# Presentation: 329182

## IMPROVING SAFETY AT HIGHEST-RISKSCHOOL SITES

- Meredith Rolfe
- California Department of Education
- Safe and Healthy Kids Program Office
- October 23, 2006

## “Persistently Dangerous” School Identification: California’s Experience

- CDE assembled a PDS Advisory Committee in March 2002
- 20 randomly selected large and small, rural and urban LEAs
- Also included legislative staff, Governor’s staff, Office of the Attorney General, and staff from several CDE offices

## Advisory Committee Process

- The committee began with a clean slate – all ideas considered
- Goal was to develop policy, to define “persistently dangerous”, and to identify implementation issues

## Policy DecisionsOF PDS Committee

- The committee believed that the process:
- Must improve safety at the highest-risk school sites – not just ID them
- Must use objective data
- Should use existing data if possible
- The committee also decided that:
- “Persistent” means repeated over time – more than one year

## California State Board of Education PDS Definition

- Uses existing expulsion data for the most serious offenses, plus non-student gun violations
- To be considered a PDS:
- Must have high rates for three consecutive years
- Must have more than 1% of students expelled for these offenses

## PDS Offenses

- Causing serious injury
- Robbery/extortion
- Assault/battery v. school employee
- Sexual assault or battery
- Firearm violation

- Selling a controlled substance
- Possessing explosive
- Non-student firearm violation
- Brandishing knife
- Hate violence

## PDS Implementation Lessons Learned

**“****Hard” data isn’t hard**
- Schools with high rates can be safe
- Schools with low rates can be dangerous
- Schools with low rates may have fear
- Identifying sites based on incident data alone is unfair

## More Lessons Learned

- Some feel that it is not statistics, but the absence of a good safe school plan or program that indicates high risk
- The label “Persistently Dangerous” is so emotionally loaded that it defeats the program’s purpose

## Implications for the Future

- The goal of any future program should be to IMPROVE SAFETY at highest-risk sites
- Any program which simply identifies or labels schools as dangerous, without helping schools improve, will not improve safety, and
- Will not necessarily identify highest-risk sites

## Improving Highest Risk School Sites

- Resources for improvement a must, or schools will avoid the label, rather than dealing with the problem
- All-day law enforcement presence, plus a long-term prevention program, costs about $180,000 per site per year

## Alternatives for IdentifyingSchool Sites

- There are many possible ways to identify sites, but no process will result in a positive outcome unless LEAs are convinced that the process will benefit them and their students.
- Any process must be initiated with a campaign to ensure the support of LEA administrators

## Gaining the Support ofLEA Administrators

- State Superintendent should emphasize importance in public campaign
- Education of each LEA administrator on students’ perceptions in that LEA
- Workshops on the connection between perceptions of safety, other protective factors, and success in learning
- Once there is local support, there are a number of alternatives for implementing a program. Three possibilities follow.

## Alternative Onefor Identifying Sites 

- Require each LEA to nominate one site, or 2% of it’s sites, as the highest priority school safety site(s)
- Nominated sites with lowest student perception of safety at school would receive a grant to improve school safety
- Call the grant recipients “high priority” school safety sites

## Alternative Two 

- Use local “hard” data, plus local knowledge of the schools to interpret the data
- Identify 1% of sites using state data
- Have a grant application process
- Only sites identified as part of the 1% would be qualified to apply for the grant

## Alternative Three

- Use an anonymous survey seeking student perceptions of safety
- Not subject to as much reporting bias as incident data
- Perceptions don’t always reflect reality - use in combination with other information
- Should be a standard survey nationwide

## Recommendations forReauthorization

- Reauthorization should mandate identification of “high priority” school safety sites, and provide funds.
- No identification of school sites should be required unless they are given funds or another positive incentive.
- Title IV funding must be retained, or their is no point in talking about improving school safety.