A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

"Safe Schools/Healthy Students"
St. Paul, MN

The City of Saint Paul is a designated Enterprise Community in Minnesota and is one of the fastest growing urban districts in the country. The school district serves 44,818 K-12 students of diverse backgrounds. Thirty-six percent of students speak a language other than English. Six out of ten students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches. Low achievement, high truancy and suspension rates, intergenerational conflict, and involved in gangs and juvenile crime characterize the risks faced by many children in the school district. The program will be implemented in the East Side of St. Paul, one of three hot spots in the City for juvenile crime. Middle schools have been chosen for project implementation.

The primary partners have been engaged in a Safe School/Health Students Interagency Agreement since May 1999, along with the Ramsey County Mental Health Center. They will collaborate with Big Brother/Big Sisters and the Youth Services Bureau.

This project will enhance early childhood activities that exist for family education, learning readiness, and to establish safe spaces in public institutions. It will implement preventative peaceful parenting practice policies in all early childhood centers and will provide home visits by a mental health professional for children being assessed for early childhood special education. On site mental health services for students and parents will be provided and will include referrals to community health providers and follow up. The project will also create model resource programs in suspension, mentoring, a violence prevention curriculum, and expanded community participation in five schools. Comprehensive school-based mental health services in 3 middle and 2 elementary schools will work to reduce violence and suicide by promoting positive mental health. Process mapping tasks will be undertaken to evaluate existing safe school policies and identify gaps to meet overall objectives of student safety and health. Project staff will develop and deliver a new teacher training curriculum on student diversity and classroom instructional strategies that enhance student engagement and use behavioral management principles and practices. An overall district planning and implementation component will support school security.

The project evaluation will be conducted by the Wilder Research Center, an arm of the Foundation. The evaluation design for this project will include summative outcome data collected directly from participants and the school, law enforcement and juvenile justice record systems. Activities will also be evaluated using formative measures.

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