From the Field: Expanding Student Support and Community Partnerships

Recommended Citation

National Center for School Safety. (2026). From the Field: Building Capacity and Collaboration for Safer Schools [Video].

Transcript

Brent Miller: Hi, everyone. Welcome to today’s panel discussion. My name is Brent Miller. I’m the training manager here at the National Center for School Safety. The National Center for School Safety is the STOP School Violence Program’s national training and technical assistance center. We’re housed at the University of Michigan. We’re funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The NCSS is a multidisciplinary, multi institutional team. We’re focused on improving school safety by convening leaders in prevention, response, recovery, and other subfields of school safety. You can learn much, much more about us at nc2s.org. Today we’re really excited. We have three STOP School Violence grantees joining us to discuss their work and share some successes. We also have an internal audience of NCSS staff joining us. So each grantee will have about 15 minutes to share. We’ll make time at the end of the recording today to answer audience questions. So to kick things off with the city of Melrose, Emily, would you mind introducing yourself, your work, and then talking about what’s been successful for you guys?

Emily Hatchouel: Yeah. Thank you. So I’m Emily Hatchouel. I’m the public health specialist for the City of Melrose, Massachusetts. We’re located just outside of Boston for our grant. It’s actually a regional grant, so we cover Melrose, Wakefield and Stoneham or three bordering communities. And we have a lot of shared programs. So it just made sense for us to combine and do a few more shared programs. One of the main things we were able to do with this funding is each community hired an adjustment counselor that was district wide that could work on cases in the school and on issues around healthy relationships, bullying, cyberbullying. So there’s really a focus on those topics for this specific counselor. And that’s really one of the success stories that we have are the counselors in the school. It took a little bit to get our footing and trying to figure out the process, but realizing that each community had different needs was really important for us. And not every community can’t model the position the same. So each community, even though the counselor was working on the same issues, they had different processes for referrals, for different programmings that they were doing and just how they were splitting up the time between like a middle school, high school, elementary school within each community.

So that was a really huge thing for us to realize that, that not every community will be the same. And I think that’s a success for us because often, like you think, like, rinse, repeat, like, you don’t need to necessarily reinvent the wheel. And even though we didn’t reinvent the wheel, we knew that there were details that we needed to reinvent per community. So that was really helpful for us. We also were able to fund training for staff members in each community as well as for students. And this has been really great. And another thing where we learned that each community may not want the same trainings. So Stoneham was able to do Responsive Classroom training. They did district wide training, train administration, teachers, school staff, and that worked for them. Whereas Melrose decided to do the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program and pilot it in their middle school. So that was really successful for Melrose specifically. And then Wakefield did a lot of restorative practice work and started bringing more restorative work to starting at the middle school level. So that was really another piece of that component where we realized that each community can come together and share ideas, but they’re not all necessarily gonna need and wanna do the same programming.

But another thing that was really great about that was even though each community did different programmings, there were a few people in Wakefield that were interested in learning more about Responsive Classroom. So they were actually able to hop over and do some of the trainings with Stoneham and learn more about the programming. And that was really cool for us. Just because they wanted to learn more and Stoneham was ready and willing to let them come in and do that programming. We actually also had the same situation with the student programming that we did. Wakefield actually started a specific student programming and brought the idea to Stoneham. And the second year they were able to collaborate on this student programming and do it in Stoneham and Wakefield and share the resources, which was also really helpful because you know, that also helps with cost when they’re sharing the resources. So that’s another really great component about them kind of working together and sharing those resources. Another thing that we are able to bring to our communities is boosting healthy relationship programming. Specifically we did this in Melrose and Stoneham. Melrose has had a long standing 8th grade healthy relationship programming that we were able to actually help fund an elementary school level program that they were able to do elementary school.

They did a few different grades throughout the life of the grant. And then this program was actually brought to the Stoneham schools. And we were able to partner with some of our local agencies like Melrose has Melrose Alliance Against Violence and Stoneham has Stoneham Alliance Against Violence. And they do a lot of that healthy relationship work and domestic violence work. So that was a great partnership for us. And they had also already had a relationship with the schools. So it made sense that we could help boost their relationship and boost these programs, which has been great. Another thing that we did is quarterly, we had meetings where all three communities would come together. So monthly, I would meet individually with each community to see where they stood, see what programs were going well, what they needed help with. But each quarter we came together, all three communities, and that way, even though they were doing kind of different programming and had different ideas, they could share their ideas together and see if there’s anything of interest that the other communities wanted to do. And it really helped also build relationships between the three schools. And between me and my counterparts in Wakefield and Stoneham were also involved in these conversations, which has been great relationship building for us.

