our people out to Kansas, because they\'re
calling, wanting to see how we do some of the things that we do, and
that is what it\'s all about, networking across the country.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  I just want to mention, in New York State, our state
education agency, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, and our single
state alcohol and drug agency, meet about five times a year with a large
number of the community-based prevention providers, so they get to hear
local concerns. We also get to hear state ideas, so it\'s really a
two-way mechanism of sharing opinions. Also, many states have statewide
prevention conferences that are held annually, and that\'s another good
mechanism.

Unfortunately, there are not as many national prevention conferences.
CADCA is really one of the best and one of the few really national
places that brings prevention providers together. Even the Department of
Education used to have, I think they were yearly Safe and Drug Free
Schools conferences. You\'re down to once every three years, or every
two years, I can\'t remember, but those used to be good places, also.

The CAPS through CSAP also try to provide prevention. CAPS are the
Centers for the Application of Prevention Technology, try to get
information out to local providers, as well, so there are some ways to
do this. But the lack of funding is a serious issue, and again, I\'ll
just use New York State as an example. If we have a meeting in our state
capitol in Albany, that\'s five hours from the eastern part of Long
Island, and five hours from Buffalo, so our colleagues in different
parts of the state either can\'t get there because they don\'t have the
funding for planes, or mileage, or overnight accommodations, so the
funding is really hurting travel.

I\'m also aware that many, many states in the country will not allow
out-of-state travel, so while I\'m very lucky, in New York we can send a
lot of people to the CADCA conference, I know some of my colleagues
can\'t do that.

MR. FRIAS:  Lastly, LA County, with 1,700 K-12 schools, we do have our
strengths, but believe me, we have tremendous challenges. By
legislation, all the schools are mandated to have school safety teams.
We train those teams, but now we expect them to go back to their
respective site and impact the rest of the faculty and others. Well, to
follow it up, there are some shortcomings; 1,700 K-12 schools with
limited staffing levels, it\'s going to create some shortcomings, so
again, we do have some strengths, but we do have some needs.

MR. LEDBETTER:  Ms. Morehouse and General Dean, you both commented about
additional funds that were leveraged, or where you got matching money,
for lack of better terminology, I\'ll just call it matching money, where
additional funds were appropriated from one place or another. Has anyone
looked, or is there any research, or any information that\'s out there
anywhere about how much money has been raised to go along with what has
come through from the federal government in these programs nationwide?

MS. MOREHOUSE:  I don\'t have the dollars. I can get that information,
but I\'ll just speak for my own organization. I get approximately \$1
million from our state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse
Services, and that \$1 million is a combination of federal block grant
money and New York State tax dollars. I match that against approximately
\$2 million of money I get from the local school districts, the 28 LEAs.
Out of that \$2 million, a portion of it, less than 25 percent is Safe
and Drug Free School money. The rest is local school tax dollars, so
that\'s just my own example. I can give you more specifics. I don\'t
have those numbers right in front of me.

MR. LEDBETTER:  I think it would just be interesting if the Congress
were to realize that there were \-- what money that the federal
government is generating, is just a portion of what may be invested in
this project.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  Right. In New York, a small portion \-- actually, I
would like to just take one minute and respond to the other part of what
Dr. Jones raised about parents. In many of our school districts with the
decrease in Safe and Drug Free School money, that was brought up at a
local school board meeting about gee, money has been decreased over the
years, that means more local tax money, and parents come out and say
absolutely, we want the money spent on that program, because they know
that it\'s working.

GENERAL DEAN:  We have not taken on a national survey to answer the
question you just asked. One, we don\'t have the dollars to do that.
Two, we don\'t receive any funds whatsoever from Safe and Drug Free
Schools monies, but what we have done is, we\'ve looked in districts
where there are significant people in Congress that care about this
program, and we can tell them what\'s happening based on your question
in their particular district. So we\'ve done that, and we know in
certain states, like Washington state, Ohio, and others that we have
very, very close relationships with. So we have data from representative
states, we have data from some specific districts where key members of
Congress reside, but we have not done it nationally.

My point is that it seems to me that this is something that the
Department of Education should do, and that it would then have its total
feel for what this program is or is not doing. That was the point I made
when I was talking about it earlier, but if you just look at Washington
State, it\'s about one-third, one-third Safe and Drug Free Schools,
one-third from the state, and one-third they leverage. That\'s,
obviously, one state, but it is, in fact, happening out there. We can
give you specific examples, but not a national example. We can\'t give
you the totality of what\'s happening across the whole country.

MR. LEDBETTER:  Okay. One other question; one of the bullets that you
had in your presentation was that the Department of Education needs to
provide uniform guidance to the states and LEAs concerning information
and data collection to enhance the program\'s ability to show it is
accountable to OMB and Congress. That was on page 5, I think.

GENERAL DEAN:  Right, that\'s correct.

MR. LEDBETTER:  Do you have any suggestions to go along with that?

GENERAL DEAN:  Well, I think the law itself is pretty clear as to what
it is that states and LEAs should be doing. The Program of Effectiveness
is really quite clear, as well. The piece that I think that would bring
it all together is a national guidance based on the law, placed on the
Program of Effectiveness, that would give then to states and to LEAs
some specific guidance on how to go about implementing and interpreting
the law, so that the data then is rolled up from the local level to
states, to national. And to the best of my knowledge, that is not
happening at the current time. The law is there, very specific, the
Program of Effectiveness is very specific, states are individually going
about implementing that, LEAs are individually going about implementing
that, but what I think would be very beneficial is some national
guidance on how to interpret, how to implement, and how to roll the data
back up, and then a national repository of that data so we could, in
fact, answer your question.

DR. WECHSLER:  A previous speaker said, \"Across the board we need to be
more prescriptive and firm about how the program is administered\". If
it goes in that direction, can you give some very specific advice as to
what aspects of the program you think we should be more prescriptive and
firm about, and what aspects we shouldn\'t go there with?

MR. FRIAS:  Can I start on that? Yes, very briefly, there are programs
out there that do not meet the Principles of Effectiveness. And yet,
they\'re getting millions, and millions, and millions. Case in point,
the GREAT Program, Gang Resistance Education and Training. If Senator
Feinstein\'s bill goes through, by the way, which it\'s expected to go
through, it will allocate over \$650 million to address the challenges
of gangs throughout the United States. We have a press conference with
our office next Wednesday where she\'s going to announce - I think she
\-- she\'s got the backup in Capitol Hill to get this approved. We, the
County Office of \-- US DOE, County Office of Education as educators, we
need to find a way to lead, and let the elected officials know that if
programs do not meet the Principles of Effectiveness, then they
shouldn\'t be funded. But, unfortunately, there are some political
realities that get those programs funded, so we need to be a little more
bold on that.

MR. JONES:  I just want to say that many of you, if you know Arlene
Cundiff, who is the SEA in Virginia, that\'s all I would need to say,
because Arlene Cundiff runs a tough shop. And the bottom line is, you
have to follow the Principles of Effectiveness, you have to turn in
things a certain way, you have to respond in a certain time, and if you
don\'t, that money is going to be sitting there waiting for you until
you do. And that is one of the things that we have been working on for
years, and she\'s been wonderful guide, so I think, and maybe with my
military background says hey, if the boss says do it, you need to do it.
And as you pointed out right there, very clearly that\'s not happening
across the board. I do know in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it
definitely is happening.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  My understanding in New York, that if you don\'t have an
evidence-based program and comply with the Principles of Effectiveness,
that you have to redo your application, and you will not get funded
until you comply, so I personally don\'t think you should make it
stricter.

DR. SIMS:  Gus, I had a question just following up on what you were
talking about, and maybe this will give you an opportunity to expand on
it, but it was in terms of the school safety teams that you do train,
and I was interested in how they come together, and whether or not
during the actual time of the training that there are other
representatives from other parts of the schools that would be impacted
by the overall Safe and Drug Free Schools program at the training? You
mentioned later on that when those teams go back to their schools,
they\'re responsible for communicating information to the rest of the
school personnel, and I was just wondering how does that work, how do
you monitor it, and how do you all assess the overall impact, or the
overall coordination with the different aspects of the programs, and
then outcomes.

MR. FRIAS:  Mind you, we\'re talking state mandates, so all the schools
in California are mandated to establish school safety teams. As part of
that, we train them. Once we train the teams, they go back to their
respective school site, and usually the principal or the assistant
principal is the leader of that respective team. There are some major
shortcomings in sharing that information with the rest of the other
folks at the school site, all the teachers, all the counselors, the
parents, and others. Where we come in, basically, is to find a way to
provide direct or indirect support services to these respective teams in
doing that, but I can tell you that when it comes down to training the
whole school, we run into some tremendous roadblocks, because the
training time for educators is very limited, and oftentimes it\'s
already taken, so you have to get in line, even for safety-related
issues. We\'re trying our best to find a way to, I guess, if we can\'t
do it by legislation, we have to find a way to collectively as a team
address that tremendous challenge. But that continues to be a
tremendous, I guess, shortcoming, concerns at some schools, particularly
the schools that are located in the middle of gang-infested areas, or
high risk areas, drugs, gangs, and guns, and all kinds of other things.
Those kids, and just for your info, we have at the minimum one lock-down
a day, lock-down, and just one gang banger can close down three schools
from a particular area because the law enforcement agencies are chasing
a son of a gun with a gun, and the whole school goes into lock-down.
Imagine that type of environment impacting the kids. I share this with
you because those realities impact what we do, and hopefully, we can use
that reality to persuade legislators and others to assist us to address
this.

DR. SIMS:  Then the other question I had, just in listening to each of
the presentations was in terms of the diversity of the different school
systems that you all work with, and how is diversity addressed
throughout the training and cultural competency, especially when you can
have big differences between principals and school student bodies,
teachers, and whatnot?

MR. JONES:  I can definitely address that. We have one of the most
diverse school systems in America in Fairfax County. We have in one
elementary school, in particular, we have over 97 different languages
that are being spoken in just that one school. One of the things that
we\'re doing is that everything that we have with drug prevention or
violence prevention is translated in seven different languages. And we,
also, through our office, we hire individuals to go out with our
specialists if one of our specialists is not already trained in that
language, to provide those in-services for parents, and also community
members on whatever topic we\'re talking about.

Most recently, the Korean population asked us to come out, and over 300
people was there. We had to have a Korean interpreter, so we took all of
our drug paraphernalia, all our gang stuff, and we had the most
wonderful time. And the Q&A back and forth is what it\'s all about, and
then from that right there, they stay in touch with us, and we
constantly stay in touch with them, help providing them information on
how they can continue to help their particular areas right there. But
it\'s a whole county thing, not just the school, the whole county is
involved in this endeavor right here.

GENERAL DEAN:  I would say that speaking of Dennis\' strategic
prevention framework, there are five major steps, that start with
assessment, planning, capacity, evaluation, et cetera. But in the
center, if he presents this plan to you, are two items that holds all of
the major steps together. And the two items are sustainability, and
cultural competency, so we\'ve been about training at all of our
trainings, whether they\'re small, large, or whatever, a central piece
that we talk about is cultural competency, because if you don\'t get
that right, nothing is going to happen locally at all. So the point is,
we\'re working with our state friends, and our local friends, to ensure
that they address that, because if they don\'t address that, the other
five steps will not work, and will not be held together.

DR. JONES:  Just real quick; are people getting training in cultural
competence?

GENERAL DEAN:  People are getting training by trained people who
understand cultural competency, absolutely. Yes.

MS. MOREHOUSE:  In my area, as we become more culturally diverse, this
becomes a major challenge, because with Mr. Frias\' point, the amount of
time for staff training is minimal, and you have to get in line behind
the new math tests, the new English tests, and the emergency evacuation
procedures, and everything else. Most of the school districts in New
York are unionized, the number of faculty meetings are set by the
teacher\'s contract, the number of staff development days are set by
contract, so there\'s very little flexibility for training. When a
teacher leaves a class or has to be a substitute or a nurse, or a social
worker, so I don\'t feel that it\'s being dealt with as well as it could
be.

One other thing I\'ll mention; most of the evidence-based programs
looked at cultural competency in terms of the results in different
populations, so when school districts select evidence-based programs and
practices, I think that\'s one of the issues that they look at, as well.
MR. FRIAS:  Let me add, that a lot of times federal agencies fund
specific CBOs, Community-based Organizations, to address issues related
to diversity and tolerance. But when all is said and done, the schools,
instead of leading, are following. We need to take change \-- change it
around, and those resources should be coming to our schools. If it
involves our kids and our staff, and our purpose is to train them on
this type of competence, then we need to find a way to make sure that
our county offices, or educational institutions lead.

I\'ve got to emphasize to you that in California, we have the California
Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act, that requires that all the
schools be proactive in addressing hate motivated behaviors. And guess
what, there\'s no money. They forgot to attach money to do this, so
who\'s going to do this? Well, it depends on the respective persons
involved to leverage resources and make it happen, but those are
tremendous shortcomings that come at us.

DR. LONG:  We are right on time. It is now 12:28. As we wrap-up our
second panel, and as I sat and watched, and listened, some things really
came through. I\'m not going to go through that list, but something that
really struck me was this; that no matter what the amount of money is,
that we get it done in this field called education for these children,
and one of the big reasons is because of collaboration, and it\'s that
networking. And I was just thinking about the people on this committee
sitting around this table, and the panelists that have come up, and
I\'ll give you - and I heard the General talk about the fact that you
and Clarence have done a lot - so it\'s that networking and that
collaborative effort, that positive collaborative effort that gets it
done for children. And I\'ll give you one quick example.

We had a situation in a rural area in our county about two weeks ago
that some hostilities ended up just prior to this situation, there have
been two murders by some teenagers, neighboring towns. Then there was a
police shooting, school was going to open and that set up a memorial
across the street from the school. The superintendent was very concerned
and called me. I picked up the phone, called Bill. Bill said we need to
get together with Gus. I\'d never met Gus until today, and within the
hour, we were on a conference call, and Gus said I\'ll take care of it.
I\'ll contact the superintendent. I\'ll be out there. There was no
money, there was not even a talk of money. It was that relationship went
from one person to another person, we\'re on the phone. This morning
when I met Gus for the first time he said, \"Dave, I talked with the
superintendent. We\'re going to get it handled.\" But it reminded me of
that collaboration, and you do it so well, so with that, we\'ll close
this panel. And, again, Gus, and General, and Ellen, and Clarence, we
thank you so much for being here and sharing.

(Applause.)

DR. LONG:  Lunch is now ready. It\'s 12:30, and lunch will be for the
committee members and the presenters, and it will be right down \--  you
walk right out this door, right through the doorway for about 50 yards,
and lunch will be served.

(Whereupon, the proceedings went off the record at 12:32:07 p.m. and
went back on the record at 1:21:59 p.m.)

DR. LONG:  Okay. We\'re all set to go, if folks, committee members,
please come up; and panelists, if you\'d please take your seats. Thank
you. As we get started, first of all, thanks to the panel members for
coming in today and being very willing to share your expertise and
experience for all of us. As we have with the past two panels, we will
have presentations from each of you. And then as soon as we are done, it
will allow the committee to ask specific questions so that we can start
to synthesize some information to make a recommendation to the
Secretary. So I\'d like to, first of all, introduce the panelists to
you, and starting on my right, Peter Reuter is a professor at the School
of Public Policy, the Department of Criminology at the University of
Maryland, and Director of the Center on Economics of Crime and Justice
Policy at the university, and also Senior Economist at Rand. From 1981
through \`93, he was a Senior Economist in the Washington office of the
Rand Corporation. He founded and directed Rand\'s Drug Policy Research
Center from \`89 to \`93. Most of his research has dealt with
alternative approaches to controlling drug problems, both in the United
States and Western Europe. Dr. Reuter received his Ph.D. in economics
from Yale. Peter, thank you so much for being with us today. And I want
to ask - we didn\'t have an opportunity, is it pronounced Zella or Zila?
Zili, so I\'m zero for two. Okay. Zili Sloboda. Now remember, this is
coming from a guy named Dave Long.

(Laughter.)

DR. LONG:  Zili is currently an adjunct research professor in the
Department of Sociology of the University of Akron, and Senior Research
Associate at the Institute for Health and Social Policy of the
University of Akron. She was awarded a grant from the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation in November of \`99 to evaluate a middle and high
school substance abuse prevention program being delivered through the
drug abuse and resistance education, or as we know it, the DARE network.
She was trained as a medical sociologist at New York University, and at
Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Her
research has included a broad range of studies and program evaluation in
the area of drug abuse and cancer. Thank you so much for being here.

And Chris Ringwalt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Chapel Hill
Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation. He has 16
years of experience in design and development analysis, and reporting
ideological and evaluation studies relating to public health issues. And
he has directed evaluation of the drug abuse resistance education, again
DARE program, for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National
Institute of Justice.

Dr. Ringwalt has served as Chair of the alcohol, tobacco, and other drug
section of the American Public Health Association, and as Secretary to
the Board of Society of Prevention Research. He has recently stepped
down from a five-year term as Director of Pyres Chapel Hill Center.
Chris, thank you so much for being here. And if we could start with
Peter, we\'ll go.

DR. REUTER:  Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the
advisory board. I should begin by noting that this is a five-year old
study. It\'s a study done for the Department of Education for this
office at the time when the act was out for re-authorization, and I have
not continued to work on this specific topic since then, so I will not
attempt to really update what we did. I think as some of you know, the
study has been cited by OMB in part for its - part being a pun here - in
justification for some reductions in the program. I think that probably
makes some interest, even in its somewhat dated form. It was the result
of a grant to the Drug Policy Research Center at the Rand Corporation,
and the report, as said, was published in 2001.

The conundrum that we were dealing with is that this is, obviously, an
emotionally powerful issue, more so at the time that we were doing the
research than it is now when drug use, the drug problem has continued to
fall in its prominence amongst social problems in this country.

Congress wants to appear to be responsive, and certainly back then did
want to appear to be responsive to the drug problem in all possible
ways, but the difficulty was that this was generating what one of our
contributors called symbolic pork; that is, it was money that was
attractive without its content. It simply was there to be distributed.
And the schools accepted the responsibility of providing these programs
unenthusiastically. And to make one updated comment, I think that that
lack of enthusiasm is probably greater now given the increased pressure
on curriculum of other kinds.

The program has been judged in general, and again, I make this comment
from sort of the late 90s really as having been unsuccessful. It\'s not
targeted at the need. Too many school districts receive the grants, and
the medium grant is too small to make a difference. The schools in
general choose relatively weak projects, they lack guidance, they lack
incentives, they lack monitoring to force them to do anything else, so
the project that we did involved focusing on whether the Act should be
re-authorized or reformed in some substantial way. So the project
involved, first of all, bringing together people who were involved in
delivery of these services in the schools. I should say, this was a
project that I did jointly with Michael Timpane who was also at Rand
those days. He had expertise in educational policy, I presume he had
some expertise about drug policy, and that seemed like a good
combination, but neither of us knew much about what was going on in the
school room with respect to prevention activities, so we held some focus
groups. We commissioned some papers to review specific aspects of the
literature, and we held a conference, which at least some people here
were present, and a bunch of federal officials and researchers talked
about what was then a draft report of the project. And what I\'d like to
do is talk about the current program, the current program as of the late
90s and its problems, evaluate what was then the Clinton administration
proposal, and talk about our own views about what might be done.

