The Pittsburgh Public School District has claimed $3 million of $63 million being handed out Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice aimed and increasing school safety efforts nationwide. The grants come through the National Institute of Justice’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative.
“When we talk about school safety it is not simply the act of locking down schools,” said David Hickton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, who was on hand for the announcement of the grant. “It goes all the way to the core of the relationship that is started when a child first enters the building.”
The school district hopes to develop policies to improve perception of school safety, reduce the involvement of juvenile courts and the justice system in the schools, and reduce perceived gender and racial disparities when students are punished. It’s grant application carried the title: Pursuing Equitable Restorative Communities.
Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Linda Lane said too often students who get in trouble once begin to spin off in the wrong direction.
“This is looking at it differently to build relationship so that you are not getting kids in that cycle of suspension,” said Lane, who stressed the need to build relationships.
Lane admits that at times suspension is the only appropriate option, “but just suspension alone is not going to solve this problem.”
Along with stressing relationship building between staff and students the program proposed through the grant application will focus on student-to-student relationship building along with social norms.
“Just like they have to learn to read, just like they have to learn write, just like they have to learn to add and subtract, [children] also have to engage in social and emotional learning.”
The district will partner with the RAND Corporation to assess “restorative practices” aimed at improving the “safety climate” in the district’s schools. Improved student attendance will be among the key measurable outcomes of the program according to RAND.
A total of 50 schools across the district will be monitored in what has been described as a randomized, controlled trial.