So that was a really great component of this grant and getting everybody in the same room. We actually had a few different ideas go back and forth. That’s how one of the ideas, the student programming at Wakefield, actually ended up being a collaboration with Stoneham, because we were able to have these regional meetings where everybody could be involved and talk about different ideas and programmings that they wanted to do. And another thing that I really tried to focus on was communities taking the lead. Like, I’m here to guide and give suggestions. Also shout out to Melissa, who is my TA, who has been ridiculously helpful during the last three and a half years, helping me with programming and coming up with ideas as well. So I would bring these ideas to each community, and they would kind of hone them and decide what they want, because they’re the ones who know what they need. They’re the experts in their school and their community. So we were really excited when, like, they did kind of take the reins. Like, I found my lead person in each community that took the reins, and I was able to provide them with what they needed, but they were able to take it to the next step and implement the programming within the schools, which is something that, as somebody who is outside of the school system, is really important having a lead in the schools that can take these programs to the next level.

So that was really big for us, is just kind of letting them take that lead and letting them jump into these programs and sharing the ideas that I’ve had, but also listening to their ideas. So having those key personnel was really probably one of my biggest successes from this program, is just finding the people in each community that are passionate and want to do the work and are ready to do the work. And I was able to do that. And they kind of just took it and ran with it, which was huge, especially as there’s a lot going on. So I was able to find these champions to help me and assist me in this work. And another thing was learning to be flexible. This is a success story, probably for myself more than anything, like, going into this and being like, okay, we’re going to do this, this, this, and this, and this is how it’s going to go, and this is what’s happening, and then realizing that not everything goes according to plan and that you need to be flexible and work with each community individually.

Because kind of my first thought going into this was all three communities will do the same things, will kind of build off each other. So realizing that each community needed different things was huge for me, and I think huge for them as well, because they didn’t necessarily want to do the same thing. So me pushing that on them was not helping build our relationship. So once I took that step back and realized we needed to be more flexible and have different programming, different communities, that was really big for us in opening the doors to finding those champions that I had talked about and just bringing as many programs to the three communities as possible. So that was another huge, thick component for me. And I’m trying to think… I think that’s about some of… That’s our major successes. So I don’t know if you want to open it up for questions specifically for me or we’re moving on to the next person.

Brent: Yeah, I was thinking we could get everyone kind of to share first just to make sure we have time for lots of questions. And I know I mentioned at the top for folks in the audience, the grantees in the room, like, you’re welcome to ask questions, too, when we get to that phase. So I hope things are kind of percolating, connections can be made. But, Emily, thank you so much for sharing. I heard so many themes that resonate with me personally, but also just like, as part of this work flexibility, adaptability, making sure people have agency in determining what works for them. I hear a lot of that on our… From our school safety specialist team about you guys. So, like, there you guys are the experts. And so to hear you kind of say that as well is really cool. So I really appreciate you sharing and I’m excited for questions in a little bit, but yeah. Emily, anything else you want to share before we move on to Spokane?

Emily: I don’t think so. Thank you for having me, though.

Brent Miller: Yeah, no, thanks for being here. All right, Millini, we are going to move on to you next. Spokane school district number 81. Would you mind introducing yourself and talking about your work and sharing your successes.

Millini Goodman: I’d love to, Brent. Thank you so much. Hi everyone, my name is Millini Goodman. I’m the district diversion liaison at Spokane Public Schools in Spokane, Washington. And I’m super excited to be here and be able to share about our project. So we funded a project called RISE, which stands for Restorative Interventions for Suspensions and Expulsions. And it’s a dual program that works as an in school diversion as well as a mentorship program. And it’s really aimed at preventing suspensions and expulsions and keeping youth engaged in school and coming to school, focusing on their attendance. And we’re really doing that through positive relationship building. Our district uses the tier model. So tier 1, tier 2, tier 3. And our program fits really nicely in with those students who need that additional connection and support. So looking at working with tier 2, tier 3 students, predominantly the RISE staff is really focused on working with the individual needs that not only the student has, but also their family has. We know that what students experience at home very often impacts their life at school. And so we want to make sure we’re providing that holistic approach to student, family and school community alike.