The schools have lacked guidance, and they\'ve lacked guidance in sort
of multiple ways. There\'s a great diversity of activities supported by
this program, and I don\'t need to tell, I think, this audience just how
varied those activities are. At the time, DARE was the dominant
curriculum choice. I forget what the percentage was, but it may have
been a majority of schools were using DARE, the one program that even at
that stage we knew to be an ineffective program. I mean, now Zili is
working on something that we hope will use that platform to build
something effective that you can still call DARE, but at the time, the
schools were clearly choosing a program, which for reasons other than
its demonstrated effectiveness. They were largely local political
factors that governed, not in any pejorative sense, but they were
responsive to what parents saw as the preferred program. And the truth
was that most of the available curricula simply were unevaluated, and
there wasn\'t much guidance available to the schools, even those that
were well-intentioned and wanted to choose the right program.

That\'s in part because prevention science at that stage was still quite
weak. As you may remember, there was a panel of the Department of
Education that invited submissions of programs to decide which were
proven and effective, and the number that made it to proven and
effective was tiny. And if you looked at those that were not
specialized, for example, aimed specifically at athletes or something
like that, it was truly on the hands, on the fingers of one hand. So it
wasn\'t just that the curricula weren\'t very strong, but there wasn\'t
a really well \-- I mean, it wasn\'t just that the schools were making
bad choices, but there wasn\'t a lot for them to make an informed \-- on
which basis to make an informed choice. Partly because of our
backgrounds, we were mostly focused on drug prevention. When you went to
violence prevention, the situation was, if anything, even worse, very
few evaluated programs, and little understanding of what was likely to
make for an effective program.

The Safe and Drug Free Schools Act itself as a program was really quite
isolated. It had a few links to other educational initiatives of the
Department of Education, and it was isolated within schools themselves.
It had no relationship to the sort of national school reform movement.
It sat out on its own, it was stove piped, and it was beginning to
collaborate with other health and justice programs, but that was still
fairly nascent at that time.

So with that as background, we looked at what was then the dominant
proposal on the table, maybe the one from the Clinton administration,
which started, I thought, with a very realistic assessment. In other
words, an assessment very much like ours, of what the problems were with
the program at that time. And it was one that sort of didn\'t tamper
with the allocation across states, and that probably isn\'t a
particularly critical part of the formula to change, but it did try to
focus on ensuring that more of the dollars went to schools that were in
need, in need and lacking capacity; that is, there\'s really a good
argument for paying attention both to the severity of the problem in the
school, and the capacity of the school district to finance the stages
there, to supplement the capacity of the district.

It would have led to slightly larger average grants. I think it was
going to target maybe half as many school districts, and would invite
small school districts to form a consortia. And it would involve an
explicit evaluation component in grant renewal. You would have to show
that you had successfully achieved your goals in getting a renewal. And
it would have established a list of approved programs, which costs you
something in terms of initiative. On the other hand, it sort of gives
you a floor on quality, gives you a better chance of a floor on quality
than the current system did.

We thought that there was sort of six criteria to use for evaluating
proposals, and I think these are fairly self-evident. We should choose
programs that demonstrate effectiveness in reducing drug use and
violence. They should target the resources of the schools that need
those resources. It should be possible to account for how the federal
government money got spent. It should be possible to evaluate the
consequences of that. It should have low administrative cost, and be
compatible with the administrative capacities of the school states, and
school districts, and you would like it to be in the business, also, of
improving the capacity of the program to deliver effective prevention
programs.

Well, on that basis we thought that the Clinton administration proposal
did moderately well in terms of accountability and evaluation, and in
terms of effectiveness. And I, frankly, can\'t reconstruct why we
thought it was likely to increase effectiveness. I can say why we
thought it would fail badly in terms of administrative feasibility,
which is that it was still talking about a relatively large number of
school districts receiving small grants, but demanding that there be an
elaborate evaluation procedure. Those two things do not go together. If
you\'re talking about grants of less than \$30,000, an evaluation of
anything more than most pro forma type is simply not doable, and that
was really the guts of the Clinton administration program. It didn\'t,
in our eyes, do much to improve program capacity.

All right. So what in 2001 did we think could be done? Well, the first
question was, should this program be continued? It\'s not a question
about whether the federal government should be in the business of
improving prevention in schools. The question is whether this particular
mechanism for doing so was the appropriate mechanism. And there\'s
certainly credible arguments against doing that. It does not have
well-defined mission. The expansion to violence further complicates an
already complicated task. There\'s little evidence that it has had
measurable effects, and it\'s not obvious.

Now to be quite personal about it, I did not find the argument that the
federal government should be in the prevention business, as opposed to
many other areas of school curriculum particularly compelling. There are
schools which need it, and those schools can benefit from federal
intervention, but the notion that there be an essentially universal
program, essentially one that\'s really quite challengeable. An
alternative role would be that the federal government be in the R&D, and
training, and dissemination, and that it just stick to that, and that
would be compatible with the Department of Education role in many other
areas of education.

There are lots of arguments, though, for continuation of it. It is five
years ago. It was still popular politically, and popular in the broad
public sense, in as much as they knew about it. The program was actually
improving, was building better links to other kinds of interventions
aimed at health and safety in schools, so there certainly were arguments
for continuation.

We thought that there needed to be, even as compared to the Clinton
administration program, more targeting to the needs for \-- to the
schools with greatest needs, a shift from give me so much of the money
to state formula, to federal discretionary grants. I should note that we
are both in Washington, we tend to that, in general; that there be more
of an effort to get state and local governments to take this on
seriously, as well, and that there should be expansion of the federal
capacity for research, training, and national evaluation. Thank you very
much.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Peter. And assuming that that has no
semblance to what\'s coming.

DR. SLOBODA:  It may, there\'s no guarantee.

DR. LONG:  Okay. Again, thank you, Peter, and we\'ll now move - I want
to ask this because I want to make sure that - I didn\'t get A or B.

DR. SLOBODA:  Zili.

DR. LONG:  Zili. Okay.

DR. SLOBODA:  Zili, like zeal-e.

DR. LONG:  Got it. Zili.

DR. SLOBODA:  But there are variations on that theme. Peter, I thought
that was very interesting presentation. I have both written comments
that I submitted to you in response to each of the questions, but I\'m
going to do a slide presentation, sort of summarizing.

I wanted to sort of set a context for where I\'m coming from in terms of
how I\'m responding to the questions, but also wanted to thank you all.
I appreciate being here today. I think this is a very important session,
and I think it\'s going to have impact on a lot of what goes on in our
schools in the country in terms of prevention in the future. I\'m an
epidemiologist, so forgive my first context, which is to talk about
illicit drug use.

I find that a lot of people sort of know the epidemiology of drug abuse,
but there\'s some nuances that I think have real implications for
prevention that many of us sort of overlook. This information comes from
the Monitoring the Future study, which is conducted by the University of
Michigan annually, looking at drug use in eighth, tenth, and twelfth
graders, have looked at the twelfth graders since 1975, and eighth and
tenth graders since 1991. And what I really want to point out here is,
in the next slide which is looking at illicit drug use, but we could
pull tobacco use and alcohol up just as well, and the bottom line on the
graph is information on eighth graders, middle line is tenth graders,
and the top line is twelfth graders. And what I want to point out is
this huge jump in use between the eighth and tenth graders. And this
morning we saw slides from Indiana which had information on sixth
graders, and it was also a huge jump in terms of drug use, alcohol use,
and tobacco use between the sixth grade and eighth grade. And I say this
because when we talk about prevention, I have found that - and even with
the DARE - that the 80 percent of school districts that delivered DARE
were delivering only the elementary school program, which is good. We
need to have elementary school programs in place, but we also need to
target middle school and high school when kids are most at risk for drug
use. And for some reason, every time I get an opportunity to make - I
try to put this message across, because communities aren\'t really
getting that message.

Law enforcement seems to -  when I talk to police chiefs, they seem to
understand that better than our educators, so I just wanted to put that
forward because it has implications for some of the other things I\'m
going to say later.

The other thing I wanted to, just as a background piece was, we know
from epidemiologic studies that not only do drug use patterns change,
and we heard this morning very vividly of the change of kids use to more
prescription drugs, and more diverse drugs that they have, so not only
are these drug use patterns changing, but we also have found that
children and adolescents\' cultures are changed, and this also has
implications for prevention. And what I mean by that, when I started the
study that was mentioned this morning funded by Robert Wood Johnson, I
started out in 1991, and I had a curriculum coordinator who was
coordinating the development of a new middle and high school program
that was going to be delivered by DARE officers. And one of the people
on that group said we should have a 2010 program in place, which she
wanted to have more interactive because kids are more involved with
video games, et cetera. And when we looked at schools, schools didn\'t
have the computers in place at that time to incorporate that into the
curriculum. Now we\'re at 2006, and I make my visits to the schools,
I\'ve noticed more and more of the schools have bags of computers, so a
lot of the programs that we have in place need to be updated, and we
need to be more flexible in design of our program, recognizing, as I
said, the different culture and the drug use patterns.

The third point I want to make is - again, this is just from my
experience - I\'m finding that school administrators really want to
address drug use and alcohol use in their schools. That\'s what I\'m
finding from my visits to schools, and I\'ll talk a little bit more
about that. Our study looks at 83 school districts. This involves 83
high schools and 122 middle schools, and they\'re in six cities. When I
travel around visiting the schools, they ask me all the time about
prevention, what they can do, where they can go for information. In
fact, what\'s been interesting, when we started the study, we recruited
schools in 2001. We told the schools that to participate in the study
they had to sign an agreement that they would agree to be randomized to
either control or treatment condition, and to stay on with the study for
the course of the study. And after we received the agreement letters,
then schools are randomly assigned to the conditions. And the control
schools in the beginning were not going to offer any kind of prevention
programs. That was part of the agreement. However, to mess up my study,
we\'re finding that many of the control schools are actually delivering
a prevention program, and statistics - that the name programs in the
school - when I talked about name programs, they\'re Life Skills
training, Project Alert, et cetera, that the delivery of these programs
range was 41 percent in the seventh grade. By the time kids get to the
tenth grade, only 5 percent of the high schools are delivering a
prevention program. And remember the graph I showed you about where kids
are at risk, but there are lots of prevention related activities, and
these pretty much are Rangers Red Ribbon campaigns, assemblies, all
kinds of activities to raise awareness about drugs, so there is a real
concern. This also said that there\'s real concern I think in the
schools about these problems, and they don\'t really know how to address
it.

When I looked at the questions that we received, two things stood out to
me. One is, is the program meeting current student and school needs. And
the second one, is the program effective; that is, does the funding make
a difference in terms of drug abuse? I think the existence, the fact
that there is the SCRUDs program acknowledges that drug abuse is a
problem and needs to be recognized. And I think that one of the turning
points in the history of drug abuse research was when NIDA was created
in 1974, because it said to the health community and to the nation, that
drug abuse is a problem. And I see the creation of this program as
making that statement, and I think that\'s very significant. I think
it\'s significant it makes a statement, and also backs it up with some
funding.

I also think that - and this is mentioned over and over this morning -
the fact that the program provides elements that support the delivery of
prevention program in schools, but also links the schools to the state
and federal government. And I see that clearly in my home state of Ohio,
where the state government works so closely with the local government
and with local schools.

The other thing is, the program is a medium - as, again, mentioned this
morning, the infrastructure that provides sufficient information to
schools on emerging drug problems and innovative educational approaches
that meet the changing needs of the kids.

Also, I think the Principles of Effectiveness was mentioned quite a bit
this morning. I think that that was extremely important for schools. I
think it\'s important for communities, also, in terms of how to plan and
strategically plan around the needs of their communities, and it allows
flexibility so that community differences can be responded to
effectively.

One of the questions had to with the authorized activities and the
mandate of restrictiveness of the authorized activities. Given what I
said in my first set of comments, I think that the authorized activities
are restrictive, and they\'re too limited, they\'re time limited. Now we
have more information about some of those activities, and there are
other activities that perhaps need to be added to that list, so I think
that needs more flexibility.

I\'m a researcher so my primary interest was in the uniform management
information and reporting system, and this came up again this morning
several times. I like to sort of not call it an evaluation system. I
think evaluations, true evaluations need to be done differently. I\'d
like to see the uniform management information reporting system to be an
administrative tool that would feed information both to the local
education agencies, as well as to the federal level and to the states,
to let you know what\'s going on. I was talking at lunch with Belinda,
and when I was at National Institute on Drug Use, I was the former
director of what was then called the Division of Epidemiology Prevention
Research, and we had a number of the large data systems in our unit, in
our division. One of them was looking at how drug abuse treatment was
being supported. It was called NDATAS in those days, and what was
interesting about that was it had multiple components to it. One was
talking about what kinds of services were being delivered so you had a
description of what was going on in the country. And then there was a
point prevalence survey that was done, which gave you an idea of what
was going on with the people who were going through the services at one
point in time, so everybody who was an active substance abuser who was
going through treatment, you had the characteristics of those people,
and what their problems were, et cetera, but it gave you a good handle
on what was going on.

Subsequently to that, we had a discharge form added to it, so we not
only had admission data, we all began to look at discharge information,
so you had this flow of information, told you what was going on in the
country. You could see where some of the gaps were, where additional
technical assistance may have been needed. And I think something like
that, I think it gets more complicated when you talk about prevention,
and the complication comes from the variations across communities.

On the other hand, I think that such a system can be developed. I think
the system you can build in short, intermediate, and long-term outcomes.
And it just needs to be a very good system that is monitored frequently,
because one thing that happens, and I\'ve worked with a lot of large
data systems, if people don\'t use the information, it\'s really
worthless, so it has to be a real living thing.

Funding for prevention in the United States is decreasing tremendously
now, and now we\'ve - since the late 90s when I think \-- I really think
one of the turning points was when NIDA put on its first prevention
conference in 1997, and out of that, we were able to \-- NIDA was
highlighting a lot of their own research, and showing that prevention is
effective. I think it\'s taken time for that message to come across to
communities. However, I think the message is there now, and this may not
be the right time to begin cutting funding for prevention. I think the
feds have to really be the leaders in this area. I think the states are
on board. I\'m so impressed with several of the state level people I\'ve
been talking to. They\'re on board, the community is on board, and I
think the federal government needs to support that. Thank you very much.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Zili. And next, we\'ll turn to Chris.

DR. RINGWALT:  Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the invitation,
Zili, to come. Zili is the person whom I\'m holding responsible for my
presence here today, and we\'ll see if that holds true to the end of the
day, but I\'m delighted to be talking to you. I\'ll be addressing the
second of the several bullets that we were sent relating to is the Safe
and Drug Free Schools State Grants programs effectively promoting safe
and drug free schools? And I will be presenting data that are as new as
Peter\'s were not exactly old, but getting there. The graphs that I will
be sharing with you did not exist a week ago.

You all are familiar with this key Principles of Effectiveness, if any
has tripped the field up in terms of being a challenge, to me, it\'s
probably this one. Programs and activities shall be based on
scientifically-based research that provides evidence that the program to
be used will reduce violence and illegal drug use. So I\'ll be sharing
with you some preliminary evidence from the second school-based
substance use prevention program study brought to you courtesy of NIDA.
And specifically, I\'ll be addressing the problems of effective
universal substance use prevention curricula.

Our study methodology entailed drawing a representative sample of all
public schools that include middle school grades. We stratified our
sample by population density, school size, and poverty. And all
together, we sampled some 2,200 schools that included middle school
grades. We then identified the school staff person whom the school said
was the lead substance use prevention teacher. WE hoped and expected
that this person would be our best informant as to what was going on in
his or her particular school. And we collected data a little over a year
ago via the web, and then mail, and then phone, and a lot of whining,
and wheedling, and nagging, but we did get what I think is an
exceptionally good response rate out of our teachers, bless their
hearts, of 78 percent. And, in fact, the response rate was so good that
when we weighted the data, it didn\'t look really very different from
our unweighted data, so we were pleased with that.

Now we got straight to the findings, but first the questions that we
asked. We asked our respondents to tell us, and most of them were
teachers, some of them were school counselors, or social workers or
nurses, but most were teachers - during the current school year, which
of the following substance use prevention curricula are you - and then
we asked them in two different questions - using, and using the most for
students in your middle or junior high school grades in your school?

Now for using, they could answer multiple responses. We gave them a long
list of all of the universal drug prevention curricula that we could
find. It went on for about 25 lines or so, using the most, we asked them
to pick, of course, just one. And it\'s important that you understand
this if you\'re going to appreciate what\'s on the following slide,
because what we then did was go to the one list of effective prevention
programs that most people and most schools turn to, which is the
National Registry of Effective Prevention Programs, to find out which of
those curricula made the list. It\'s called simply the \"List\" out
there in the schools. It carries tremendous weight. It has been a source
of great pain, and challenge, and anxiety for the people who have been
in charge of saying sorry, your curriculum is not on it, and I\'ll do my
best to explain to you why, but you won\'t like what you hear.

Turning to our first chart, you will see two bars. The light one is any
one effective curriculum - and remember, this is the first question.
They could answer one, they could answer more than one. And our middle
schools of a certain size often had more than one prevention curriculum
in their schools. And then we asked them to tell us the effective
curriculum they used the most.

Now what do we see here? Well, we see that close to 50 percent of our
schools with middle school grades have at least one effective curriculum
in the school. That\'s pretty good news, I think, in terms of the
dissemination, the saturation of effective programs into our schools.
But when we asked them well, which ones are you using the most, we
discover that a fair number of these curricula are simply sitting on the
shelf, not being used, or at least not being used the most. And I think
that is of concern. As you look at those bars, you will see something
closer to 23-24 percent for using effective curriculum the most.

Now in response to the questions that we were asked to address we
disaggregated our data by urban, suburban, and rural. And as you will
see, the suburban schools were more likely than the urban and rural to
say that they had purchased or secured an effective curriculum, but that
those differences are more modest when we asked the question well, is
this the curriculum you\'re using the most? So these data suggest to me,
at least, that it\'s not as if the Safe and Drug Free Schools has been
more effective say with suburban schools, which you could argue have the
money than rural schools, which are less likely to, in getting effective
curricula out there. There is work to be done all across the board.

We then asked the question of how long, when did your school first start
using the substance use prevention curriculum you were using the most
with students in middle or junior high school grades? Our response
options were less than a year. You can see for yourself, one to three
years, three to five years, and at least five years.

Now when I asked this question, I rather hoped that we would get the
answer that you see on the following page, that most of the curricula
have been in place for quite a while. Two-thirds of them, approximately,
have been in place for at least three years. I think that is good up to
a point, because it does show that these curricula are fairly stable.
They\'re not coming and going year by year. But what these data also
told me on reflection, I\'m reflecting as I speak because these data are
so new, is that the push to get effective programs into the school
hasn\'t resulted in a whole slew of them just coming in recently. Most
of the ones that are there, have been in for at least a year, and the
majority for three or more years. And I don\'t know why that is. I would
have expected to see a larger number of schools saying well, we just got
one in, because of the, I believe, persistent emphasis on the part of
our states and our districts, to get schools to spend their money
wisely, where it is believed that the programs will be most effective.

We then asked our schools, our respondents, how likely is it that the
substance use prevention curriculum that you were using the most with
students will continue to be used next year, in three years, and in five
years? Here\'s some very good news. Most of the people we talked to
expected that their programs will be sticking around, and I was pleased
to see that.

Now there was somewhat less optimism that they would be highly likely to
be around in five years, as opposed to likely, but I think that just
that may have been caution on the part of some of our respondents, so I
aggregated those two groups in a single column.

Then we go to the question which I believe is the nub, and I\'m going to
have to move slowly through this one so you know exactly what you\'re
looking at. You know how economists, present company excluded, have a
way of dazzling you with assumptions of one sort or another as they
present the results of their cost benefit analyses. I\'m going to tell
you exactly how we asked this question, and then you can decide for
yourself how much credibility you place in the answers that you will
get.

