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County-Wide Initiative Aims for Violence-Free Schools
Skagit County, Washington may be known for raising tulips, but if a group of educators has its way, the community will also be known for its ability to raise and nurture children in an environment free from violence. Committee for Children’s SECOND STEP curriculum will play a role in achieving this goal. Through the leadership of the Northwest Educational Service District (ESD 189) and its prevention center, Skagit County has embarked on a three-year initiative to create violence-free schools and communities. The initiative is funded by a $7.5 million federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) grant.
The initiative’s six strategies focus on decreasing risk factors and increasing protective factors that affect the county’s 27,000 children in order to curb the county’s higher-than-average incidences of youth violence, juvenile arrests, and alcohol use. Its partners include Skagit County’s law enforcement and social-services agencies, school districts, community coalitions, community centers, the Skagit County Public Health Department, early learning and childcare providers, Skagit Valley College, and the Skagit County Children’s Council.
County-wide implementation of the SECOND STEP program in Head Start programs, childcare centers, and other pre-kindergarten programs—in English and Spanish—is a key objective of the program.
The initiative anticipates that by 2008, center-base providers and family child-care providers; Head Start teachers and support staff; classroom special-education teachers; instructional assistants; and YMCA early-learning program providers will present the program in more than 150 early childhood classrooms.
The grant will enable the county to enhance the current ten-hour annual training requirement for childcare providers and address the need to promote literacy and social and emotional skill development.
“State resources for quality improvement funds for child care providers were virtually eliminated in 2002,” according to Linda Nelson, SS/HS grant coordinator. “According to our child care licensors, many early childhood caregivers lack the resources to effectively identify children at potential risk of antisocial behavior and then provide them with skills to enable them to avoid problems as they grow up."
Nelson points out that, as an “economically distressed area, Skagit County’s challenges to ensuring safe and violence-free schools and communities can be linked to its poor socioeconomic status and its communities’ geographic isolation.” Nearly 20 percent of Skagit County children under age five live below the poverty level.
Statistics for Skagit County school-age children are just as sobering:
- Nearly half qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.
- Nearly eight percent are from migrant families.
- The incidence of violent crimes committed by youth is higher than the state average, and the incidence of juvenile property crime is eight times higher than the national average.
In the future, Nelson hopes to expand the SECOND STEP curriculum to kindergarteners through third graders in the county’s seven school districts. “It will be important to build on the early lessons in empathy, impulse control and problem-solving, and anger management that they will receive as preschoolers,” she said.