We kind of going back to that dual model. Our diversionary agreements are for discretionary discipline and is often when those agreements come into place or re entry from non discretionary discipline. So if they’ve been out of school for a bit of time and they’re reentering back into school, the administration of participating schools will send a referral or counselors of that school will send a referral saying we have this student or this family that we would like for you to meet with. We really feel like they could use some supports to be successful coming back to school. So we’ll sit down with them and kind of just get to know them, find out what’s going on for them and how can we bridge the gap between school and community resources to really set the student and this family up for the best success coming back. So again, that’s really highly individualized. We do look at resources like substance use, mental health support, but also community building too. We’ve found that if students are not feeling connected to their school or having a hard time coming to school, engaging in clubs or sports, or ways to kind of build friend groups, whether that’s with group mentoring or just one on one mentorship sessions, we’re really trying to kind of peel back the layers of where’s the disconnect for the student and how can we repair that so that they are successful?

So again, highly individualized agreements that we will draft and then we will share that with the administration of the school and let them know when that agreement has been successfully completed. Oftentimes that will come with ongoing mentorship support. Our program also offers mentorship support without those diversionary agreements for maybe students who are at risk of suspension. So we use the evidence based Check and Connect model where we’re reviewing course completion and grades and behavior and just providing that intentional rapport and building support with that student. Some other things that we have found to be really helpful is training our staff in restorative practices. Our staff is also trained in court processes such as the Becca and Truancy Child in Need of Services and At Risk Youth petitions. So just being able to help, again, bridge the community to the families. So we’re guiding them as to where they can get those forms, how they can fill that out, and then providing support at those Becca Truancy hearings. In our experience, that can be really daunting for families to have to go to court or for students to have to go to court. But having somebody who has built that rapport with them, being able to walk alongside them makes it a little less scary.

And we can kind of break down some of the myths that families often have. And we have seen a higher level engagement in those hearings when we are able to provide that support with students and families. Some other things that have worked really well for us is just relationship building, not only with students and families, but kind of getting the program off the ground. It took a lot of work to learn different school cultures. Kind of like Emily was saying, every place it works a little bit differently. So our staff trying to adjust to that, to find out where does our program fit in, getting to know everybody at the school, the referral process. And now that we’re a couple years into the grant, it has been so seamless this year, just knowing everybody and being able to get referrals directed to our mentors and being able to provide that support. And then also some of the families and students we’ve worked with we’ve had for a few years. So we have really strong connections with those families. So that if something does pop up, it makes it a lot easier to support them or to like, know what those needs are because there’s already that foundation of relationship there.

So lots of intentional relationship building and then also collaborating with community partners and just having an awareness of what is the availability for substance abuse services right now, what is the availability for this type of insurance at this mental health support. So trying to remove barriers, making things easier for families to get into services for their children, their students. So we spend a lot of time trying to just make that easier for them by making sure we’re educated in where the services are. Along with that is providing support at different meetings that different schools have. So some of the… We predominantly work in middle schools and also some high schools, but attending like student support meetings or multidisciplinary team meetings where they’re talking about students that oftentimes are involved in our program and just kind of hearing how that student’s doing in class or maybe some concerns that have come up for them. So when they’re meeting with their mentor that week, maybe they can touch base or just kind of have a little bit more insight on what they’re dealing with at home. So that has been really helpful. Just working collaboratively, excuse me, collaboratively with school in within different school systems and models.

We do a lot of goal setting with students and we try to have that really be a student centered element of our program where we may have a lot of goals for students, but we really want to hear what goals do students have for themselves and how can we help them meet those goals and how can we celebrate their successes along the way. So what we’ve learned is that sometimes I don’t want to pick on our middle schoolers, but sometimes middle schoolers may have really broad dreams and say I want this thing, but have a hard time breaking it down to what do I need to do today to make that dream happen. So we really do try to break things down into bite sized pieces and then celebrate those wins. We just finished up first semester and we had a first semester celebratory lunch where we celebrated all of our academic success students. So that was really great to be able to honor them in front of their peers. So lots of celebration and celebrating the little things. That has been really lovely. Some other things that we have found helpful is working with the National Center for School Safety.

Shout out to all of you for being so helpful and the guidance that you have on your website, just different resources focused on different topics, has been really helpful for our mentors. We had a loss of one of our students during the time of this grant and being able to access materials that specifically support how they can support themselves, how they can support students and the school community. And then working with our technical assistant specialists with that it was just super helpful. So I very much appreciate all of that support. Yeah, we are so fortunate to have a great team of mentors in our program. I was in a meeting yesterday where administration called one of our mentors magical and just said that her work with students has made such an improvement at their school. One of the students was highlighted at the school’s evening of excellence for such personal growth and has not had any suspension since working with our program. And we’ve partnered with substance use to get support for the student. So it’s really neat at this point to see some of these students who have worked with us for a few years excelling to such high levels and being recognized by their school.

