SAP Bulletin 13: School Violence

Student Assistance Programs: Helping to Close the Achievement Gap

Background

Students must feel safe and secure in order to achieve academic success. A student who feels unsafe at school is not open to learning. Instead, he/she is preoccupied with the need to feel safe, the need to belong, and the need to connect with others. Only once these needs are met, can a student begin to address the gaps in their academic achievement. Schools must attend to the safety of each student by creating a learning environment that is safe and free from violence.

To improve school safety, it is critical that schools work on creating a positive school climate, which is a state priority in the Local Control and Accountability Plan.

Too often school reform efforts fall short because they fail to address the context in which the curriculum and instruction are implemented. Not all students may be ready or able to learn, to benefit from improvements in instruction, because they don’t feel emotionally or physically safe at school; or they are hungry, worried, depressed, under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, or suffering from other nonacademic barriers that undermine the process of learning.

How Student Assistance Programs (SAPs) Can Help

• SAPs can assess the school environment and help schools understand whether students, parents/guardians, and staff feel safe at school.
• SAPs can improve school attendance and academic performance.
• SAPs can develop effective school-family-community partnerships to address the issues of bullying, internet safety, gangs, behavioral incidents, substance abuse, and school violence.
• SAPs can provide increased access to family services and support by creating and implementing a referral system. School violence is often a strong indicator of violence in the home and neighborhood; families need resources to assist them with addressing these issues.
• SAPs can provide parent education on topics such as gang prevention and intervention, teen dating violence, bullying, and internet safety.
• SAPs can also provide training for students and staff in the areas of school safety and crisis management (prevention, intervention, response, and recovery).

Additional Information

The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) is one tool that may be used to assess school climate. The CHKS is administered to students in grades five, seven, nine, and eleven, assessing student’s perception of school safety and climate. Schools can use their CHKS data to improve school safety, assess student’s barriers to learning, and promote resiliency and wellness among their students.

Statewide CHKS statistics show that:

• One-third of secondary students do not feel safe at school.
• Thirty to forty percent of secondary students were harassed or bullied at school.

One in five 7^th graders were afraid of being beaten up and seen a weapon on campus.