We said, \"About what proportion of students in middle or junior high
school grades in your school will have received the curriculum you are
using the most before starting the high school grades\"? And we gave
them a set of response options from zero to 100 percent, one to six, as
you see. Now we categorized schools as having zero percent if they
received no substance use prevention curricula whatsoever, or if they
received a substance use prevention curriculum not shown to be
effective. And we gave that both a zero. Now that\'s not to say that the
programs that are not on the list are not effective, it just means that
we don\'t know that they are. And what we found from our middle schools
reports of the proportion of their students who receive an
evidence-based curriculum, is that 80 percent of our middle school
students have not, and will not, receive a program that is on the list,
that is in the effective category by the time they leave middle school.
And by the way, you all know how unlikely it is that they will get
anything effective in high school. The prevalence of curricula,
particularly effective curricula in our high schools is very low,
indeed. So 80 percent got zero, and then a piddling amount got the
intermediate categories, but 10 percent, a little over 10 percent said
well, almost all of our kids will get this effective curriculum.

Now we also disaggregated in data that I don\'t have to show you whether
these charts looked materially different across urban, and suburban, and
rural schools, and they don\'t. They look pretty much the same, so it is
with a reasonable level of assurance that I can inform you that we have
a long way to go in terms of exposure, or reach as it\'s sometimes been
called, getting our effective programs out to our students in our middle
schools.

By way of summary, about half the nation\'s middle schools report having
at least one effective, that is evidence-based prevention curriculum in
place, but only a quarter are using it the most. And the differences in
use by population density of communities served, that\'s simply another
way of looking at urban, suburban, or rural - these differences are
modest. Two-thirds of the schools using effective curricula the most
have had them in place for at least three years, and the likelihood that
they will stick around in the future seems very high. But 80 percent of
the nation\'s middle schools report that none of their students is
exposed to an effective substance use prevention curriculum by the time
they leave the middle school grades. And that, to me, was an unpleasant
surprise. That tells us that we have work to do.

Now I also wanted to address the issue of the difficulties in
determining the effectiveness of the Safe and Drug Free Schools program.
Zili has already referred to the fact that you can\'t find control
schools any more that are pure controls, so it\'s really difficult when
you do a study that you\'d like to think it was controlled, to isolate
program effects, to attribute program effects when you\'re lucky enough
to find them, to the program under study relative to some other
characteristic or attribute of the school that you\'re in, the
intervention school, or the comparison school.

You\'ll know, of if not, I hope you should, that there\'s increasing
resistance in schools to non-mandated drug use surveys. Schools don\'t
want to do them any more. Evaluations are getting harder and harder, and
much more expensive to conduct. I\'m conducting some of them right now,
and the costs just keep ratcheting up. And there are many other
challenges to collecting survey data. Ellen has mentioned education\'s
mandate for active parental consent which makes life difficult,
particularly as it is, even if you go to great lengths as we are in our
studies to get parents to say yes, it\'s the ones who say no who
probably have the most to hide, or are the most concerned that their
kids may divulge something that will make them look bad, or get them in
trouble. And there are some new concerns that the questions that we ask
kids about their drug use maybe iatrogenic in nature. We prevention
researchers have been saying for decades oh, no, that doesn\'t happen.
It can\'t happen, it won\'t happen. Well, someone has done a study and
published it, which shows maybe it will, maybe it is, maybe we are
actually creating the very problem by asking these questions that we are
trying to resolve. The jury is not in on this, but we have to be
sensitive to the fact that this article is out there, as much as I would
like to stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and ignore it.

Other problems are school-based archival data concerning reports of
substance use activity unreliable, the reporting norms and practices
change, and teacher fidelity to curriculum, and we\'ve heard a number of
people talk about fidelity, is very hard to assess. It is increasingly
looking like we really can\'t trust teachers to tell us what they have
done, because they don\'t know what they don\'t know. And to the extent
that they haven\'t paid attention to the curriculum guide, we can hardly
blame them for saying that they haven\'t followed it very well. So my
final slide, and do I have another minute or two? Good. Relates to
proposed mechanisms to determine the effectiveness of our programs.

I do think it is worthwhile to support through one mechanism or another
periodic surveys of a nationally representative sample of schools to
determine, among other things, the proportion and distribution of
schools using effective curricula, the extent to which these curricula
are being taught to our students, so it\'s not as if \-- what we don\'t
want to happen is the schools will say yes, we\'re satisfying the
mandate of this program, when they\'re only reaching a very few, a small
percentage.

We also need to find out the extent to which content that it thought to
be effective is being taught, and also, the extent to which teaching
strategies thought to be effective are used. By the way, the strategies
that we are modeling today we know are ineffective. This notion that our
dialogue should be one way, and it won\'t be as soon as we start asking
questions, but that here we are, we\'re teaching you, you\'re a class -
we have known ever since Nan Tobler told us ten years ago - it doesn\'t
work.

We need to know the extent to which teachers are administering
evidence-based curricula with fidelity, and there are a number of us who
are pushing the feel for, or trying to find out are there questions that
we can ask our teachers that will give us reliable and useful
information about fidelity. And we need to know progress over time, both
relative to earlier surveys, and we did \-- our first iteration of this
survey was back in 1999, and we will do another one in an abbreviated
form in another three years, but also to establish goals. And I think we
should be considering strongly establishing a goal that our states and
our school districts reach X percent of their students with an effective
prevention curricula, within a certain amount of time, and then find
some way to figure out whether, indeed, that has come to fruition or
not.

The only other thing I have to say is that with the revisions and
modifications of the National Registry of Effective Prevention Programs,
and I could talk at great length about that, but don\'t have time -
there\'s no longer going to be a list, as such. And people like John
Carnevale, who is known to some of you, at least, are going around
telling programs that aren\'t on the list to tell schools that there is
no more list, there is no more list, so let our program in, please. And,
indeed, John is correct to the point that the registry has transformed
itself into something called the decision support system.

Well, when you translate that into English, it turns out to be something
like consumers reports, where each program that is reviewed or
re-reviewed, and Ellen will tell you that she\'s in the middle of
resubmitting her program for re-review, will be scored along a number of
criteria. And the scores will be put out for the public along a
continuum, but it won\'t be an on the list/off the list kind of vehicle,
which is easy for anyone to understand; although, it certainly generates
a lot of heat, and energy, and passion, regardless of which side you\'re
on. It\'ll be much more difficult for the consumer at the district or
the school to say okay, is this an evidence-based program or isn\'t it,
and how do I tell, how do I interpret these criteria, and how do I
differentially weight them? So I\'m not sure where the field is going,
but things are in flux, and it\'s up to you guys, I believe, to make the
kind of recommendations that will keep us on track and headed in the
right direction. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Chris, and thanks to all three of you.
And at this time, as we indicated earlier, we\'ll be opening this up to
a dialogue, question and answer, so that we can learn some things as a
committee. So we will do that just as I indicated, right now. Any
questions from the committee?

MS. PRICE:  I have two questions. One is a very short question.
Iatrogenic, can you tell me what that means?

DR. RINGWALT:  It means creating the problem you\'re trying to solve.

MS. PRICE:  Okay.

DR. RINGWALT:  The best example of an iatrogenic illness is when you go
into a hospital healthy and you come out sick.

MS. PRICE:  Okay. And your first point on that slide was control schools
with no prevention programming, now impossible to find program effects,
cannot be isolated from potential competing attributions. Can you
expound a little bit on that so we have a clear understanding of what
that means?

DR. RINGWALT:  Sure. When all schools are doing Red Ribbon weeks, when
they have MAD Chapters, when they have assemblies, when there is drug
prevention components in regular health classes, when there are metal
detectors, drug sniffing dogs, whatever it is, when all schools have a
certain level of activity, it becomes much harder to disassociate the
signal produced by the intervention that you are investigating relative
to the background noise, and so as the background noise gets louder, as
more schools do more things, the ability to hear the signal above that
gets harder and harder. It gets fainter and fainter, and the results are
that in this depressing profession of ours, is that you \-- it just gets
really hard to say with confidence yes, this worked, because you\'re not
comparing something to nothing any more. You\'re comparing something to
something else.

MS. PRICE:  So, in other words, it\'s really hard to identify the
specific cause of the results of lower drug use, or raising \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes. And it\'s even harder to actually find a significant
difference between say, drug use and your intervention in control
schools for that very reason.

MS. PRICE:  Okay. Thank you.

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes.

DR. LONG:  Russell.

DR. JONES:  Yes, just a couple of quick questions. Thanks so much for
that very informative report. I\'m sorry that the results weren\'t more
positive, but that\'s what \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  They are what they are, the data speak.

DR. JONES:  That\'s research. First of all, how were the data weighted,
and then secondly, you talk about the study that was done, suggesting
the iatrogenic effects. What is your sense of the \-- how reliable that
study is? I\'ve not read that.

DR. RINGWALT:  Sure, I\'ll be glad \-- I thought I might get that
question, and I thought to myself you better read up on the study. I\'d
be glad to get you a citation to it, if you give me your business card.

DR. JONES:  Sure.

DR. RINGWALT:  And then you can decide for yourself. It looks to my mind
as if it\'s worthy of attention, and that we need to be looking into
this with more detail.

DR. JONES:  Yes. What journal is it in? Okay, no, no.

DR. RINGWALT:  Back to your first question, how we weight it.

DR. JONES:  Weight the data, yes.

DR. RINGWALT:  We told you that the criteria by which we stratified our
sample, population density, school size, and poverty. Those three
criteria, so we weighted the data up to be representative of all schools
that include middle school grades by population density, school size,
and poverty. And as I said, the good news was that our results didn\'t
change much at all. It\'s when they do start changing that you worry
about your sample being unreliable.

DR. LONG:  Hope.

MS. TAFT:  I want to thank you all for your great presentations. I
learned a lot, as I always do, when I listen to the researchers. And
I\'m hoping that you can enlighten us a little bit on the big question
that we are concerned with today, and that is how can we repackage, or
how can we reinvent, or how can we do something different that will make
this program more attractive to the funders. And I would love to hear
your comments on that.

DR. REUTER:  Attractive to the funders.

MS. TAFT:  I.e., Congress - the big funder in the sky.

DR. REUTER:  Yes. I understand. I probably \-- I\'m not sure any of us
are the right people to answer that specific formulation.

DR. SLOBODA:  I think as researchers, we\'re kind of feeling awkward
about that. I think that a couple of things are important. I think first
of all, I think the program - Congress should know that this local
constituents seem to be, at least from my experience, wanting to do
something in the schools related to drugs. I think that certainly your
study indicates that they\'re trying to do something. I think schools
are challenged right now. I know when we were developing the high school
portion of the curricula that we are developing, the curriculum people
actually had focus groups with high school principals to find out how to
include this in the school day, with everything else competing. And it
was wonderful because the program became their program, too, so they
were able to assist us and give us guidance in where to place the
program.

The point is that it wasn\'t that they didn\'t want the program in the
schools, they just didn\'t know where to put it. And I think that along
with the fact that the communities are interested in this, I think that
the thing I got excited about about this program is the fact that I see
this as a way of supporting - the federal program supporting the local
community, particularly I was pleased to see this group, because it
included NIH, includes Justice, includes SAMHSA. The fact that everybody
is working on this issue together, that information, to me, pulls out
information that each of the agencies is developing, and feed that back
to the communities, so I think that communities really would like to
address this problem that they don\'t have the wherewithal to do it.
They\'re looking for guidance from the feds. The feds are collaborating
across agencies. Those are the kinds of messages I think can get through
to Congress.

DR. REUTER:  Actually, could I just take a brief go at that? I think the
tension is that on the one hand, Congress does like the entitlement
aspect of this, the fact that everybody gets something. On the other
hand, that makes it very hard for the program to show that it is doing
something, and I don\'t know how you deal with that tension in terms of
getting Congress to be more enthusiastic about this program, but I do
think that\'s the tension that\'s there.

MS. TAFT:  In some ways, it\'s almost the reverse from five years ago,
when Congress was enthusiastic about it, but the locals didn\'t have the
wherewithal, and were hesitant. And now the locals seem to have more the
wherewithal, more knowledge about what works, more enthusiasm for it,
more seeing the need of how it relates to higher academic performance,
and Congress is cooling on it, so I was just wondering how we could
reverse it again.

DR. LONG:  Shep, as you start, if we go Shep, Fred, Belinda.

DR. KELLAM:  There are times when it\'s complicated to be a researcher,
and I sort of sense a enormous discomfort that the three of you seem to
have, although I know at least two out of the three of you, and they\'re
not shy people. One of the problems we\'ve talked about on the part of
the policy people is - and this is kind of a comment, I guess - I\'ve
tried to elicit some kind of response to this. The policy people this
morning local and more broadly, were talking about the importance of
being able to show that something good happens; that is, they wanted to
show effectiveness. They were deeply interested, I guess you could say
they\'re a big market for evaluation studies. Listening to the
researchers, it says well, nothing much is happening out there, guys, at
least that we can tell, and so what that leaves us with is bringing
together researchers and program people who need to develop a new
paradigm.

I disagree a little bit, Chris, I think it might be useful, a weather
report of the nation in terms of what\'s happening, but I do think that
research at the local level that really addresses what works for whom,
and under what circumstances is critical. But I don\'t think we can get
there without a new kind of community public education/child welfare
institution and researcher collaborations. To do randomized field trials
requires an enormous partnership, and what we\'re talking about is
something that involves demographic studies, evaluation modeling, and
third level randomized field trials. And this has to be done in highly
select places with new kinds of funding, new kinds of institutional
support locally, the mid level at the state, and federally, so I think
that\'s the business that we are in. And I just try to make that comment
to kind of focus us into a marriage that looks like it could be of
mutual self-interest, as my old teacher, Saul Alinski, used to put it.

DR. SLOBODA:  I just wanted to comment on that. It seemed to me that if
you were able to develop this uniform reporting system, it provides a
universe of programs that you can sample periodically, and do some
evaluations on a national level, something that was done with the old
data system, where they selected programs randomly and went and did a
follow-up study, so I think it can be done. It would be a nice system, I
think, giving us information on what\'s going on in the country in terms
of what\'s being delivered and some of the outcomes. But there are a lot
of other issues with research. I guess when research is so close to the
\-- I definitely think, particularly at the local level, I think
communities need to tie up with university-based researchers to do
ongoing evaluations. And I feel that when I talk to community groups
that they don\'t, and in the past, I mean, I literally got yelled at
when I would go and talk to workshops on evaluation, because it was used
as a tool, punitive evaluations are considered to be very negative. I
don\'t find that. I still sort of quiver when I go into a workshop, but
there\'s a lot of interest in doing evaluations. But I think that the
focus should be on administrative evaluations to see where you tweak a
system so it\'s more responsive to the needs of the kids, rather than
necessarily be a punitive thing where you withdraw funding. I think it
needs to be in a positive mode.

DR. REUTER:  I think this is a field in which evaluation is going to
loom very large in the total budget. These are extraordinarily expensive
evaluations to do, and if I could put in a plea, they should be much
longer, should have much longer term follow-ups than is currently the
case. And we are concerned not merely about initiation by age 16, which
is often the outcome measure. We want to know about drug use by age 23
or something like that, maybe get away with 21. That\'s very expensive
research, and it may be that there has to be an acceptance that if you
take the total prevention budget for a while, a substantial chunk has to
go into good quality evaluation. Obviously, a researcher\'s comments,
but I\'m not an evaluation researcher, so I have slightly clean hands
here. But I do think that that, given how hard it is to make a strong
case that these programs make a difference to the nation\'s drug
problem, not simply reduce marijuana use in high schools, but make a
difference in the nation\'s drug problems, I think one does need longer
term and more expensive evaluations, which are not going to come easily.

DR. RINGWALT:  I\'d like to put in a brief plea to do that, and
particularly in the case of alcohol and alcohol abuse. When you look at
drug abuse, rates rise rapidly into the young and early middle twenties,
and then they decrease. Alcohol is much more insidious, and is much more
flat over the life course. And to the extent that we can demonstrate
that we\'re keeping kids from using alcohol and certainly abusing it,
and that we are able to maintain those differences into young adulthood,
we are going to be saving our society a tremendous amount of money and
lost productivity over time. And there are economists that are working
on this issue even as we speak. But yes, we do need to be following the
kids in our studies into high school and young adulthood, if we\'re
going to demonstrate the true effects of what we\'re up to, to a
skeptical audience of funders.

MR. ELLIS:  Yes, I was going to ask a question, basically a follow-on to
Dr. Kellam\'s comment, because I\'m sitting here as a non-researcher, as
the lay person, if you will, hearing from the state and local
representatives this morning about how wonderfully effective they find
the programs to be and they quote various statistics, and really make a
very cogent case for continuation of programs in the current or enhanced
form. And then I hear your all information about hey, none of \-- well,
not none, but many of these programs are not effective, 80 percent of
the school systems don\'t even use the effective ones that are there, so
there\'s kind of a cognitive dissonance going on in my mind. And also, I
don\'t know if you\'re familiar with the suggested improvements to the
State Grants program and reparting of the program, the recommendations
that have been made, and some of the things that Safe and Drug Free
Schools Office is going to do in terms of, for instance, sharing best
practices, and obviously, improving the performance measures, and those
kinds of things. So I guess bottom-line question is, what am I missing
here? Is it that your all evaluations, and obviously, albeit it your\'s,
Dr. Reuter, was several years ago, but what am I missing here, where
your evaluations didn\'t get the data that we heard this morning, or
what\'s the deal?

DR. SLOBODA:  I didn\'t present this data.

DR. REUTER:  I think there\'s a general phenomenon of enthusiasm for
what you have, and you\'ve tweaked it. And there\'s general optimism
bias that\'s true of a whole range of human activities. If you don\'t
have a control group, it\'s easy to fool yourself. And all of those - I
wasn\'t here this morning, but everybody\'s reporting basically some
very ad hoc evaluation which violates every known principle of
evaluation, but is a source of great comfort, and genuine inspiration. I
mean, I don\'t want to put this down that everything they\'re doing is
ineffective. It\'s just that what they\'re relying on is the measure of
effectiveness doesn\'t have much credibility. And this it\'s not that I
think that the evaluations that have \-- I mean, one criticism you can
make of the evaluations is that often there are programs \-- the
interventions are sometimes not very deep, and you sort of, if you look
back and say well, could we expect that for a couple of hundred dollars
a student, we could make a major difference in a sort of important
dimension of behavior, and the answer may be that\'s pretty optimistic.

Jim Heckman, a very famous economist, keeps pointing out that the first
thing you want to start with in an evaluation is how much it cost, and
if it costs very little, don\'t expect much. And prevention is not
immune to that, but people act as though it\'s immune to that. And so I
think some of the things that get evaluated are even on their face
fairly modest interventions, and not likely to have large effects, so to
that extent, perhaps what gets evaluated is not sort of what\'s really
going on out there in the field. That\'s the best I can do.

DR. LONG:  We\'ll go to \-- Dr. Ringwalt, were you going to say
something? And then we\'ll go to Belinda\'s question.

DR. RINGWALT:  What was I going to say? You know, when programs are done
at the local level, they\'re backed by champions, they\'re backed by
passion and enthusiasm. All of that, I suspect, makes a difference in a
way that I don\'t know how to measure. By the time we get around to
evaluating the program, it has become routine, and sometimes it\'s being
administered by people whose investment in it is very little, and whose
understanding of the program and the rationale behind it may be low, and
who are not going to be administering it with fidelity, and certainly
not with the passion of the original developers. Is it any wonder why by
the time the programs get into our hands in the evaluation field, they
fail to show what the developers, and operating under their conditions,
under start-up with enthusiastic schools and teachers, that they have
found what they know in their hearts to be true.