That has been such a huge win and celebration for our program. The other thing I wanted to highlight too with this grant is being able to support schools ability and capacity to reduce violence without having to pay anything like out of their budget. So we’re a grant funded program. We can come in and take some of that burden off of them. But support during lunches, during hallway passes, we have our mentors out there who are checking in with students or saying hello. Even if it’s not specifically on their caseload. We’re still engaging and impacting the school and supporting them as a whole. So we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from school administration about how that’s been really helpful for them. We try to do a survey at the end of every year with our students to try to gauge was our program helpful for them, is there things that we can do to improve the program? And we have gotten such great feedback from our students and one had said that our program had saved her life. And so that’s just such a huge statement to hear and just kind of all touched our hearts of like this program is so meaningful and we’re so grateful to be able to do this work and walk alongside students to help them find their own success and keep them engaged in school. So I’m just obviously very excited about it, very excited to share about it today. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Brent: No, Millini, thank you. Yeah, again, so many really powerful themes and lessons I think to share with others doing this work, that relationship building and just getting to know the people you know in the community and in the room and who are the helpers and the students themselves. Like that sounds like such an important thread in what you were sharing. The training, the student empowerment, the goal setting. Love to hear that. Like that’s so great that that has been super effective. And yeah, working with middle schoolers doing that, I can imagine is really interesting. No, thank you so much for sharing. I’m sure I see the gears turning and our team and others about questions, so please hold, but we’ll get to questions in a moment. Millini, anything else you’d like to share before we move on?

Millini: No. Thank you so much.

Brent: Thank you. All right, last but certainly not least, we’ve got our City and County of San Francisco team here joining us. So I’m going to hand things over to you all to share… Introduce yourselves, share about your project and your successes.

Jasmine Dawson: Great. Thank you so much, Brent, for having us. I’m Jasmine Dawson. I’m with the Department of Children, Youth and their Families here in San Francisco City and County. And we are really excited to present today. I wanted to just lift up too that we started this model back in the fall of 2021. We were approached by our school district leadership and as well as our city leadership to support the campuses because we were seeing an uptick in violence, including guns on campus after the pandemic and schools were reopening. As you know, everyone knows our youth lost a lot of social, emotional, they lost a lot of time. And we needed to get them back acclimated to being in school and to really figure out ways to solve conflict. And so what we got together, we specifically were tasked to figure out how to support the students. And we reached out to one of the folks that work on our street at the time, worked on our street outreach team, who had a long history of working on school campuses. His name is Chico Wells. And we talked with him and a couple of other folks to just try to figure out what could we put in place to support our highest risk young people and really just decrease the violence on the campuses.

And we also enlisted the support of the National Institute for Criminal Justice and Reform to help us with some technical pieces. And what we were developing, which we didn’t know, was a coordinated incident response model that was going to be super helpful for the school district, city leadership, our enforcement partners, our transportation partners, you name it. And so luckily, the BJA funds came in and we were so happy to receive the BJA STOP grant because it allowed us to hire from our community based organizations, staff who could work as school violence interrupters, who basically serve as mentors with young people, help with conflict mediation, they offer case management, they do group work. So it was a really unique role. It wasn’t a role that was really created before the model started. And so we work with those different nonprofit agencies to help hire those staff. We also used our funds to help fund our technical assistance component and then also too, to fund some staff positions, because what we knew is that what we were creating and we need to be able to sustain it. And so the BJA funds helped us put positions in place both in the district and the city to help hold the model up.

It took a lot of work, though. Those are the technical things. Where the rubber hit the road was really with the trust and relationship building. Luckily for DCYF, we had a really good relationship with our CBO, our community based organization partners, and our school district partners, and our juvenile probation, which is the other team that works with us. We had individual great relationships with folks, but we didn’t have a situation where we need to put all of them together in a room. That’s where it got a little tricky because as you all know, you know, from a community based standpoint, they don’t know there’s not a lot of trust with law enforcement. And then there’s some sadness with the school district and history there. And so we had to really work hard on folks’s relationships with each other. We had to create spaces for them to build trust and see that, you know, actually, I’m your ally. We have the same goal in mind, but this is how our work is and this is how it looks. And so luckily, with a lot of work, and you’ll hear more from our team, a lot of work that became possible.

