do to ensure our children’s safety in school. We must encourage the staff and parents to get involved. Parents can volunteer as monitors and teachers’ aides. Youth are less likely to misbehave or engage in violent acts if parents from their neighborhood are highly visible on a daily basis at their school. The community can also encourage the school to set up counseling programs and conflict resolution programs if it does not already have them. The school can also set up classes for parents to teach them effective parenting skills, vocational training, and the opportunity to earn their GED in the case that they never graduated high school. Some school communities have established tutoring and mentor programs for those students with students lacking a “significant adult” in their lives. These tutors and mentors consist of volunteers from local businesses, colleges and universities, churches and retiree organizations.It is not only the community and the school who have to get involved in order to make a real change. At the 1998 White House Conference on School Safety, President Clinton announced a series of new initiatives in dealing with school violence. In one of the initiatives, President Clinton proposed a $12 million School Emergency Response to Violence to help schools and local communities respond to school- related violent deaths. The president also announced a new $65 million initiative to hire up to 2,000 community police and resource officers to assist the estimated 10 percent of schools with serious crime problems. He also announced plans to reform the Safe and Drug –Free Schools Program. Hopefully these initiatives will be put in effect soon, and hopefully they will work. Whatever they decide to do better get done quickly before it gets any worse....