DR. SIMS:  I wanted to follow-up on a point that was raised by the
presenters from the first panel, I think it was the state
representatives. And at least a couple of them called for wanting to
have more choice around using prevention strategies versus prevention
programs. And I wanted to get your input on that, especially since with
most curricula, you need to be exposed to a certain amount of the
program to be able to demonstrate similar effects of the curriculum
developer, in addition to the issues around fidelity and things like
that.

DR. RINGWALT:  I\'m very cautious about that. I know how to evaluate
programs. I don\'t know how to evaluate strategies. I can look at
programs that work and I can detach from them a set of strategies that
they have in common, but then I also look at the programs that have not
yet demonstrated effectiveness, and they are using pretty much the same
strategies, and often they\'re adopting the same teaching content,
teaching strategies, as well, both content and teaching. And I wonder to
myself, is a program, is a curriculum really a concatenation of various
strategies, or is it something more? And I believe there is synergy
operating in our curricula. I believe that they have a beginning, and a
middle, and an end. I believe that they should be taught with as much
fidelity to the original as possible, and that that is what makes the
difference, not a collection of strategies, even though you say but all
these programs use pretty much the same strategies. Well, they probably
do, so do the programs that aren\'t showing effectiveness. They use the
same strategies, too. What makes the difference? It\'s something else.

DR. SLOBODA:  Yes. Being one of the people that put together that first
red book that had Principles of Prevention in it, that was \-- what we
were trying to do with that booklet was to pull out what were the
consistent elements across what we were finding were effective
prevention programs. I\'m also quite torn on this issue, to be honest
with you. I believe in strategies, but I think one needs to talk about
strategies, or some kind of strategies, or other kind of strategies. I
think one of the issues that was raised, questions was bringing parents
in. There are different elements, there are different steps involved
with effectively bringing parents in. I don\'t know if those are
strategies. I think we\'re hung up on evidence-based, research-based.
We\'re hung up on terminology. We really have to, as a field, we really
haven\'t defined terms properly, so I think sometimes we talk across
each other. So I think some of us feel that there are sort of like how
do you do brain surgery? I mean, you could use Dr. X\'s approach, which
would be a program, or you can use some strategies or steps to cut the
brain - whatever. So I think what we\'re really not there yet in the
field, but I\'d like to be there. It seems to me I would rather be
teaching how to do brain surgery, do prevention that way, than to do
\-- you have to learn Dr. X\'s methodology. And I think that\'s
basically where the field is. We\'re still \-- the field still hasn\'t
really come up with how do you \-- one can agree on what fidelity is,
sort of, in the field, but how do you measure - is it content coverage,
is it structural style, is it the response you get back from the kids?
We\'re sort of not there yet, but I think we\'re on our way there. I
think in the next couple of years we\'ll probably be able to address
that question a lot better.

DR. LONG:  I\'m sorry. I think \-- okay. Yes, you\'re on, Russ.

DR. JONES:  Yes. Is it wave or is it particle? How does light \-- we\'re
going to play dice with the universe. Anyway, Chris, I had a question.
In terms of the effective strategy, how is that being defined, the most
effective strategy? You asked a question to the \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  The most effective curriculum, or the most effective \-- 

DR. JONES:  Yes, I\'m sorry, curriculum.

DR. RINGWALT:  The most effective curriculum.

DR. JONES:  I\'m hung up on your excellent question.

DR. RINGWALT:  The very short answer to that question is to go visit the
National Registry of Effective Prevention - excuse me - National
Registry of Effective Programs and Practices maintained by SAMHSA. There
are a number of criteria. The criteria are rated by outside reviewers,
of whom I am one, and then there\'s a score, and that\'s how it\'s done.
And there are a number of \-- most of the score comprises the quality or
the methodology of the study, is it up to snuff on one thing or another.
And there\'s also, does it actually have findings that indicate effects
on any particular substance.

DR. JONES:  Right, I understand that, but my question was in terms of
the teachers, when you ask them the question, are they using the
effective strategy?

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes.

DR. JONES:  How did they define the effective \-- is it \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Sorry, how did my respondents define it.

DR. JONES:  Yes, exactly.

DR. RINGWALT:  We never asked the question. We gave them a laundry list
of curricula.

DR. JONES:  Right.

DR. RINGWALT:  And said if you\'re using this, tell us, curriculum by
curriculum. Tell us if you\'re using it, then we group the curricula as
to whether they were effective or not.

DR. JONES:  And so what was the \-- let me see if I can ask it another
way. So the effective strategy \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Curriculum.

DR. JONES:  Curriculum from \-- did that match the effective curriculum
on the list?

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes, what we did is \-- 

DR. JONES:  It did. Okay.

DR. RINGWALT:  Sorry. We give them a laundry list of curricula, are you
using each one? Yes/no, yes/no. Then we looked at what was on the list,
and we said you\'re using an effective curriculum if you\'re using one
of these.

DR. JONES:  Right.

DR. RINGWALT:  And that\'s how we did it.

DR. JONES:  Right. Exactly. But what we don\'t know is the fidelity, to
the extent to which they were also engaging \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  No, we do not know. We have asked some questions about
fidelity, which I have only marginal faith, but we will report that.

DR. JONES:  Sure. Yes, I was just kind of piggybacking on the question
that Shep raised, in terms of a new paradigm, which I agree with. And
I\'m just wondering the extent to which portions of those effective
mechanisms can be engaged in the development of new strategies, or
curricula. But that\'s another issue. But this really does raise the
issue of evidence-based versus evidence-informed \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Indeed, that\'s exactly what it is.

DR. JONES:  Yes.

DR. RINGWALT:  Evidence-informed means we have a bunch of strategies,
put them together like an add-a-bead necklace, and chances are you\'ll
do something that\'ll be pretty good. Evidence-based curricula means do
it this way from soup to nuts the way we tell you, teaching the content
we tell you, and that should work, but to the extent that you deviate,
it may not.

DR. JONES:  Indeed. You know, I was just wondering - that question was
supposed to be real quick, but I was just wondering what your question
was, you were going to make a comment, the woman in the yellow, because
I thought that was an excellent question that you asked, and I was just
wondering if you want to respond to that.

PARTICIPANT:  I was just stating \-- 

DR. JONES:  Oh, you can\'t. I\'m sorry. You can\'t answer that question.

DR. LONG:  Excuse me.

DR. JONES:  I\'m sorry.

DR. LONG:  I\'m at a point privilege here. The reason that we don\'t do
that is that then we go beyond the panelists here, and it becomes a
meeting involving the entire public.

DR. JONES:  So what I guess I would say, I think it\'s important at some
point that the presenters have a better understanding and appreciation
of what\'s being said now in light of their evaluation of some of the
good programs that they\'re using.

DR. LONG:  Which will be our job to put all that together, yes. Dennis.

MR. ROMERO:  Thank you, folks. I found your presentation extremely,
again, enjoyable and enlightening. Chris, it dawned on me, I do know
you.

DR. RINGWALT:  We sat on a plane next to each other.

MR. ROMERO:  That\'s correct. We had a wonderful conversation, and it
was your \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Accent.

MR. ROMERO:  Your accent that just gave it away.

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes.

MR. ROMERO:  Thank you. I thought he was talking about me.

(Laughter.)

MR. ROMERO:  Two questions, and I don\'t mean to put you on the spot
with the second one, so we\'ll go with the easy one first. You
characterized the NREPP as a consumer\'s guide or consumer\'s report
version. How would you characterize this version, is it more palatable,
does it make more sense, or is still the same soup, just \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  Served up in a different bowl.

MR. ROMERO:  Yes.

DR. RINGWALT:  I think it pushes the challenge of interpretation onto
the consumer, and it pushes it away from the funding agency that bears
the heat from all the people whose programs are not on the list. And
that is a good thing and a bad thing. To the extent that the public, the
consumer, the end-user of the National Registry has up until now been
able simply to figure out whether a program is or is not on the list.
That\'s all one word, \"on the list\", has made it easy for them. It has
also made it very difficult for the people who are doing the reviewing,
and very difficult for the people who have had to defend the reviews.

I think it\'s going to be a challenge, as I believe I said to you on the
plane when we talked, to educate the end-user in the school, the lead
prevention teacher, whoever he or she is and the school district
prevention coordinator, in how to interpret and select among the options
given the various criteria by which they are rated. That was the easy
question?

MR. ROMERO:  I think so. The graph where you showed the 80 percent of
the folks are using non-listed programs.

DR. RINGWALT:  Or nothing.

MR. ROMERO:  Or nothing. Were you able to interpret the effectiveness of
those efforts since it was \-- they were using non-evidence \-- 

DR. RINGWALT:  No.

MR. ROMERO:  They were off the list, basically.

DR. RINGWALT:  If they were not on the list, they were not \-- right,
they were either on the list or off. This was the old list. Actually,
the list as it currently exists on the website, which is soon, I
suppose, to be updated - so now I can\'t characterize the effectiveness.
I\'m just \-- this is just a fairly sophisticated exercise in bean
counting.

MR. ROMERO:  I just wonder if \-- I have seen programs that are very
effective in prevention, that may not be on the list of - the NREPP
list.

DR. RINGWALT:  Yes.

MR. ROMERO:  So they\'re not - but they are effective, and so how do we
measure that?

DR. RINGWALT:  How do we measure the effectiveness of programs that are
not on the list?

MR. ROMERO:  Yes.

DR. RINGWALT:  By having them evaluated, and then reviewed, I think.

MR. ROMERO:  That\'s such an easy answer.

DR. RINGWALT:  It is such an easy answer, and it is very superficial. I
know that.

MR. ROMERO:  No.

DR. RINGWALT:  Evaluations take years and years, and they cost a great
deal of money to do right.

MR. ROMERO:  Absolutely.

DR. RINGWALT:  And if they\'re not going to be done right, they won\'t
pass muster by the current criteria that NREPP is using.

MR. ROMERO:  Thank you.

DR. LONG:  As we close this portion, I had a question, and it\'s
actually for members of the Department that are sitting at the table. I
would just - as you were talking, Peter, I was listening, and some of
the things we\'ve heard this morning from a few of the panels about the
need-weighted grant renewal process, accountability, evaluation,
improved capacity, effectiveness, so I was seeing and hearing a lot of
the things we\'d heard from some of the earlier panels. And you had
indicated as we\'re aware, that this was about five years ago, so the
question that I would have, what have we done as a Department relative
to the things that came up five years ago, or is that \-- I mean,
leaving politics out of it, of course - but that\'s something that
crossed my mind as I was listening to you, because I was hearing that
from five years ago, and yet we were talking about some of those things
this morning, so I was just curious.

MS. PRICE:  Well, I\'ll give a first shot at answering that, and then
I\'ll let Bill follow-up on anything I missed, because he\'s had the
legs with the program, where I\'ve been in the office a little over two
years. But when Peter\'s, the Rand study came out, we became very much
aware that there were issues related to the Safe and Drug Free Schools
and Communities Grant Program, and they needed to be addressed. Shortly
after that, then OMB reviewed in the PART review, and the program
received an ineffective rating, which is the lowest rating.

Before the PART review, after the Rand report, we started looking at
questions within the office of what needs to be done to show that
programs are effective, and we started looking into areas, what can we
do to show that there are positive things about the program. One of the
results of that is a grant that we have called the State Data Grant, and
it identifies the data, and I\'ll let Bill give a better example of it,
but it\'s developed and has been implemented. As any research project,
it\'s a long-term research project funded through grant dollars. But to
help us understand what programs states are implementing, and the second
part of that question is, are they being implemented with fidelity.

We are hoping that we will have the first half of that answer in the
fall, probably around November, and we\'ll be able to see what programs
states are implementing with their Safe and Drug Free Schools State
Grants dollars. In the spring, we should be able to get more - in
spring/early summer, more of the information about fidelity, are they
being implemented with fidelity.

If you will look under your second tab, State Grants Program Background,
we gave you a background paper. I think we sent it out a little earlier,
but on page 7 of that, if you go over to \-- the PART said three things;
performance measures used by ED at the time did not reflect program
performance, so the program performance measures did not help improve
local programming decisions, and the funds are spread too thinly to
support quality interventions.

From that, the Department has taken steps to address some of those
concerns. There are parts of the legislation that restrict the
Department to what we can actually do. We would like to be able to do
some things, but we cannot do that. We are \-- I mean, the legislation
doesn\'t provide for us to be able to do that, so as much as it seems
perfectly logical that we would do that, we can\'t. But these are the
things that we can do, identify performance measures. And I\'ll just
list the categories, the State Data Grants, getting this information
about what programs are out there being implemented, and are they being
implemented with fidelity, developing a model data set. We are
prohibited from identifying what data states have to collect. That\'s
one of those flexibility issues that states get to do, that\'s part of
the beauty of No Child Left Behind. It\'s flexible on many points, and
this is one of them, but what we can do is get a model data set and
provide that to states so they can use that, and it\'s like the short
menu, maybe they\'ll add to it, maybe they\'ll get some other things,
but it helps with that data. Because as you all know, the data is not
comparable from state to states because of different definitions, which
is part of the No Child Left Behind Act, that states get to define these
things, and we believe that that\'s an important thing for states to do,
but it makes comparing that information difficult.

Truancy would be a good example of that, and one state being absent from
school may be truancy, in another state it\'s a much different thing,
and so comparing one-to-one. And then providing training to states, and
we have really focused on providing training to states. We do technical
assistance meetings, we have our state coordinators in twice a year, we
do a variety of things. But these are the elements that we have been
implementing, and I\'ll let Bill expand more on it. Do you have anything
you want to add to that?

MR. MODZELESKI:  Just a couple of things. First of all, let me say, the
research that Chris has talked about was in the June edition of *Social
Influence*, and three researchers, one from Parook School, one from the
Wharton School, and one from Duke, so Gavin Fitzsimmons from the
Falkland School I think was \-- and it is an important study, and I
think that Howell should take a look at it, also, because they also
talked about exercise. They thought that basically if you ask a person a
positive question about something like exercise, they\'ll give you an
answer saying yes, we exercise more often than not. And the flip side of
that is if you go ask a question about drug uses, that if you ask a
negative question, you\'ll get an answer below what you\'re asking, but
you had just the opposite effect, where what they got were people
answering higher than they expected, so it is in the June edition of
*Social Influence*, I believe.

Just to pick up Peter - Peter and I actually were involved with this
back in 1999 on the study, and I think some things have changed for the
better, and some things probably haven\'t changed for the better. I
mean, there has been some significant changes in some areas. I just
jotted a couple down. There\'s just as many LEAs receiving dollars today
as there was back in 1999. That means about 95 percent.

Peter had a figure on about \$10,000, and that\'s about cut in half, so
that\'s decreases significantly. At the same time the funds have been
decreased, Peter mentioned that the focus expanded back in \`99, it
expanded in 1994 to violence prevention, and now it\'s expanded even
more to crisis prevention, Avian bird flu, disaster, so forth and so on,
so the focus has expanded even more. Sort of the good news was that, you
heard this morning, the word \"POE\", Principles of Effectiveness, and
while that was codified in the No Child Left Behind Act, that was
actually developed by staff of the Safe and Drug Free Schools in 1999,
so just as Peter was beginning to take a look at this, we began to
enforce and effectuate the Principles of Effectiveness, and so that
began to kick in, and we believe that that plus the codification in the
law had a lot to contribute to developing more, again, research-based,
science-based, Chris, call it what you will, at least better programs.
And I think that there has been a significant increase in the number of
programs that have been effective, whether it\'s on NREPP\'s list or
whatever the case may be.

Just one point of clarification - there still is a list out there. I
mean, there is still a lot of confusion. NREPP is not the only thing
that schools go to take a look at, and it is the administration. The
White House has now the HAY program, Helping America\'s Youth, which is
a list of programs with three levels and schools use that. Schools use
the Blue Print Series, schools still use our program, so there\'s not
one, there\'s multiple lists that are still out there. There\'s some
beauty to that, but there\'s also some problems because it leads to a
lot of confusion about what may or may not happen.

Lastly, is that from where we were in 1999 when Peter took a look at
this, and where we are, and Debbie alluded to that, is that there\'s
much more data being collected. And I think the Department has done
several things. Lorraine is going to be up next, Lorraine Allen. Her
state, Florida, has done quite a bit in the area of not only collecting
data, but using data to make decisions, data for decision. We are in the
process of developing a uniform data set. Hopefully, it will be adapted
by every state, but we don\'t have the authority to force it down any
state\'s throat, and the other problem here is that you know if you go
to change a system, any time you begin to change a system in the state,
the one thing they\'re going to ask you is where is the dollars to
change the system, so we have had sign-off by most of the states for a
willingness to go to a uniform data set, uniform definitions, and we\'ll
have to see over the course of the next several years as to whether or
not they\'ll accept that change in definitions, and whether they\'ll put
money behind it, and then begin to collect some different data.

DR. REUTER:  Could I just very briefly add a point that Deborah made,
which is Congress is really the \-- was the target for the study that
Rand did. I mean, this office is hamstrung by legislation, which really
I think makes it very difficult to be effective and innovative, and the
timing of this report was that there was a re-authorization, this was
the chance to make changes, but I think in the end there turned out to
be not much interest on the Hill in taking on a major reform, so I think
that\'s why not much has happened. I mean, it was commissioned by the
Department of Education. We\'re probably going to be highly critical of
the implementation, but that wasn\'t the critical issue, it was the
legislation that was the problem. Thanks.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much. We are close, just a few minutes over.
That was because of all of the very good questions. We will now take a
break, and we\'ll be coming back at 3:10. And as we leave, I want to
give you the ultimate compliment - thanks to the doctors. You were
excellent.

(Applause.)

(Whereupon, the proceedings went off the record at 2:59:20 p.m. and went
back on the record at 3:09:39 p.m.)

DR. LONG:  Okay. As we come back together, we have four distinguished
folks here in front of us that will be our Panel IV on School Safety and
Preparedness, their perspective on that. And we\'ll start over here with
introductions of Ed. Ed Ray has been the Chief of Safety and Security
Department for Denver public schools since 1995. During his 25-yea
career in law enforcement in Colorado, he served as a Deputy Sheriff,
patrol officer, detective, sergeant, lieutenant, division commander, and
chief of police, retiring in 1993. Chief Ray holds a Bachelor\'s degree
in technical management with minors in criminal justice and economics,
and graduate work from Regis University in Denver. Welcome, Ed. Thanks
for being here.

Next, Lorraine Allen. Lorraine is the Director of the Office of Safe
Schools for the Florida Department of Education. Since 2000, her
responsibilities have included overseeing the Safe and Drug Free School
program, School-wide Discipline Initiatives, and School Emergency
Management and Anti-terrorism Planning activities. And from March 2004
to \`06, the Coordinated School Health Program. She has a Master\'s
degree in public administration from Florida State University, as well
as a BS in government, and a BA in Spanish. She is originally from the
Panama Canal zone, and currently resides in Tallahassee. Welcome,
Lorraine.

Next is John Akers. John has served as Executive Director for the
Kentucky Center for School Safety since his employment in December of
2000. He has over 35 years experience in public education, including 25
years as school-based administrator and principal. Since then, and prior
to serving as Executive Director of the Kentucky Center for School
Safety, served as Kentucky Leadership Academy Coach and Scholastic
Auditor for the Kentucky Department of Education. John received the
designation as one of Kentucky\'s distinguished educators in 1996, and
was selected as the 1998 High School Principal of the Year by the
Kentucky Department of Education. Thanks, John, for being here.

