But no step on the road to community-based policing is likely to be easy. The chief will need strong community and City Council support for it to happen. The department is fortunate that the new officers it's recruiting have at least two years of college. Future recruitment and training will have to shun would-be macho crime fighters and focus on skills such as negotiation, mediation, communicating with neighborhood people and forging partnerships with residents and businesses. The answer's clearly yes.
Schools are the most visible public institutions in every neighborhood.
Historically, they've symbolized our commitment to a shared culture, to equality of opportunity. Schools come into daily contact with the children and families of the new demographics, the African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics who will comprise a growing share of the community's future workforce. And if one reads the report of the school board's Commission for Educational Excellence, written by a 26-member panel led by lawyer Sandy Kress, there's reason to be highly optimistic. But then the report goes further, saying site-based management is such a good idea that it should be expanded rapidly from the initial 10 pilot schools to encompass all DISD schools within four years. No concept in American education governance today packs a more powerful punch than school-based management.