Safe School: Moving Beyond Crime Prevention to School Empowerment (From School Violence Intervention: A Practical Handbook, P 236-264, 1997, Arnold P. Goldstein and Jane Close Conoley, eds. - See NCJ-169051)

• NCJ Number: 169063
• Author(s): G M Morrison; M J Furlong; R L Morrison
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 29 pages
• Sale Source: Guilford Publications, Inc.
• Publication Type: Report (Technical Assistance)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

School safety is discussed in terms of its importance, the need to reframe the issue of school violence into one of school safety, a recommended planning process that includes typical steps toward crime prevention and school safety, and the relationship of these steps to methods of whole-school empowerment and change.

Abstract

School safety is an educational issue because safety at school is an educational right as well as a need related to educational outcomes. Safety includes not only the freedom from both physical and psychological danger, harm, or loss as well as freedom from anxiety about danger or risk. This expanded concept of safety is similar to the concept of developmental risk and resilience; resilience concepts provide a useful framework from which to work on providing safety settings in which learning can take place. Creating safe schools requires change in the context of a wider effort toward school reform. Change involves the cooperation and participation of all educators and requires a unifying theme, leadership, collaboration and team building, and the development of skills and practices. The steps involved in a school safety planning model are (1) getting started, (2) working collaboratively, (3) creating a vision, (4) collecting data, (5) determining needs, (6) selecting actions, (7) writing the plan, and (8) ensuring success by keeping standards high and continually searching for ways to improve. Tables and 76 references