And Cynthia Timmons. Cynthia has done extensive training and consulting
in the area of Safe and Drug Free School Programs, including
implementation of violence prevention programs and student assistance
programs. Cynthia is the Director for the Children of Promise Mentors of
Hope, a statewide initiative to immobilize Oklahoma in reaching children
who have an incarcerated parent. Children of Promise Mentors of Hope is
a partnership between the University of Oklahoma Outreach and Big
Brothers/Big Sisters of Oklahoma, and is funded by a grant from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. Cynthia received her
Bachelor\'s in education, Master\'s in guidance and counseling at the
University of Oklahoma. Cynthia, nice to have you with us. And with
that, we\'ll go ahead and get started. And, Ed, if we could start with
you.

MR. RAY:  Thank you, David. Having listened to so many panelists already
this morning, I\'m not sure exactly where to start, but I\'m going to
give the famous disclaimer, that I\'m a cop. I work in security. I work
in security-related issues, so probably many of my comments are going to
be geared towards law enforcement and how we protect, rather than how we
educate; even though there certainly are some correlations in how do we
educate people to protect.

In preparing to come here today, obviously, we were given a series of
questions to try to answer and respond to, and my methodology on
response, or gathering information for my response was to talk with
numerous of my counterparts around the country and pose the same
questions to them, and then try to compile the myriad of answers that I
got into sensical remarks, and I\'m not sure I\'ve done that. But
regardless, I\'m going to try to focus on what we believe, and I say
\"we\", and I hope I\'m not bringing too much of my own personal beliefs
in, because my personal beliefs are somewhat strong in some areas, so
I\'ll try to keep those as subjective, or as objective, as possible.

The first question you asked us to respond to was, what are the
strengths of the State Grants Program, and the elements of the States
Grants Program that are working and addressing the needs of students in
schools today. In my surveys, I found that nearly 100 percent of the
folks I talked to felt that the State Grants Program is working
effectively, in that the program provides funding, vital funding to
school districts to conduct programs that may or may not otherwise be
possible, due to the current budgetary constraints, and reductions that
are taking place across the country. That\'s basically in our large
inner city urban school districts. Felt that the greatest element to the
States Grant Program that is working is the flexibility provided. It
allows - I\'m going to try to steer away from the research-based
programs discussion, but it provides funds for us to use to put programs
in effect that we believe are based on best practices, that do have a
high degree of efficacy, if nothing else, from the empirical data, and
unfortunately, sometimes from the anecdotal, whether they\'re working
on.

The programs that we have concerns about are those programs that are not
\-- don\'t have the ability to research-base, that there has not been
any research-base conducted. We\'ve heard a lot of talk this morning
about - I think Gus from LA mentioned the great program, DARE programs -
those are nice programs to put in, but we don\'t know. We don\'t know if
they are effective. We really had no opportunity to study those. I
should say we haven\'t taken the opportunity to study those effectively.

Alcohol counseling, mental health, drug programs certainly are extremely
important, and I think there are data, is data that will support that
those programs work. The problem we don\'t know in safety and security
in law enforcement is do those programs truly provide a higher degree of
safety for the schools, or are they more geared towards the
community-base as to helping eradicate the problems of drug and alcohol
abuse? We\'re not sure about that, so we\'ve kind of tried to focus on
those things that we believe will truly provide a higher level of safety
for our schools that are - I guess basically they are determined by lack
of bad things happening to our schools.

One of the other questions was, is the Safe and Drug Free School Grants
Program working effectively to promote safe and drug free schools across
the country, especially in rural, urban, and suburban settings. The
general answer is yes; however, this works better in the urban and
suburban areas, the programs do, because of the resources available to
those inner city suburban bases.

I\'ll use Colorado for a second, and every state\'s got the same issues.
We have some school districts in Colorado that have 1,500-2,000 kids in
them. They\'re so rural that even getting an ambulance to a school in
the event of something happening is 20 to 30 minutes away. They don\'t
have the resources in some of our - at least in Colorado - rural areas.
And in some cases, some of what we consider suburban areas, so are the
grants programs truly working in the rural areas? The answer probably is
a qualified no, not to the extent they certainly are in the urban and
inner city, and suburban areas.

A lot of the grant money that we believe we\'re seeing is based on
population and free food, the funds are driven based on that. So if you
have an extremely affluent community that has severe, or has very little
reduced food, we have some concerns are they getting the appropriate
share, or fair share, I guess, for lack of better terms, to implement
programs. I don\'t believe that has been decided upon, but we do know
that in the rural and somewhat suburban areas, that many of the safe and
security programs that we are able to implement in the inner cities are
not implemented appropriately in the rural communities. Obviously, risk
factors are believed to be lore. I\'m not sure I totally agree with
that, but certainly, they don\'t have many of the, numbers-wise, the
issues we have in the inner cities and some of the suburban areas. But
if we are foolish enough to think that gangs don\'t exist, drugs don\'t
exist in even the most rural communities, we\'re badly mistaken to allow
ourselves to accept that premise, because it does exist.

I tried to list out some mechanisms that could be considered, and I\'m
not sure that these are kind of a compilation of mechanisms. First and
foremost was needed to establish follow-up surveys with attendees of
programs. We talked about DARE, talked about GREAT, talked about some of
the other awareness programs. To my knowledge, there has been no
follow-up down the road, four, five, six years down the road of
attendees to see did they learn the lessons of these various programs.

We also know that there are no baseline data programs baselining the
occurrence of alcohol and drug directly to crimes occurring on school
campuses, and the ability to analyze those incidents appropriately, so
we need baseline programs.

We need to establish at the statewide level reporting systems, so that
this data, this information can be shared and possibly it will help to
do the research to determine whether our programs are effective. This
basically applies to school-based incidents. The problem with a lot of
incident reporting we do currently at the state level, is it reports
only incidents where there is a subsequent disciplinary action taken.
Crime analysis, incident analysis, if you will, requires an analysis of
those things where we don\'t know who did it, and frequently report data
based only on we know we have a suspension, or an expulsion, or
disciplinary action, that we don\'t take a very good look at the
underlying cause of other incidents that take place on our schools that
may or may not be directly related to a wide range of things, not just
alcohol and drugs, certainly. Certainly, behavioral issues, but if we
don\'t catch somebody doing it, we tend not to report it in that
fashion.

We talked about other emerging issues facing students in schools today
that need to be reviewed and addressed. I\'m going to go over here to
Gus because he stole everything I was going to say today. Yes, there are
some tremendous emerging issues, especially in the area of safety and
security dealing with the issues that we have to deal with today other
than the drug and alcohol issues, certainly major issues, certainly
things we have to deal with, some of the social and cultural bases, but
our fear today is all the cultural diversity issues that are taking
place, that are causing to every day wake up to another act of
terrorism, another act of a school administrator, a teacher, a
custodian, security officer, bus drivers that are involved in behavior
that is extremely detrimental to the safety of our children. Every day
you pick up a newspaper, turn on the news, another story about a
behavioral aspect of some of our most trusted, or should be our most
trusted personnel, our educators, involved in behavior. And it\'s
apparent - I\'m sure it sends chills up most of our spines to think we
send our children to school, and we have our own professional personnel
that are conducting and involved in behavior. We have to develop, we
have to figure out how we can implement programs to stop those types of
things, certainly terrorism, certainly gang shootings.

We know that gang shootings infrequently occur on school properties, but
we know if a gang shooting takes place in a neighborhood on Saturday
night, it\'s coming to school come Monday morning. We know that. How do
we interact with law enforcement? How do we interact with the
prevention? How do we interact with the intelligence services that Gus
so brilliantly alluded to? We have 20 to 25 percent of our populations
in our buildings every day of the school day/school year, and yet we
seem to be ignoring they are prime targets for those persons, those
groups who want to make a political or ideological statement to this
country, and that we do very, very, very little to harden our schools
against these types of attacks, what do we do, how do we prepare our
teachers, our staff, how do we respond; very little. That\'s the biggest
issue I see emerging, and again, Gus over here to my left did an
outstanding job of bringing those issues up, so we know the issue that
we had in Bezlin, Russia. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the
study on that, and all the various things leading up to the Bezlin
attack are frightening, and they are occurring today in our own country,
seeing people who are ideologically immune to the feelings of hurting
our children. So, please, we need to really consider what we can do on
those areas.

We all believe that the basic language when it talks about focusing on
safety, is adequate. We believe that the recent emergency response or
crisis management grants from the Department of Education were critical
in helping the schools begin to prepare for how to respond to an
emergency, how to prevent an emergency, how to mitigate emergencies, how
to deal with the after-effect from all aspects of it, so for the most
part we believe the language appears to be adequate in the current
documents.

Very difficult to train our staff, however, especially with the No Child
Left Behind things that are in place currently. They\'re geared towards
education, they have to be geared towards education, and to find time,
as somebody else, a previous panelists said, to find time to train all
of our teachers to be security and safety experts, not only it\'s not
\-- well, it\'s plain impossible. We can\'t do it, so we have to make
sure that we have other methods in place, such as the school training,
the school safety teams and hope, hope that our principals are
responsible enough to roll out those plans to their schools, because
that\'s where the first place, the first\-- that\'s where we have to
start with school security. The whole thing with national management
systems, these are buzz words, not buzz words, operational words, but
they\'re critical in how to establish incident command bases and so on
like that. We need to continue training and educating all of our
educational staff without putting the burden to them, turning them into
experts on those concepts.

I\'m going to kind of glaze over this real fast. The question was is the
structure of States Grants program through the state and the Governor
the most effective mechanism for use of these funds? Yes, we believe
currently it is, unless there was a mechanism to award directly to the
school districts, but we - no offense to Washington, D.C. folks, but we
don\'t believe that the funds should come directly out of Washington,
D.C. We don\'t believe that to be the most effective, and maybe the most
unwieldy possibility, so we kind of would like to see, at a minimum,
keep it as it is.

Flexibility, accountability, continue the statute working, are they? The
short answer is yes. Could state and local flexibility be balanced with
additional core requirements? I would encourage LEAs to address specific
issues. We believe yes, it could be, it can be balanced.

Can the tension between the Principles of Effectiveness provisions that
require that funds be spent on research-based activities and the broad
list of authorized activities, many of which lack a strong research-base
be resolved? We believe it\'s important to consider this, that not all
programs that work can be research-based. We know for technology, we
know that the technology is changing so rapidly that, frankly, if we
waited three to four years to get a research-base on any type of
program, the technology already left and we\'ve gone to something new,
so we need to be a little more flexible in our thinking in thinking
outside the box on the technologies, and how do we interact or
interface, what we call security technology, and educational technology.
Can they be appropriately interfaced? We believe they can be to direct
or help us get into truancy issue, safe campus issues, keeping the kids
on campus that belong there, and the kids off - not just kids, people
off of campuses that don\'t belong there. We believe all those
technologies can be interfaced, but as I\'ve heard so many times this
morning, it takes money to do those things, and to sustain those
programs, and cause those probably to become institutionalized and
funded. With that, I think I\'ll shut up. Okay. Turn the mic off.

DR. LONG:  Thank you, Ed, for the information, and we\'ll now turn to
Lorraine.

MS. ALLEN:  Thank you, David. I want to take a little bit different turn
if it\'s all right with you, since we\'ve talked very much about the
Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, and I want to go right to question
4. How does that sound, talking about school emergency management
planning and safety and security, because we\'ve covered quite a bit.
But I always like to start out any presentation that we do with this.
Really, what we want is for students - we know that our students thrive,
and that they do learn in these environments that are safe and drug
free, that are well disciplined, strategies that lead students to make
healthy life choices, and also that everyone is respected, and the civil
rights of all are respected, and so that\'s one of the things that I
like to always start out with, because that\'s where we look when we\'re
looking at implementing our program.

I also want to show a little bit about Florida, just to show you that we
have over 2.6 million students. We\'re quite large state. In fact, one
of our LEAs has 400,000 students in it, so when they were looking this
morning at some of them that have less than seven, I said oh, well,
Miami-Dade, probably as large as some of the states. We also have 3,441
schools that we deal with, and we try to work with in this program.

My office is the Office of Safe and Healthy Schools, and until recently,
we used to be called the Safe and Healthy Schools until about two months
ago, and now we are just back to the Office of Safe Schools, and we have
school emergency management planning and anti-terrorism activities,
school safety and security, Safe and Drug Free Schools programs,
school-wide discipline initiatives, and also safety and discipline data
collection. So I thought what I would do first is to talk a little bit
about what we\'re doing in the area of school emergency management
planning. After 9/11 it expanded to anti-terrorism activities for
schools, as well. But as all of you have heard so far today,
collaboration is the key, because we could not do our job if we didn\'t
collaborate with all the other state agencies, and also local education
agencies, and our emergency management folks in our counties, et cetera,
so we couldn\'t do it alone. And, also, the funding, we couldn\'t do it
alone on just the funding that we do receive.

Back after the school shootings back in 2001, the Department decided to
look at this issue of emergency management and preparedness planning,
and so we received a grant from our Department of Community Affairs, and
basically, we received almost \$300,000 to improve emergency planning in
our schools. And we were asked to bring together an advisory committee,
such as you all have brought together an advisory committee. We also
wanted to assess the status of our school plans, and we had a survey
that we developed. We wanted to find out well, what are in your plans,
are you using your plans, what are your most critical emergencies? Those
are the kinds of things that we asked in our survey.

We also wanted to give them some planning guidelines on well, if you\'re
getting ready to do a school emergency management plan, what should you
do? And then we created a website, and we\'ve been maintaining it, even
though the grant has now ended. And we developed some training, it\'s
our multi-hazards planning training for school, and then we were to
evaluate the project. So this is how we got started in the business
under the office of Safe Schools, is through this grant with our
Department of Community Affairs, where our emergency management division
is housed.

Some of the things that have come out of that grant, I just wanted to
show you some of our activities, but we have worked with our Attorney
General\'s office and our law enforcement, our emergency management in
FASR, which is the Florida Association of School Resource Officers, to
have school resource officers response to terrorism training. As you can
see, quite a few partners there, because again, we can\'t do it alone.
And the multi-hazard planning for Florida schools, which we developed
through the grant. Then crime prevention through environmental design,
which is CPTED, it\'s target hardening, and we work with our Attorney
General\'s office in offering that training to our school districts.

We also have school safety CD-Roms for site and floor planning training,
because Florida requires that all the schools and community colleges
provide their plans to law enforcement and emergency personnel, and so
this was one way to help our schools get that on a CD, so that if there
were an emergency, they could just bring up that CD and find out the
layout of the school and the campus, et cetera, and help with the
emergency.

We also offered virtual safety conferences around the state on different
topics. There were hot topics, and at each of your places I\'ve gone
ahead and provided you with three of the sessions that we offered, and
they were based on the hurricanes, our lessons learned. As you know,
Florida in 2004 especially, we were hit by four great hurricanes, and so
we went ahead and had regional meetings, and we developed these DVDs
from that, and we have shared them with Mississippi last year, our
commissioner did, and so I wanted you all to have these, as well. And
then we started to develop an emergency drill CD-Rom training, too, and
we didn\'t like the product we got, so we\'re back at the drawing board
on that one, but those were some of the things that we did.

We also worked with our school transportation office, because as you
know, in emergencies they happen on school buses, and also, you need to
use school buses during emergencies, as well, and so we have the
electronic bus route so you can tell electronically where the different
routes are. Critical situations for school bus operation, and we also
have our school emergency management web page.

We also did review some of the school district\'s emergency plans. We
didn\'t get the kind of response that we wanted, so that\'s something
that we will revisit again. We had some of our regional committees and
councils look at those plans, and then we\'re working with our school
transportation area in the school bus student management best practices.

After 2000, there were also some legislation in Florida that passed in
dealing with school emergency management planning, and so our school
districts are required to have school emergency plans by law, as well as
safety and security best practices, which I\'ll just share with you just
what they look like. And then coordination of school safety information.

We also found that there\'s school safety information that we don\'t
want to have public access to, so we were able to, through legislation,
to be able to not have that as part of our Sunshine Law, where you have
to report out information, so we\'re able to keep that non-public
information, which is very good in the area of safety.

As I mentioned hurricanes, lessons learned, that\'s another piece,
because we were working on the emergency management plans, and working
with our school districts after our hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, and we
had our sessions. We said well, what are the things that you\'ve
learned, and how do schools play such a major part in that? And, of
course, schools usually are first responders because you use them for
shelters, and what we also found was really critical is that when you
start to get the community back to some sense of normalcy, you need the
schools to be involved, because when kids start to go back to school,
they start to feel they\'re normal again, and those were some of the
things we found were very important.

Also, the fact that disasters changed the rules. What used to be normal,
no longer is normal, you have a new set of normalcy. And they found that
having multi-agency plannings for multi-hazard response was very, very
productive, because you want to be prepared before the emergency occurs,
not after. And then backup power systems, because they should have them
for the core functions, your data processing, for food services,
maintenance, your central office and schools designated as shelters. One
of the things that happened in Santa Rosa County is that people
couldn\'t get paid because the banks, the banks weren\'t operational, so
how do you get paychecks to people? There\'s just all these different
things to think about before the hurricanes, that you have processes in
place to deal with them after hurricanes. And, also, that communication
was very critical, and you had alluded to they have the whole incident
command system, there\'s a whole bunch of different ways to communicate,
but that communication was critical, too. You need planning, of course,
on all the phases, not just in the actual response, but in prevention
and preparedness, and recovery.

What we\'re finding in our school districts in the west area of our
state, which are Santa Rosa and Escampia, especially, it\'s a very
long-term recovery. We still \-- it just takes so long to get the
community back to where it was, and so that\'s one of the things that
they are still dealing with two years after the hurricanes of 2004. They
felt that dismissing kids from schools probably saved some lives, and
then as I mentioned earlier, that schools are such a critical part of
the community, that the sooner you can get the schools operational and
the students back, the teachers back and you work with them on their
recovery, the better it will be for the community as a whole.

I also just wanted to share with you our website, what it looks like.
After 9/11, our focus included anti-terrorism planning for schools, and
we, in Florida, and I\'m just going to give you a real brief overview of
what it looks like in Florida. We have a Florida Domestic Security
Partnership and a Domestic Security Oversight Board, and what\'s really
critical is that the Department of Education is represented on this
board, so education is a player. We also have seven regional Domestic
Security Task Forces, and as you can see here from the map of Florida
where they\'re located in seven critical areas of our state. But what\'s
really nice about them, if you\'ll turn to the next slide, is that each
one of them has an education schools subcommittee, and because of that
subcommittee, we were really fortunate that when some of the federal
dollars from Homeland Security came down for budgeting issues, we were
at the table.

Over the last three years, I just wanted to share with you some of the
dollars that we have received through Homeland Security that comes
through the State of Florida, they\'re called the Domestic Security
State Grants. Target hardening for our districts and our schools. As you
know, schools, if a terrorist were to attack the school, it gets right
to the heart of our country, and what they talked about is okay, how can
we look at some of the areas that have most need, those that are by
ports, those that are by power plants, those sorts of things, how can we
harden those schools, and control access to and enhance security of
school campuses and transportation are the areas that were looking at.
And as you can see here from the list, they talk about single points of
entry. Quite a few of our schools now have that single point of entry.
Of course, we\'re Florida, and in the old days our schools were with
great breezeways, so you could go to our campuses and there everything
is outside. It wasn\'t that \-- so those - we\'re working toward making
it so that you do have that single point of entry. And, of course,
integrating your fencing into the design of your school campuses to help
create that single area, and to keep others out. Vehicle stand-off
barriers, which, of course, you see all around Washington, D.C. and very
lovely, by the way. You do a nice job with that. Integrating appropriate
locking systems and restricting access to ventilation system intakes,
because people don\'t realize that you could also a terrorist attack by
putting something into the ventilation system. And so we actually,
through CPTED, teach our school administrators and our security people
to go through and look at their campus and say ooh, this is an area that
I need to make sure that we don\'t have access to. Those are some of the
things these dollars are for.

