If a school has a climate in which staff, students, and parents feel safe and welcome, victims of violence may find the healing process easier as the school reestablishes its supportive and secure atmosphere. The following are the major groups associated with successful school partnerships. They also have a responsibility to avoid becoming victims to the extent they are able, for example, by walking in groups and avoiding high-risk areas of the campus. To ensure student involvement, schools should encourage all students to participate in decisions about school safety and discipline procedures and see that student leaders are trained to represent their fellow students on these issues. Parent involvement in anti-violence efforts gives legitimacy to school strategies and demonstrates to students that schools and families will not tolerate violence.
Parents are more likely to get involved if they are invited to the school and made to feel welcome.
Security procedures at the school should be no more threatening to parents than they are to students. In planning activities and implementing strategies to reduce violence, schools should seek the assistance and expertise of other organizations. Too often, the comprehensive needs of children and youth go unmet due to a lack of interagency collaboration, and the blame for failure gets passed from one agency to another. For example, principals often blame the juvenile justice system for their problems with violent students but admit that they know little about the system, how it operates, or how to work with it. At the same time, law enforcement officials are frustrated by school policies that place disruptive youth out on the streets.