Oak Park district takes proactive approach to school safety
Students are the first responders on the scene
By Sophia Fischer sfischer@theacorn.com

JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers A COMFORTABLE SETTING- Sixth-grade students, from left, Neil O'Bryan, Daniel Mindlin, Bryce Chrisakis and Grady Benson enjoy recess at Medea Creek Middle School in Oak Park. Safe campuses are a priority for the school district.

Part 1 of two parts

As school shootings continue to occur nationwide, Oak Park schools are taking decisive action, joining other campuses across the country to implement programs that might prevent such future tragedies.

Although Oak Park High School and Medea Creek Middle School already engage in peer counseling, mentoring, and conflict mediation, the administrators on both campuses are introducing a new round of efforts to create a secure school environment.

Through a program called Safe School Ambassadors, Oak Park students are being trained to identify bullies and prevent abuse among their peers.

"Students see, hear and know things that adults don't, and can intervene in ways adults can't," said Lou Tabone, chair of the school district's Safe and Healthy Kids Task Force. "Students are the first responders on the scenes of most incidents,"

Rough bullying rarely occurs on the local campuses, but there are still many other types of abuse to worry about, said Jay Greenlinger, Medea Creek dean.

"A lot of the mistreatment is emotional, psychological, which is easier to mask, harder to see. It's mostly teasing, putting down based on race or looks," Greenlinger said. "We can make all the rules we want but we can't be everywhere or see everything all the time."

The key to the ambassador program is to give students the power and the courage to speak up when necessary.

Greenlinger pointed to the recent shooting in Oxnard in which one classmate killed another.

"All the kids knew the one boy was going to kill the other because he had said he would. They didn't do anything because they were afraid," Greenlinger said. "We need to give kids a way to voice their concerns."

The students identified by staff as campus social group leaders are undergoing an intensive two-day training this week at the Oak Park Community Center. The goal is not to create a cadre of tattletales, Greenlinger said, but to teach students how to build a safe, positive campus environment.

"They're not really policemen, just noticing things going on in their peer group and learning how to redirect treatment," Greenlinger said. "This program meets the kids where they live. It's with their social group."

Most importantly, the students will be trained how to identify those risks that require immediate staff intervention.

"Our goal is to ignite the confidence in the bystanders of the student community, the silent but caring majority of students," said Randy McLelland, Oak Park High School counselor.

"This type of environment will support academic excellence, it will engage, empower, and equip all students to stand up and speak," McLelland said.

Born out of necessity

About 500 schools in the United States and Canada are participating in the ambassaador program, including Santa Susana High School in Simi Valley and Nordhoff High School.

But the program, which was piloted in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2000, shortly after the Columbine shootings in Colorado, had its shortcomings.

"It was an outside-in approach to school safety. The power of students was laregly ignored," said Chris Pack, program director for Community Matters, a Santa Rosa-based organization that runs Safe Schools Ambassadors nationwide.

Still, within six months of taking part in the ambassador program, the participating schools reported a 40 percent decrease in abusive incidents and a calmer, more positive campus climate, Pack said.

The program came to the attention of Oak Park through its Safe and Healthy Kids Task Force.

Comprised of teachers, parents, school counselors, students, and a member of the board of education, the task force identifies student health and safety issues and develops prevention and intervention strategies.

About a year ago, McLelland and fellow counselor Stewart McGugan visited Nordhoff to view the program in action. They were impressed, but realized that for their efforts to be effective locally they would have to include the middle school as well as the high school.

"We will . . . benefit from the fact that the kids will be graduating middle school and coming into the high school already pretrained," McLelland said.

The cost to provide materials, training and manpower for the Oak Park schools is $16,000 , but as Laurel Ford, the Oak Park school district director of instructional services, said, "The board, superintendent and school staff felt this program was essential."

Other approaches

Other initiatives at Oak Park and Medea Creek that are designed to promote "kindness on campus" include Rachel's Challenge Club. The four goals of the middle school club are to welcome new students, to support Medea's existing community service projects, to post positive cartoons and quotations on campus to counteract what Greenlinger calls negative or violent influences from television and video games, and to make a point of writing thank you notes to school cafeteria workers, crossing guards and other school personnel who may go unnoticed.

Medea Creek also has set up an e-mail alert service for students to anonymously report the dangers they see and the concerns they might have. Greenlinger admitted that an anonymous tip line can be misused, but said the school wants to be preventative rather than reactive.

"No one program will change school climate. We have to have a multi-pronged approach," Greenlinger said. "This will hopefully start a chain reaction at school and overflow into other aspects of life."

Part 2 next week: Is the effort working?