Also, we had a group that talked about some of the things that we felt
would be really the best of all worlds if we could, and that is having
our uniform school resource officers there, that they\'re actually in
uniform as a preventative measure. And in the best of all worlds, they
would love to have one school resource officer to 1,500 students,
including our elementary schools, consistent with school resources and
consultation with law enforcement. And then we talked about security
facilities for unattended buses, because some of our school districts
actually used to let the school bus drivers take their buses home, and
so there wasn\'t a secured area. I mean, I remember when I first moved
to Leon County, you would see the school buses all over the place, so
there was no secure area for those buses to go to.

Then we talked about just the physical checks, the critical operations
equipment on campus during periods of increased alert, and then, of
course, maintaining the safe mail-handling procedures. We also received
some funding for training, and we\'ve been really fortunate in that we
have several police chiefs of school, and one of them is Jim Kelly with
Palm Beach County schools, and he has a Safe Schools Institute. And I
think, Bill, you\'ve been fortunate enough to go and visit Jim in his
facility, and they provide incredible training, and so we gave them
these funds to provide training for all of our school districts that
were interested. And as you can see, the incident command system,
national incident management system training for district personnel. We
had statewide meetings on best practices, exercise development and
technical assistance and training, shelter-in-place training, access
control, target hardening training, and risk communication, so those are
just some of the things that we did.

Also, communication is very critical during emergencies, and we spent
dollars on improving our communication system, and purchasing passive
repeaters, and that\'s kind of devices that amplify signals to help
responders, the bi-directional application systems to improve, again,
signal strength and radios to facilitate communication. Those were just
some of the things that we did with regard to communications.

We also received dollars to conduct a study to research the needs for
expanded emergency management responders, because I don\'t know if you
know, but in Florida, for example, just in Palm Beach, you have very
urban areas, and you have very rural areas, you go into glades, and you
have migrant workers, et cetera, so how fast can responders really get
there if there\'s an emergency in the school, so you need to teach your
school administrators what to do in those 15, 20, 30 minutes that it
takes to be able to respond to an emergency. So we\'ve done a study on
that, and we haven\'t gotten the final results yet. And we also
purchased GPS units for all of our school districts, because as you know
in hurricanes, sometimes all the street signs are gone, all the
landmarks are gone, and so this way they\'re able to pinpoint where
things are with this. That\'s something else that we have done.

Another thing is, we received additional funds a year ago, another \$1.1
million for more communication, and also, for our K-20 - we\'re actually
K-20, which is that we include post secondary in our Department of
Education, and there\'s funds there for campus warning systems, because
campuses are so spread out. How do you warn the students of emergencies,
et cetera, so there has been dollars provided for that, too. And the
most recent legislative session, we were given \$1.5 million for school
safety emergency preparedness system pilot. And, basically, what that
is, is we\'re going to be looking at having one large district, two
medium, and four small districts implement this notification system. And
it\'s going to be multi-lingual, so that if there is an emergency
occurring that we can via email, phone call, cell phones, communicate
with parents to let them know what\'s going on, but there\'s also
another side to it - you need to tell them about the football game, or
the homecoming parade, you can also do that, and FCAT, you know, FCAT
studying, so you can do that, too, through this system. And quite a few
of our districts have already put into place these kinds of systems.

Julie Collins is the person that I hired to manage all this for us, and
she is my school emergency management planning manager, and I actually
hired her away from the Emergency Management Division, and so it\'s
really nice to get someone with that experience and those contacts to
come and work in education, because she had so many contacts already
made in the field, and at the county level, so that was very, very
important to have that, again, that collaboration. So with regard to
emergency, I don\'t see us as a lead agency, but I see us as an agency
that needs to be part of that collaborative process in order to make
sure that our schools know how to respond, and how to prevent, also,
emergencies. That\'s the piece that I wanted to talk to you a little bit
about, emergency planning.

The next I wanted to talk about was school safety, and it gets to some
of the data, and I don\'t know how much more time I have, about two
minutes, one minute? Okay. Just briefly, we do collect data on school
environmental safety incident report, and we have \-- our legislature
gives us \$75,350 for safe schools. And we also have best practices for
safety and security, and so just briefly, we collect incidents of crime
and violence on 22 incidents, and we just added bullying and harassment.
You can see those are the incidents right there.

We also show based on those 22 incidents of crime and violence what was
the resulting disciplinary action, but we also collected based on those
who are non-students, too. It\'s a system that\'s in effect 365 days per
year, 24 hours per day, so we try to collect it on all aspects of school
time.

This is just a trend to show you school safety in Florida over times
with the Violence Act piece, and we did have a slight increase last
year, and that\'s mostly in battery. We saw an increase in battery in
our numbers. And, as I mentioned, we do \-- our legislature appropriated
\$75,350 for safe schools activities. Every district gets \$50,000, the
rest is based on two-thirds the Florida crime index, and one-third on
weighted FTE. And what we found when we survey the schools, they say
that 50 percent of their issues deal with behavior, and 50 percent deal
with safety and security, and so these are how they spend these dollars.
And I\'ve included some slides there for you on some of the activities
for emergency preparedness, for school safety equipment and resources
for the learning environment, and also student programs. And we really
like this quote, \"Effective schools invest in systems and strategies
that prevent behavior problems, rather than relying on compelling
consequences to deter violent behavior.\" Okay. And then the best
practices for safety and security, and we have 29 of them, and these are
the areas that they cover; as you can see, safety planning, discipline,
school climate, safety programs, facilities, transportation, and we have
best practice indicators, and this is just an example of one.

And as a result, our districts are able to assess their school safety,
and to report that at school board meetings, and to make decisions on
how to improve their safety, as well. And the last slide, I know how to
be safe, because I want all our kids to feel that way. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Lorraine. We appreciate that. And next,
Jon.

MR. AKERS:  I\'m afraid I got carpal tunnel syndrome by clicking that so
much. She gets off easy, I only have ten slides on mine. Let me, first
of all, say to you all, thank you for you giving up your time to come
here and to kind of pull all this together, and kind of do all this hard
work and sit here and listening to us pontificate here all these many
hours of this day, so from Kentucky, we say thank you for all that
you\'re doing for us.

It\'s hard to be next to the last one. I don\'t envy you. I don\'t want
to repeat what everybody else has said, but from the educator
standpoint, I really believe that what they\'re saying holds a lot of
water. I have troubles with research issues when you can\'t really
measure prevention issues, and that\'s speaking as a high school
principal for 25 years. It\'s hard to measure our effectiveness until
years later down the road, and so I\'m just going to kind of say ditto
to what our educator folks have been saying here.

I\'ve been invited to come here to give you a different perspective. I
think I\'m kind of a stand-alone here, if I\'m not mistaken, as far as
being a Director of Center for School Safety, and are you going to click
for me? It\'s hard to get good help these days.

(Laughter.)

MR. AKERS:  I\'m on background right now. I just wanted to tell you that
I\'m going to come to you from a principal\'s perspective. I\'m going to
come to you as a Director of a Center for School Safety. We are
independent from our state education agency, so we are stand-alone.
Sometimes we\'re seen as a watchdog agency to be sure that our
Department of Education is doing the right things under school safety is
concerned. That\'s a media perception, that\'s not a real perception. We
have a very strong working relationship with the Department of Education
in Kentucky. We do not receive monies directly from Title 4s for our
program. It\'s a stand-alone. You want to go the next slide for me here.
We are a consortium of three universities, Murray State University,
University of Kentucky, and Eastern Kentucky University, which I\'m an
employee of, and we\'re the headquarters of the Center for School
Safety. We also have as a partner the Kentucky School Boards
Association.

Our funding comes from our general assembly, which was enacted back in
1998, which was House Bill 330. Our main task is to basically partner
and facilitate activities that will enhance school safety, so in a
nutshell, that\'s kind of like what we do.

Now who do we partner with? Well, we partner with our number one
partner, obviously, is our Department of Education. In our state, we
have education cooperatives, which are basically eight regions where all
of the superintendents cluster in one of these eight regions to work on
common issues and goals together, so we work with those folks. From
Bill\'s shop over here, the RCM grantees that have been awarded grants
in our state, we work with those folks to see that whatever we can do to
help facilitate what they\'re doing in pursuing what they have said they
were going to do in their grants.

We work with our Homeland Security office. We had Bill Modzeleski and
some of his folks from the Secret Service come to our state last year to
do a threat assessment workshop, as far as trying to look at how do we
try to identify would-be students who were going to be violent in our
schools.

Just a quick aside, I think they were thinking that we were going to
have about 75 police officers and 75 principal-types in there to kind of
work with this, and we had to shut down at 500. We had basically a split
house of about 250 principals, and 250 police officers that work
together on that thing, really, really good session.

We work with our Office of Drug Control Policy, and I go over to Maryann
Solsberg, who came over in February, and lit a fire for us over there.
She\'s awfully quiet. I\'m really surprised how quiet she is here,
because she was just \-- she lit my fire. I haven\'t had a cup of coffee
in five months, so she\'s got me that fired up.

We work with the Department of Mental Health, and I\'m not a school
psychologist, but when I hear such stats that we have close to 20
percent of our kids that are clinically depressed going to our schools,
we\'ve got some problems. We need to get some issues on the front burner
here, and we work with our folks with that. And, of course, just like
Florida does, and Colorado does, we work with our school resource
officers and see what we can do to help them out, as well. Next frame
here.

Just kind of give you an idea of what we do as an outside agency looking
in here; we formed our own emergency management guide back six years
ago, which definitely needs to be tweaked now, but we gave them, and
then we were just working with the three phases, Bill, at that time, the
preparedness, the response, and recovery. It didn\'t get into the
mitigation issues at that point in time.

We have worked with in our alternative education programs, and I don\'t
know how it exists in your states, as well, but some of our alternative
education programs span the continuum, from absolutely wonderful to
absolutely uh-oh, where we have some alternative education programs
where that\'s the last stop for some teachers, and the last stop for
some administrators, so that\'s lose-lose when challenging kids come in
there. So we have hired, through a program with our Department of
Education using these discretionary funds to send trained alternative
education specialists to work with those schools that are having
troubles, or those programs that are having troubles, and try to assist
those programs in an advisory way, not in a supervisory way.

Our hallmark service that we provide in our state is a school safety
assessment, which is a climate and culture piece, that is a voluntary
piece that superintendents ask us to conduct. And, again, those were
through state monies, through the Title 4. My board of directors have
picked up on that, and now totally funded, but it was because we had two
years of funding through discretionary monies that allowed us to get
this program, which we feel is very, very important, up and running, and
I think that\'s the way it\'s supposed to be. We get the seed money from
you guys, and then we take it and run with it in the state level.

A community service work project - boy, did I hate to see those monies
dry up. We had some tremendous results on this, where we had kids in
lieu of suspensions going to community work service programs. Plus, we
put a major counseling component in that - why did you mess up, and how
could you avoid these things in the future, and give them some skills on
how to avoid those things, and we saw some suspension rates drop as much
as 75 to 80 percent. And when we were looking at targeted use, we saw
major drops in that, as well. Some school districts had the funds to go
ahead and pick it up and run with it. Some smaller districts couldn\'t
do it.

We have been for the last six years working with our State Department of
Education. We report all the board and law violations that escalate into
suspensions, corporal punishment, expulsions with services, and
expulsions without services. The PDS obviously stands for Persistently
Dangerous Schools. Since we are the keepers of the data for the state,
we will issue a report card, if you will, to all 1,265 of our schools in
our state where they stand as far as movement towards or movement away
from our definition of what is being considered as persistently
dangerous school. So those are some of the things where we have
interacted with our state agency by virtue of Title 4 monies, and so
none of this would have gotten off the launching pad hadn\'t we had
those dollars here, is my point.

Some general comments, speaking out of both sides of my mouth now as a
principal, and as a director, and as a proud father of a son who is a
high school principal now, as well, the reign of terror of Akers in
principalship still continue in Kentucky. Title 4 monies need to be
there. Ten years ago, 15 years ago when I was practicing as a high
school principal, I was more concerned about getting those kids to pass
that state test. I wasn\'t really concerned about Osama bin Laden, I
wasn\'t concerned about school shooters, I wasn\'t concerned about a
whole lot of these issues. Even though I\'m right next to a airport,
never thought about an air crash. Two years prior to that, I was at
another school where there was a railroad track, never thought about
derailment, never thought about the all hazards approach, but we have
morphed from, as been mentioned to you here today, from the alcohol,
tobacco syndrome issues, all the way through and including an all
hazards approach situation.

Now one thing that we\'re really trying to do in our commonwealth is to
look at this teacher/student connectivity piece. When I look at the
documents that Bill\'s shop produced, along with Secret Service, on some
of these issues about why kids were involved in these heinous acts,
there was a major disconnect between the kids and their school, or the
kids and the adults in that school, so we\'re looking for ways to find
ways to enhance that connectivity piece, and that could be through
several of these programs that I\'ve got listed there; the Anti-Bullying
Program. If teachers really knew how they could really interface with
that, you would see a major connectivity piece there. The threat
assessment program that we talked about earlier, I see a major need to
breathe life more into these student assistance teams.

I look at this from basically 200 plus assessments that we have been
directly involved with in our schools, basically middle schools and high
schools. Staff need the support, they need to have the training there.
And, of course, this doesn\'t come cheap. In Kentucky, people don\'t
want to work for free, so we have to pay these folks when they come in.
They just don\'t do it out of the kindness of their hearts.

Some ideas that I have that I want to throw out on the table here - for
those states that are - and I\'ll say this with all honesty here - for
states that are lucky to have Centers for School Safety, we can see a
good partnership happening between the local, excuse me, not the local,
but the state education agency and the state Center for School Safety,
not in trying to supplant any kind of existing funds, but to getting
creative, and maybe pooling the funds together to see what we can do.
You\'ve heard some wonderful stories. Just seemed like regular high
school, the custodian going down this time of day with a cart going down
there - but anyhow, looking at these initiatives that we could do to
consolidate our efforts, we heard some testimony today about that, as
well; great things can happen when people really don\'t care who gets
the credit, but who want to go out there and see what they can do to
help effect change.

I think they need to have a needs assessment. I think they need to see
where they need to go, and a cooperative attitude. And a couple of other
quick things here, too, and this was mentioned, again, that we need to
train the trainers, and then we need to have, for lack of a better term,
booster sessions, where we can re-up these people again. You know,
you\'ve been trained in bullying. You\'ve taken it, now okay, what\'s
happening three years down the road from here? What do we need to do to
re-up this a little bit? Same thing with our emergency management
situation with some of the issues that we\'ve seen there.

Talking about emergency management - the training, obviously, is
critical. As I go into these schools, I see dusted off copies that
haven\'t been really updated in several years. We are going to try to do
something about that, but moreover, now that I\'ve learned a lot more
from working with folks up here, there\'s a significant piece there in
this, this exercising these programs, and having functional exercises
are certainly desirable, so those are some things we\'d like to see kind
of come up from, or come down from the federal government to us saying
hey, you need to be more engaged with these activities.

And, finally, trying to save you a little bit of time here, I recommend
that as you look at where the Center for School Safety are located, and
I\'ll use Ohio, for example, because I collaborate with the folks in
Ohio and Indiana, and Mike over here in Tennessee, we could have
regional meetings, and we could bring our SEA folks down, along with our
Directors for Centers for School Safety, and get into brainstorming
sessions - what\'s going on in Ohio that\'s hot and neat and stuff like
that. I\'d like to steal some ideas from you guys. Maybe we have
something down in Kentucky that you all could use, et cetera. So I think
that there\'s a whole gamut of things that we could do, if we could find
some way to coordinate this thing and explore that.

Finally, I\'d just like to reiterate the fact that prevention is a very
difficult thing to put a measuring stick on. I just know what I\'ve seen
in the schools over the years, that these prevention activities have
worked in anecdotal ways. Will it fit some of the questionnaires that
are out there? Possibly not, but I know that when we have fewer
suspensions, we have fewer assaults, when we have fewer crimes in our
schools, when we see drug issues dropping off the face as far as the
chart is concerned, some good things are happening. Now how people
answer crafted questions on surveys sometimes, as was mentioned here
before, may not always get to what\'s going down. Good things are
happening with you Title 4 monies. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Jon. Cynthia.

MS. TIMMONS:  Is my time up?

DR. LONG:  No, God bless you.

MS. TIMMONS:  Yes, I hope he is.

DR. LONG:  This group in front of you has been here \-- 

MS. TIMMONS:  Wishful thinking. Go ahead.

DR. LONG:  We\'ve been here for 27 hours, and you can rest assured that
we want to hear what you say, and you take as much time as you want.

MS. TIMMONS:  Oh, did you all hear that, I can take as much time as I
want.

DR. LONG:  I\'m just kidding

MS. TIMMONS:  Oh. The clock is on, right? The bells will ring kind of
like the custodian going down, when the bell rings, that means I\'m
through. When I work in the prisons, when they come in for count, I have
to quit, too, so if we come in for count now you know I\'ll be quitting.

No, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you
members that are here to listen and to hear what we have to say, to help
you make advised and informed decisions, as well. Do we have all the
answers? The answer is probably not. We don\'t even know the questions
yet, so I\'m hoping that today what I have to share will kind of
summarize many of the things that I\'ve heard people say from the very
beginning this morning, and I\'ve been here all day, and glad for that.
From the things that Jon said, I thought I think he was looking at some
of my slides, because some of those things I will be saying, but very
briefly. And I\'ve got my watch here, so I\'ll try to keep it at 10
minutes.

Okay. The information that I gave you in your packets, and that you\'ve
had prior to this has several slides in it. I\'m not going to go over
all of those. I\'m going to emphasize the assessment phase, the needs
assessment phase, because I think that\'s something that\'s truly, truly
vital and important, so I\'m going to look at 13 steps here very
quickly, because many of them have been talked about, but I\'m going to
look at that assessment and the needs assessment phase. And as I\'ve
listened to all of the panels, one reason that I\'m going to do that,
and that I want to keep it to that, is that when we\'ve talked about
evaluation, we\'ve talked about programs that have worked, I haven\'t
heard too many say that sometimes they\'ve not been effective. Well, you
know what, sometimes they haven\'t been effective because you\'re not
measuring the right thing. You don\'t know truly what your problems are
in your school, so if you\'re measuring Second Step and violence
prevention isn\'t your number one program, you may not get the scores
that you want, so I am going to emphasize the needs assessment, and that
this is kind of a checklist of looking at the needs assessment, looking
at what you need to do in generalities. I\'m not going to look at a
specific school district. I\'m not going to look at a specific state.
I\'ve worked in several, but I\'m going to be looking at, in
generalities, what do you want to look at in each one of these
comprehensive \-- for a comprehensive prevention program. And look at
promising programs and practices, if you will.

And if I get off on the slides, Debbie, will you tell me like you did
before. Okay. Am I on number one? All right. Well, first of all, we
can\'t separate focusing on academic achievement from safe and drug free
schools. We just can\'t do it. And I think too often we fragmentize
that, and we\'ve looked at our academics, and we\'ve looked at our safe
and drug free schools issues as separate issues. It is not. It is the
same. We need to look at it together collectively, collaborate, and work
together on that, and so that\'s the first one that I want to look at.
We, too, as Safe and Drug Free Schools educators, need to look at that.

Okay. The second one is to involve the family in meaningful ways. Again,
that\'s the Principles of Effectiveness. We need to look at and work
with our families. Only when we work with our families are we truly
going to make an impact, are we going to make a difference. Are they
going to listen to us, only if we\'re listening to them. I mean, in
meaningful ways, not bring the cookies through the door, but I mean
truly listen and put them on our advisory boards within the schools, and
listen to what they have to say, as well as what the children have to
say.

The third one is developing those links to the community. We\'ve got
several links with all of our communities, the rural communities we\'re
working one school in Illinois, very, very small rural school, and what
they use were the Schools Within The Schools. They use their high school
students as mentors for their elementary students, because they didn\'t
have a lot of resources, but a lot of things happened by them doing
that, so link to whatever resources you have within your school.

Also, to emphasize the positive relationships amongst students and
staff, and I heard Jon talk about that, make sure that your students and
your staff have equal and mutual respect for each other. I\'ve seen too
many administrators and too many teachers many times not respect their
students. The respect goes both ways, and I think that\'s really
important when you\'re looking at a comprehensive plan for your schools.

Another is to discuss those safety issues openly, make sure that you\'re
talking about them. Just because you talk about them isn\'t going to
make them happen. You need to talk about them and get on the same ground
work, get on the same framework, make sure your terminology is the same,
and work together there.

Again, I\'ve gone back to the treat the students with equal respect, and
it goes along with slide four, and that was that positive relationships
between the students and between the staff. There needs to be that
positive relationship, respect absolutely the students for the teachers,
but also to make sure that you have that positive working relationship
with that. Many ways that we\'ve done that in some of the schools that
I\'ve looked at as far as student assistance programs, the teachers are
mentors with their children, and sometimes silent mentors, especially
with their high school students. They don\'t want to be thought of as
needing a mentor, but to be silent mentor with someone, to ask them
about how they\'re doing, to go to their wrestling match, to go to their
choir meetings and things like that, is really, really important.

And, again, mentioning student assistance programs, create those ways
for students to share their concerns. Many times they don\'t feel like
they have any place that they can go to share those concerns with. Our
student support groups, the opportunities for children to meet with and
youth to meet with their faculty and staff need to be made readily
available for those students. We also, number eight, we need to help
those children feel safe in expressing their feelings. How many times do
we say, if any of us in this room have said oh, you shouldn\'t be angry
about that; oh, you shouldn\'t be mad, you shouldn\'t be sad. Baloney.
If they\'re angry, they\'re angry. Acknowledge it. Let them know that
they can express their anger in appropriate ways. If they express their
anger, and they say okay, well if this isn\'t angry, then maybe I should
show them what angry is. Okay? So we need to help them, and share with
them ways to express those feelings, and listen to their feelings.

We also need to have a place and system for referring the children who
are abused, children who are - their parents are going through divorce.
There\'s children who have parents in prison. We need to let them know
it\'s okay, that they have someone that they can talk to, to come back
to. And any of our violence prevention programs, in any of our safe and
drug free schools programs, we need to look at that.

We also need to offer those extended day programs. The little girl that
I mentor in my program, Children of Promise, both of her parents are in
prison, and she\'s been raised by a grandmother that\'s trying to work
full time, and doesn\'t get off until 5:00. I don\'t know what she would
do without a full day, without an extended day care that\'s positive in
nature, that allows for some tutoring, that allows for some positive
interaction with some adults, extremely important in our Safe and Drug
Free Schools programs.

We also need to promote that good citizenship and character. I can tell
you since I\'ve started working with children of prisoners, they
sometimes don\'t know what good citizenship is. They really haven\'t
been taught that. They do not know. We need to advise and not let the
parents know that they are, indeed, their first moral teachers, and we
know that, and we need to acknowledge that. We also need to help them
and teach them, re-teach them, if you will, some good citizenship, and
good character education.

We need to identify the problems and assess the progress toward those
solutions. How many times do we as educators, do we as parents, look at
the problem, but we never move into the solutions. One thing that I\'ve
used with middle schools, if you\'re not a part of the solution, then
you\'re a part of the problem, so we need to talk about solutions as we
identify those problems. And last but not least, we need to support
those students in making that transition. These students, and especially
at the high school, are scared to death to move into adulthood, as we
know it; to move into what am I going to be when I grow up, because we
try to make them decide that right now. How many of you are in the same
career that you were thinking about when you were in elementary or
middle school? We need to help them. We need to have some of the things
that Jon and some others have talked about, and work study programs, the
opportunity to move forward, and to help our children make those
decisions, not to make the decisions for them, but to help them in those
decision making skills.

Those are the 13 key points that I wanted to bring out, that I wanted
everyone to make sure that when you\'re working for a comprehensive
violence prevention program, that you look at each one of these and say
am I doing this? Am I doing this? Am I doing this, as you go through
those programs that you\'re looking at. And as we look at the seven
elements of a promising program, make sure that they have these seven
key elements in place, that it\'s comprehensive. Again, it\'s not a
stand-alone program, it\'s not the Safe and Drug Free Schools program
versus No Child Left Behind, versus the Math Department, versus the
English Department, but it\'s everyone working together, a comprehensive
approach, that we have an early start and a long-term commitment, that
we don\'t try to get it all done in one year. We can\'t, but we look at
what\'s imminent, what we need to right now, and that we make a
long-term commitment to that.

We must have strong leadership, strong leadership does not need a
disciplinarian that\'s over your head cracking the whip. It means strong
leadership to look at promising programs, to look at changes, to look at
what\'s happening in your school. Just because you did something five
years ago doesn\'t mean it\'s going to work in today\'s time, so have
that strong leadership that could have action with it.

Also, staff development. Staff development, as we\'ve mentioned before,
and that\'s why I said, he was looking over my shoulder here, staff
development means staff development, means staff development, not once,
but many, many times. Repeat it, and implement it, make sure that those
development programs and those books are dusted off and read, and
re-read, and revised as the need be.

Also, look at the family involvement. We have to look at the family,
including our grandparents. Guys, our grandparents are raising more and
more of our children right now, and if we don\'t include them as part of
the family, if we don\'t make a 56-year old woman as welcome in our
schools when she\'s raising a first grader, as we do a 25-year old
mother, then we\'ve made a mistake. If we don\'t start looking at all
avenues of all of our family involvement, and make them feel welcome,
and not that oh, well this PTA is for 30 and under, and I\'m 60, and
I\'ve heard that be said by grandparents that I work with, saying I
don\'t feel welcome in the schools as a first grade mother, so we need
to be sure that we look at the family development, and the family
involvement.

We also continually need to work with that in our generation of
partnerships, and those community linkages that I listened to before.
And as we\'ve talked about being culturally sensitive, make sure that
we\'re developmentally appropriate, make sure that we have the books and
everything in the languages which are in schools, and who is it that
said they had 69 or so languages in your schools - make sure you have a
common language. Someone here, I respect this morning, that they had an
interpreter here for those that needed it, and that was excellent.

The last slide that I have up here, this is a quote that I love, and
it\'s from - and I don\'t know who it is here - from Howard Adelman. And
I think it just kind of puts it all together, and it talks about
fragmentation. It says, \"We must avoid fragmentation in implementing
programs. The concepts and preventing and responding to violence must be
integrated into effective school reform, including socially and
academically supportive instruction, and caring and welcoming
atmosphere, and providing good options for recreation and enrichment.\"
And I think that just says it all. I think pulling that all together is
so, so very vital, and so very important.

And the last slide, it\'s going to take us all, each and every one of us
around this table and in this room, and outside this room and within our
states, to make that difference. Thank you.

DR. LONG:  Thank you very much, Cynthia. Thanks to all of you, and we
will now turn to questions from the committee so that we can interact.
So we\'ll entertain questions from committee members. Fred.

MR. ELLIS:  I don\'t know how to begin this. One of the, I don\'t know,
frustrations from little piece of the world is coming like Ed did, from
the world of law enforcement over to school security, is that there
seems to be almost an exclusive emphasis on the federal level,
particularly at the Department of Education, on prevention programs. And
I don\'t say that to say that prevention programs are bad. I think in
the world of crime fighting, prevention is the ultimate crime fighting
mechanism, or emphasis. But in the world that I come from, crime
fighting basically is made up of the three-legged stool; one is,
prevention, another one is deterrence, and another one is enforcement.
And it\'s my perspective, or my impression that while there\'s this
tremendous emphasis on prevention, which is a good thing, there\'s
almost none on the deterrence and enforcement. And, specifically,
looking at and evaluating technologies - Ed talked about technologies in
terms of dual access technology, video surveillance, student I.D. cards,
use of force issues. We heard on the emergency management piece where
not only, of course, Department of Education, but DHS, FEMA,
particularly FEMA comes out with publication, for instance, that makes
all these recommendations for education facilities, such as bomb
resistance coating on all of your glass. Well, Fairfax County, I have
more than 25 million square feet of space, that\'s more than four
Pentagons. I don\'t think the Pentagon has yet to do all of their glass
in bomb resistant coating, so to come out and suggest that we should
somehow come up with funding to address these issues, bomb resistant
trash receptacles, these kinds of things, thousand feet stand-off
parking. Really, we don\'t even have the land. The schools already
exist, so it\'s a very frustrating position for us to be in, to listen
to other people suggest how we should be, one, protecting our schools
and doing these prevention programs, but providing no funding, no
assessment particularly of the technologies to do some of those things.
And it was interesting, Lorraine, you talked about the - and correct me
if I\'m wrong - you talked about \$3.3 million, I think you got from
DHS, and that was for the State of Florida, which sounds like a lot of
money, but you and I both know that\'s a pittance. We did two
generators, emergency generators in Fairfax County, \$1.2 million. Two
buildings of the 247 that we have, so my point is it\'s very frustrating
from our end, so I\'d like to hear from you guys to see if I\'m just
nuts, or have I really hit on something, and would you like to see
somebody at the federal level, whether or not it\'s Department of
Education, and in this office, this program being the right ones to do
that. But, personally, I would like to see \-- I think \-- Bill, correct
me if I\'m wrong - didn\'t you guys partner up with NIJ years ago and
did the thing with Sandia, and the video surveillance thing. It was a
great piece on making recommendations on video surveillance, but it
would be great see some stuff on dual access technology, student I.D.
cards, those kinds of things, and I would like to hear if you guys echo
that.

MR. RAY:  I won\'t make a comment on whether you\'re nuts or not, Fred.
I won\'t make that comment regarding whether you\'re nuts or not.

It is frustrating to us that are more geared towards the non-educational
program issues, and that we are always trying to come up with that
latest way of making the classroom safe, whether it be through programs,
character education, certainly classroom management issues. But the one
thing we, at least I in Denver, and most of my counterparts around the
country are charged with, is making sure that our students, our staff
members, and our facilities - we can\'t forget facilities, because
without a facility, without the computers in the facility, without all
aspects of that, four corners of that building, we don\'t have
education. And we tend to think about security from an eight to five,
Monday through Friday concept, and I assure you that it\'s much, much
deeper than that.

Now we have, and Bill\'s probably tired of us talking about this, but we
have very little access, unless you are a true law enforcement entity.
And some of the school districts in the country are law enforcement
entities, their own police departments, ISDs. Michael over here from San
Antonio is the other school districts. We do not have access to
Department of Justice, Homeland Security dollars. They go directly to
law enforcement; and, therefore, when \-- if we\'re fortunate enough for
anything to come down, which for most of us is not the case, the money
we count on is the money that comes out of DOE. Those dollars are out of
our taxing our own public for monies \-- for the majors. And Fred is
right, we can\'t create these thousand foot barriers, there are so many
things we cannot do, but there\'s a lot of things we can do if we have
the dollars to do it. And I personally think access control, I think
student identification cards, I think knowing who is coming into our
campuses not only during school day, but around the clock. A school
that\'s taken out because - give you an example in Denver, we just had a
burglary, \$27,000 burglary of computers, \$27,000 worth of computers in
one school overnight, and the cameras caught it, and we got them back.
That school was able to open this morning, as a matter of fact. Without
the cameras, that technology, and the intrusion alarms to back those up,
we would not have gotten the school\'s computers back. One computer lab
taken out of \-- just wiped out. Those types of technologies are so
critical, but they are also so difficult to maintain, to keep them
running, to keep those things going on a 24-hour, 7-day a week basis, we
can\'t forget school security is a 24/7 operation, and we need those
funds, wherever they come from, whether from Homeland Security,
Department of Justice. I agree with the comments about NIJ, the research
programs. NIJ has done a tremendous job for us in taking a look at
applicable technologies, and we need to continue those programs, Bill.
We need to get those things hooked back up, so we know that what we\'re
doing from a technology point of view, at least, are those things are
working.

MR. AKERS:  I\'d like to just maybe comment just real quick on the
behavioral side, rather than from the criminal side on this situation;
that as far as deterrence are concerned and enforcement, I hope I would
get some support here from principal, the colleague over here, but there
are some programs out there under the umbrella, huge umbrella called
\"instructional discipline\". It could be the CHAMPS program, it could
be the Peebis program, Rob Horner, George Sugai, Randy Sprick, whoever -
they\'re teaching kids, actually, they\'re teaching teachers to be
consistent, first of all. Then if all the teachers are pulling together
consistently on what they\'re asking these kids to do, then we\'re
seeing a greater compliance issue. That articulates back over to your
shop, Ed, that if the kids are complying to civil issues with the
teachers, then some of the crime issues might come into lockstep as far
as that behavior thing is concerned, as well.

Being the first high school principal in our State of Kentucky to
enforce mandatory drug testing for athletes, we saw a major change, and
we saw something really weird happen, where we actually had non-athlete
kids come up to me and say can we start a club for drug-free
non-athletes, where we have to offer a urine sample to get into the
club? Now I said, you want to hold that club in a closet because we only
have three kids that could come into that. We had over 700 kids step up
to the plate. We had wonderful businesses give us - in fact, I still
carry the card in my wallet here, which I can show after hours for you
all - where they were offering discounts for kids who tested negative as
far as the drug tests are concerned, had the card, sanction card, would
go in and get discounts. We let kids come into our athletic contests
absolutely free because they were drug free. We got them at the
concession stand - that\'s where we got the money - a little bit more
salt gets more Coca Cola, but anyhow, bottom line here is that there are
some deterrent programs out there. Now are they the end-all/be-all, the
answer is no. Are they a step in the right direction, I said I
definitely think so. And so we\'re seeing more and more. This lady over
here lit a fire, we went from 46 school districts to 72 school districts
within six month period of time that are engaging in student drug
testing for athletes, and for extra curricular. And because of our Safe
School assessments that we do, which I think is a deterrent, as well,
we\'ve had four schools in our state that had open lunches, and that\'s
an accident waiting to happen, you know, where kids can leave campus
unsupervised, and that becomes a law issue, as well as a school issue
there. We\'ve had three out of the four closed because of our
assessments, and saying what a negative issue that is as far as impacts
on drugs and behavior, and crime is concerned, so there\'s some
deterrent issues there, as well, that principals are trying to fight
with day in and day out.

MS. ALLEN:  I just want to speak to the technology piece, again, and we
had districts that have quite a bit of funding, and so they\'re able to
use the technology, the key to check I.D., et cetera, but there\'s other
districts that don\'t. And so based on their needs, they\'re going to
determine if they\'re going to use those dollars for technology, and so
that\'s something that gets back to, you know, we talked about
assessment all day, but it\'s based on your needs, and with the
dwindling resources, how you\'re going to use those dollars. And we do
have some districts that that is so important to them, they will put it
in, for example, my county - they had the RAPTOR system identification,
and so that\'s a technology that\'s used. So it just depends on their
need, and the funds available. Would we like to see more funds for
people to use that? Yes, but then you have to measure, based on other
needs, as well.

DR. LONG:  Montean, question.

MS. JACKSON:  Hi. And, again, thank you all for coming. I\'m from
Alaska, and something that has come up for many of us as we\'ve
discussed on the breaks, is the active versus passive consent. And I was
wondering could someone talk a little bit about that, and some of the
strategies that you\'ve used to kind of get the students to participate
in the surveys, and get your families involved. And one other piece on
evaluation, on evaluating your ancillary programs. We\'ve heard a lot
about evidence-based curricula that\'s delivered in the schools, but I
think for many of us, we probably know that with that goes hand-in-hand
some other support systems that need to be in place, as we have students
coming to school a lot more challenged, and receiving \-- perhaps even
taking medication and receiving some other kinds of services in the
community, so how are you evaluating those components, that it\'s not
just the prevention piece, but it\'s also the intervention component.

MS. ALLEN:  Well, could I speak to one way that with active versus
parental consent in our Florida Youth Survey effort. I do have some
slides on that, was unable to show them to you, but we actually worked
with other state agencies for our Florida Youth effort, and it includes
Florida Youth Substance Abuse surveys, and our Youth Risk Behavior
survey, and our Tobacco survey, in addition to our Physical Activity and
Nutrition surveys, and one of the things, because we\'re using DCF
dollars, which is Department of Children and Families, we, of course,
don\'t need active, but passive - we go ahead and we tell our school
districts that it\'s voluntary, that we\'re going to be doing these
surveys. And some of the districts, because of local control, have
decided that they will make sure that the parents say yes or no, and
others will say well, we\'ll let them know the surveys are there, we\'ll
let them see the surveys, et cetera, just to try to get the number of
students that we need for appropriate sample sizes, so that\'s one area
that we use another state agency and their dollars to be able to do our
Youth surveys.

MR. AKERS:  I\'m not sure if I understood your question all together,
but you were phasing into what I\'m calling co-occurring issues that
kids have, and how do we, at the state level, address those issues?

MS. JACKSON:  It was actually how are we evaluating the schools that are
not only implementing evidence-based curriculums in the schools, but
also, are providing those additional services that students are in need
of to show effectiveness to the Safe and Drug Free Schools programming.
Yes, is there anybody evaluating those alternative programs in
conjunction with what they already have in place?

MR. AKERS:  I\'m not a state coordinator of that situation, so I have to
defer over to \-- 

MS. ALLEN:  We\'re not evaluating programs that\-- we\'re not evaluating
intervention programs, no. I mean, our office doesn\'t do that.

MS. TIMMONS:  I think that\'s more from the state education agency, and
I think more of our state education agencies are looking at the
Principles of Effectiveness as a tool to do that, so they\'re looking at
all strategies, not just the programs but the strategies they\'re
putting in place to meet their need, so they\'re looking at their needs
assessment of what they need to do, and the strategies to make those
difference. And then as they go back and evaluate are they making that
difference, then there are several strategies in there that look at
that, but a state education agency person would be better to answer
that, I think.

DR. LONG:  Hope.

MS. TAFT:  Thank you all for coming, because you\'ve broadened my
perspective of what it means to be safe schools; but yet, knowing that
the title of this program is Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities,
how would you all recommend that the program be tweaked or reinvented to
become \-- to keep what\'s good in it, but also enhance it in some way?

MS. TIMMONS:  I think one thing, Hope, that I would do that I would like
us to look at is to take down those territorial walls. I think there\'s
too many territorials and boxes that we\'re in, and I think we need to
step outside those boxes in some ways, and make some change among
ourselves, not just here, but with all of the colleagues that we work
with, or that we need to work with - Juvenile Justice with all of the
different programs, Homeland Security, et cetera, et cetera, that we all
need to look and see what is our piece in making a difference, how can
we work collectively together, and I think it was Jon that mentioned
that, and we don\'t care who gets the credit, as long as it makes that.
What\'s happened, though, is that Safe and Drug Free Schools is making a
difference. They\'re making an impact, and other people are taking some
of that credit, so we need to look at that, as well. But as we look at
the changes, we need to, first of all, contact every one that\'s at the
table who makes those changes, and look at the five Cs, and then go back
up to communicate, and then communicate among each other, look at each
other, talk among ourselves, and then cooperate, cooperate with each
other, give each other the strokes that they need, and to cooperate, and
then to collaborate, and truly to coordinate our efforts together to
maximize our programs. We could all, across the governments, across the
school boards, across the communities, we could make a difference if we
collaborated, coordinated, and all worked together up that, what I call
the five Cs of making change in our efforts.

DR. LONG:  Thank you.

MR. RAY:  Could I respond, just a quick second. I would just like to add
that from my perspective, I guess, and I think I\'ve talked to others
about what can we do, is first and foremost, is acknowledgment that
times have changed. We talk about stress levels of our children. You
know, they\'re dealing with things that most of us in this room never
had to deal with, and we talk about terrorism, we talk about pandemic
flus, we talk about 1918. Well, how many people died, I guess in 1918,
is that somewhere close with the various flus. Not only do we deal with
the issues that we have to acknowledge those issues exist today, but we
also have to acknowledge the fear factor of our parents and our
teachers. And I\'m not sure we do a real good job of understanding that
parents are sending their kids off, under concerns that will they see
them at the end of the day? And they expect all of us to make sure that
they do see them at the end of the day. And that acknowledgment has to
come from where we are today, not where we were 25, 30 years ago. Things
have changed, and I think we have to acknowledge that we\'re living
under different times today, especially in the past decade or so.

MR. AKERS:  I think one other thing too, Ms. Taft, that when you look at
school administrators, they have the Jerry McGuire philosophy - show me
the money. And they\'ve been used to getting monies from state levels,
used to getting monies from the feds, as far as these things, and I
think there\'s a certain amount of an entitlement added, too, that some
school administrators have, so now we\'re going to have to show them the
reason not to give them money if we do get outside the box and find
another way to reallocate the situation. And so I would think that you
would need to get the stakeholders together and say okay, let\'s all
think outside the box here state-by-state, and it may not be just a
situation where we need to do it nationally, but just give the option
out there for school administrators, superintendent-types,
principal-types that come to the table and say okay, if we were to
reconfigure this and re-allocate this money within our state, rather
than going out where you don\'t get enough to even - I think one of our
school districts gets like \$1,015, something like that, what are they
going to do with that? But if they cooperatively shared that monies
within maybe regions within the state or whatever, they might be able to
enhance some regional training, some things like this where they could
maximize their monies. And then, also, I think we need to ask people,
you know, like Lorraine was saying, look at all the collaboration that
she\'s got going on with her state with all those folks. I\'m sitting
here in absolute envy. Well, you know, Homeland Security invites us to
sit at the table, but we\'re at the back part of the table. Homeland
Security hasn\'t offered me a penny yet, and yet we\'re the ones that
they\'re going to come to when a disaster happens saying can we put the
refugees there. And all I want is a fair seat at the table for educators
to be able to access some of the monies. Of course, she\'s a lot better
looking than I am, so maybe that\'s an issue. I don\'t know.

(Laughter.)

MR. AKERS:  But that\'s what I was thinking about, maybe one year rotate
off and see what might happen. But, again, you would have to have a
grassroots agreement among the administrators in your state before you
tried to even get there, or else they\'re going to start going to their
Congressmen saying hey, they\'re screwing with our money. Now back them
off from this thing because I want my \$1,015 back. It\'s hot potato.

MS. ALLEN:  Well, to piggyback, also, with regard to the collaboration
issue; I would love to see at the federal level the prevention system in
place that all the federal state agencies that deal with prevention,
what their common goals are. And then look at it at the federal level,
because at the state level, what we\'ve done is we work with Children
and Families, and Health, and Juvenile Justice, and the Office of Drug
Control, and we have our own statewide prevention system. All of us
bring something different to the table, but yet, I would love to see
that at the federal level, what are you all doing at the federal level
to do that, and what goals are you setting as a federal government, and
see what the states are doing, as well. And what we found with our
prevention system is that then our LEAs kind of want to mirror what we
do, and that collaboration is really improved collaboration.

I feel so fortunate when I come to national meetings because we have
very good rapport with Children and Families, and Juvenile Justice, and
the Governor\'s office, and we really do all sit down together, and we
like to tease the reason why is because most of them started in
education, we just farmed them out to those other state agencies so that
we all have a common goal. But I\'d like to see that common prevention
goal. I don\'t know if that existed at the federal level, but we\'re
working on it at the state level. It\'s hard. It\'s not a simple job,
but we are, so that we can pull together the data we need with limited
resources, the fact that we can have our Youth survey and Children and
Families pays for it. I mean, how incredible is that? And we do other
things. We have a prevention conference coming up in September, and all
these players, all these state agencies are putting that together, so
that\'s one piece I would like to see, I think would help if we see what
the feds are doing.

The second thing to go with what Jon had mentioned was, we do have 72
LEAs, and some of them are pretty tiny, and so we have a built
consortia. And what\'s really nice about that is they tend to be our
smaller rural districts, and they tend to be near each other, and so
we\'re able to maximize our dollars that way through either a
consortium, or the two consortia that we do have, so it\'s another way
that I would like to see those states that have so many LEAs, perhaps
look at what Jon had mentioned, and regionalize some of the activities,
and to be able to set some common goals and work on those. And we talked
about the current law, we now are required through the Uniform
Management Information Reporting System to have this common set of
uniform data, and we have been working since the mid-90s on trying to
come up with, across our state, data for crime and violence, our
substance abuse surveys. And we\'re tweaking it, and we\'re tweaking it,
and we feel we\'re in pretty good shape that we can across the state
look at that if fighting is happening in Baker County, it means the same
thing as fighting in Miami-Dade, because we spend so much time training
our school administrators and staff on reporting that back to us through
our automated information system that we have. So for that piece, I
think we could get some common elements.

And then I really would like us to revisit the criteria by which the
PART scores our program, just to ensure that the program is looking at
our program outcomes, and that they are aligned. And in revisiting the
criteria, work with out states to determine the best program indicators
to use to reflect program performance. I think that would be really
useful for us, as well. Those are just a couple of things I think would
improve the program, but I think it\'s critical that you have the states
receiving administrative and state activity dollars because we can
really maximize the use of those dollars across out entire state. And
again, our state is huge, Florida is huge, and we\'re able to do so much
with such little dollars because of that, because then we bring in all
those collaborative partners by having the infrastructure in place.
Thank you.

MS. TAFT:  I have to agree with you. Having a single definition for
prevention in your state with all agencies and departments buying into
it makes a tremendous difference. Ohio has just gone through that
process, and it\'s like night and day.

DR. LONG:  We have about two minutes left, and the order is Shep, and
Susan, and then we\'ll \-- Shep, go ahead. I\'m sorry.

DR. KELLAM:  I was fascinated, as was Ms. Taft, and I\'m sure everybody
sitting around here, with the breadth of what you all are presenting. It
goes far beyond - I mean, as the day has unfolded, the picture has
gotten very much more enlarged, somewhat out of focus in some areas, but
very much larger. The role of research in all this, whether, in fact,
this is antagonistic research managing to impose itself in certain ways
that don\'t make any sense or not, all kinds of issues that need to be
resolved. One of the things that\'s not come up, and comes out of a lot
of research is the importance, as Ed pointed out, of classroom behavior.
I think it was you - classroom behavior management, and we\'ve been
doing research on that for 40 years literally. The two great risk
factors for aggression and trouble with drugs later, in fact, are school
failure and aggressive, disruptive behavior as early as first grade, and
actually earlier, but those two risk factors have been the subject of an
incredible amount of research. One of the things that\'s become clear,
and we\'ve tested methods, is that roughly 50 percent of the first grade
teachers in Baltimore, the Baltimore school district being our close,
very dear partners in our work, is that about 50 percent of first grade
teachers don\'t have the tools to organize the classroom. And when you
actually look at schools of education, they don\'t even require, it\'s
not required by NCADE, the accreditation nationally of schools of
education, and teachers have very little background. And about 50
percent do it, apparently, intuitively, and the other 50 percent don\'t.

Now imagine kids coming into first grade classrooms who are not very
well prepared to be students, or have some attentional difficulties, or
who haven\'t been socialized at home to be students. When a teacher says
sit still and pay attention, what happens? Chaos, so you end up about
eight or ten weeks later after random assignment, literally, of kids to
classrooms and teachers to this kind of condition or that, or standard
conditions, and about half the classrooms are chaotic. And it\'s out of
that chaotic half that you see an enormous amount of later problems, so
I\'m trying to illustrate two things. One is, how research can really
help tease out what the early risk factors, and what works and what
doesn\'t for which kids. But another issue is, schools of education
don\'t show up in these conversations. You go from one place to another,
one meeting to another with the National Prevention Coalition or what,
or Society for Prevention Research, and never hear about schools of
education, so what I\'m really concerned about is how we reach out and
integrate.

Student teachers get so little field experience before coming into a
first grade classroom, or any other classroom, it\'s incredible. As an
M.D., when I think back over 12 or 15 years of how people taught me how
to think about cardiovascular, or psychiatric, or whatever, it doesn\'t
make any sense. It\'s no easier to teach reading than it is to do
medicine. That\'s the facts. I know, because I\'ve been around medicine
all my life, and I\'ve been around classrooms all my life. It\'s a very
complex, highly precise process of instruction, and many school
districts don\'t have the coaches, or whatever.

I\'m raising the question in the context of a big speech, but I just
wondered whether you all could help enlighten us. I mean, surely, where
are schools of education in all this, where is teacher training?

MR. AKERS:  One of the biggest frustrations I had when I first started
my role as a director, I addressed all 29 deans of the colleges of
education in our state, and it was like I was slapping them in the face
saying that we really need - and I was being very diplomatic when I was
talking - have you all looked at having your secondary teachers
primarily given some kind of behavioral management class? Now your
elementary teachers in our state get it, but when I did a survey within
our state, and I had 80 percent return rate on this thing, those who
were in secondary education, only 15 percent of them had behavioral
management classes taught to them by the colleges, and those are the
people who were leaning over into the special education areas. And I
have 35 years into this, and I don\'t have a doctorate in this, but I
have 60 years above my Master\'s degree, and I had never had the first
class on how to sit across the table from a kid, or how to handle the
angry parent coming in, and how to deal with these issues on
de-escalation. Fast forward 30 years later and Jon Robert Akers, Jr.
sitting over there at Woodford County High School never had the first
class. You would think 30 years later he would have had something like
that. And fine institutions, all governed by NCADE and Southern
Association, and all the associations that go along with this, I think
the deans of colleges of education need to have a freshen up and say
let\'s take a peak at this, like Ed says, the times have changed. And
the kids today aren\'t fearful of a call coming home from a teacher. And
I\'m sure us boomers in here remember those days when we didn\'t want to
have anybody call home on us.

MS. ALLEN:  Perhaps one of the players who should be at the table then
would be post-secondary education, as well represented, especially with
regard to the colleges of education, that could be a recommendation,
because it is very difficult to get into the colleges, and to change,
because you can say, for example, Florida requires that they have
discipline in their curriculum, but what does that mean? It\'s embedded,
so does that mean that they get it for 15 minutes in one of their
classes? I mean, what does it really mean?

I know for us, we went ahead with the Positive Behavior Support System,
we went ahead and looked at two districts, a small district and a large
district, to have them implement Positive Behavior Support in their
schools to manage their discipline issues, and we\'re getting the
results back this summer. And I know because they\'ve used it in ESE
classes, that they\'re going to see great reductions in discipline
referrals in those schools. We know it from what we\'ve seen in previous
schools in Florida that have implemented it, and that\'s school-wide
approach to discipline. It\'s not just discipline in one classroom, but
that everybody in that whole school has the same concept as to what
tardy means, what it means to \-- as you were talking about, the
different language in school, that everyone is on the same page with it,
from the principal, to the teacher, to the student, but that it\'s
school-wide, and it\'s not just in one classroom. So tardy means to Mrs.
Jones after the bell rings you\'re sitting in your seat, whereas, tardy
means to Mr. Allen, you\'re walking in the door. And that\'s just a
little basic example of getting kids to honor school rules, but it will
be really interesting to see the data that we get from the two projects
that we\'ve done for discipline.

DR. LONG:  Let\'s go Donni, then Russell, and we\'ll wrap-up.

MS. LeBOUEF:  Throughout the day they\'ve been talking about training,
and you all have talked about it on your panel and your presentations
were so wonderful all day, but when you said sometimes training cannot
be, except within the union guidelines, and I was wondering how you got
around training, because so many of the issues we\'ve spoken about today
were about keeping teachers on the cutting edge of what\'s happening
with all of these issues, so I don\'t know who would like to talk about
that.

MR. RAY:  It\'S interesting. We just went through some negotiations on a
union contract that dealt primarily around responsibilities of teachers
during an event, that they ask for the training so that they could be
more proactive in dealing with some of the issues. In the past, we\'ve
said teachers, you know, if you see a fight break out, dive in. Now
we\'re saying teacher, if you see a fight break out, don\'t. And the
unions are saying we don\'t pay our teachers to be enforcement officers,
but we just negotiated, I think it\'ll come up in the start of the
second semester this year, where we will actually go out and do some
restraint training, some other programs with the teachers, not all of
them, but the teachers that want to accept it, on how to protect
themselves, and how to deal with those moderately violent issues that
take place. It took a lot of negotiation with the contract with the
union to sit down and say look, we will teach you what you need to know,
but you need to tell us what it is you need to know, and why you need to
know it. And we found them to be very receptive, at least at the onset.

MS. LeBOEUF:  Thank you.

DR. LONG:  That was not done on purpose, Russell, I assure you.

DR. JONES:  (Off mic.) I have a question and a comment. What percentage
of the monies that you guys have gotten come from the Department of
Education?

MR. RAY:  Aside from the ERCM grants, less than 5 percent.

MS. ALLEN:  And with regard to the funding of our office, 100 percent
\-- well, of course, you know 20 percent goes to the Governor\'s office.
We get 80 percent, and of that 80 percent, 93 percent goes to our LEAs,
but our funding is totally from Title 4, but as I mentioned, with our
collaborations that we bring in other funds, but our office funding is
totally our Title 4 funds.

MR. AKERS:  Are you talking about the U.S. Department of Education \-- 

DR. JONES:  Yes.

MR. AKERS:  Okay. U.S. Department of Education, we get none, other than
grants that have come to us to administer, such as the Community Service
Work Project. As far as the functionality of our group, we\'re totally
state money.

MS. TIMMONS:  And in Oklahoma, our department within the State
Department is 100 percent funded by second \-- 

(Off mic comment.)

DR. LONG:  Thank you. Good question, good answer, and I appreciate that
metaphor. As we wrap-up today, first of all, I think to remind all of us
that we\'ve heard from folks, experts from all over this wonderful
country. And these folks came from Florida, to Washington, from
California to Colorado, and Kentucky, to Oklahoma, so we heard from all
over this great nation, and from really some great experts.

I do keep track of things, also, and I just changed it here, but 85
percent of our panelists, and I did have 75 percent of our committee
members, but then Shep said it, and then Donni just said it, so I had to
change it to also 85 percent of our committee members that at least one
time today said \"you all\". Where I come from, see, I can\'t even say
it. But I want to, in closing for this panel, want to thank all the
gimbals. I think your start of that. You do some things for our children
that we know are necessary for them to learn, and sometimes not
appreciated enough. So I want to say for all of us sitting here, thank
you for what you do for our children, thank God for what you do to keep
them safe. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

DR. LONG:  And as we wrap-up the day as a committee, a reminder that we
start tomorrow morning 8:00 to 8:30 for the breakfast, and then 8:30 in
this room, so 8 to 8:30, Continental breakfast, and then 8:30 in this
room. And, Debbie, would you address, if you would, and I just mentioned
this, about the public comment section that will be here tomorrow, but
also ways that folks across this country, if they wish to give some form
of public comment, could get to that.

MS. PRICE:  Sure. Obviously, most of the world doesn\'t read the
*Federal Register*, but it is in the *Federal Register Notice*, and
we\'ll put it in the *Federal Register Notice* for each meeting.
Tomorrow we\'ll have a public comment period. People will come,
basically first come/first serve. They can speak up to five minutes, but
we would prefer they keep it shorter, around the three or so minute time
period. We have allotted from 8:40 to 9:15 for that, which seems like a
small amount of time, but we didn\'t get any requests for speaking from
the *Federal Register Notice*, so we may have some in the morning. And
they would be able to come and speak, and give their comments, and then
we will just move on to the next person. There won\'t be a question and
answer time following their comments.

If we don\'t use all that time, that time just rolls over into working
time for the committee, so we have from, like I said, 8:40 to 9:15. And
if people would like to provide any additional information, even our
panelists today, or anyone in the public, anyone who\'s working in the
areas of Safe and Drug Free Schools, there\'s not a parameter about who
you need to be. But we have the Safe and Drug Free Schools, we have an
email address specifically for this committee, which is osdfsc@ed.gov.
Well, I have to apologize for having an O in the beginning of it,
because I\'m so used to doing Office of Safe and Drug Free School, I
stuck an O in the beginning of it. It wasn\'t until about four weeks
after it was up, and I thought why did I even put the O on? It didn\'t
need the O, so it\'s OS - Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities
Advisory Committee, osdfsc@ed.gov. So that is our email address. It is
posted in the *Federal Register*. Anyone who wants to send anything, any
comments to the committee can send it to that email address, and we will
get those out to all the members of the advisory committee. So, for
example, if someone had - I think Chris Ringwalt mentioned his study, if
you wanted to send a cite for that, we can get it out, so we\'ll get
that all out.

We also \-- our website is live. If you go on to the Department of Ed\'s
website and click on offices, and ignore when it comes up and continue,
underneath offices you\'ll see boards and commissions, if you click on
there, then you\'ll be able to see our website for our committee. And we
will post the presentations from today, we\'ll post on there, we\'ll
post information on there, as well. PARTICIPANT:  And the website
address, please?

MS. PRICE:  Well, the Department of Ed\'s website is ed.gov, that\'s all
you need is ed.gov. But to run it through to get to our advisory
committee, it\'s best to just click on offices, click on boards and
commission, and you\'ll see us there. In the *Federal Register Notice*
we\'ll put everything, but anyway, so is that helpful to everybody? I
think everybody but one person will be here, so it\'ll be fine. I tell
you what, if you leave your notebook here, if you could put, let\'s say
put your name or tag here, because we may have to move them into another
office overnight. I don\'t know if we can physically leave them in this
office, in this room, but we\'ll find out. We\'ve got it in the morning,
so I don\'t think it should be a problem. The logistics for tomorrow are
identical to today, getting food over there, and then meeting in here.
And we moved it up a half hour so that you could get out of town, for
those of you who need to catch flights, a little earlier.

DR. LONG:  As we close, I think it\'s straight up on 5:00. That\'s when
we said, and I want to say that as a way of thanking you for what I
thought was an excellent day. You had some outstanding questions. I
think we learned a lot. Tomorrow we\'ll start to put it together, so I
would say to you, excellent job, have a great evening.

(Whereupon, the proceedings went off the record at 5:02:11 p.m.)