And we have really strong trust and really great relationship and we can just mobilize very quickly because we’re all working together. And the other way that we work together is through our regular meeting structure. That’s a big deal. As you can imagine, folks are super, super busy and folks that need to be able to make quick decisions are often the most busiest. And it’s hard to get them in the room to just meet on a regular cadence. And there’s all kinds of reasons why that’s important, but for us, it meant we had to create a structure where we had to make sure that everyone could come together at what I call our golden hour, our time where everyone stops what you’re doing and we talk about the work for the week, what does it look like on different campuses? And all of that’s very structured and technical, but really it was about creating that practice for folks to share information. And after the trust was built, folks were able to share information and we were able to put interventions in place. So creating that was really important and also to creating a structure to allow for feedback.

So we do surveys from folks after our trainings. We also… And you’ll need to hear more about that. And then we also meet on a weekly basis with the leadership of the school district because in our eyes, we’re a grant maker, we sit outside of the district. But we want to make sure that this is a model that the school district can use forever. And so that’s the goal there. And so we really wanted to make sure that we created something that worked for them and give them time to tell us, hey, this is where you guys got it wrong. This is what we need to make changes. And it’s a little bit of a dance, but that is the part of the relationship building and the trust building and then our ability to be able to just respond quickly. The other thing I want to lift up too is the commitment from the city leaders. Well, actually, I’ll just also mention that during our little four, almost five year run here, we’ve had a new mayor and a new superintendent and a lot of new Board of Ed and Board of Supervisors folks.

And San Francisco, we’re a very political city, as folks may know. So the tides can change. But what we’ve been able to do is stay steady with our model. And we’re active, we share a lot of data, so we are really dependable. And so when we’re called to hearings or things where city leaders need to know, hey, what’s going on? Is the violence up? We can actually respond pretty quickly with our work and our information. And then I’ll also just add too, that data is really at the center of what we do. Data and training. That’s really the heart of it. And so, you know, that’s really where we can maintain sustainability. And then to see the excitement. And again, you’ll hear more about that in a minute. The last thing I’ll lift up is we’re happy to say that we’ve grown our model from a pilot to a program and to now an initiative where we’ve gotten a lot of great recognition from city leaders and also from our school district around our work. And we’ve been able to mobilize really quickly around anything that needs to happen as it relates to youth and our youth that are impacted by our school district and have incidents where they are hurt or harmed.

And then we’ve also been able to really strengthen our relationship with our transportation system. So as you all know, in a major metropolitan city, a lot of stuff doesn’t just happen on the school campuses, they actually happen on the bus or at the bus stop. And so we’ve been able to really coordinate with a team there that is specifically folks that are hired from the community who also know those young people. And we’re able to like do a lot of teaming, a lot of coordination across the board and across the map for the city. And so that’s a huge thing that again, trust building, relationships and regular meeting cadence has made that happen. And so next I just want to pass it to two of my colleagues who are going to go up and just talk a little bit about the area where they are specifically working. And so next up is going to be Ryan Sapinoso. He’ll share more about our data and our trends and then our efforts around technical assistance and capacity building. And then we’ll close out with Simone, sharing of our engagement efforts and really our big highlights around our work on the different school campuses. So I’ll pass it to Ryan.

Ryan Sapinoso: Thanks, Jasmine. So, yeah, I’m just going to elaborate a little bit more and share some summary points and some successes around data and also our technical assistance. So in San Francisco, we’re really fortunate to have agreements in place that enable data sharing among DCYF, our school district, our juvenile probation department and our CBOs. I’m not going to like enumerate data items or topics that move through shared files or extracts or anything. I think the data discussion really presents another branch of what Jasmine was already describing regarding the city’s commitment to collaboration across our institutions. I mean, understanding that coordinating responses to different conflicts, incidents, threats, moments of student harm, etcetera, they require multiple layers of supportive services. So again, we’re just really thankful to all of our partners in the city who share that sensibility. And they don’t just coordinate the legwork of active responses to these conflicts, but they also regularly practice active communications about incidents and their contexts. So this means that we’re able to take moments to just pause, review, reflect and recalibrate from data as we learn. So I think that’s really like beyond collecting the data, it’s like, why do we collect the data?

It’s because we want to improve services. We want to improve how we can plan and coordinate our responses. So this is kind of like up in the clouds, but just a few light examples about what we’re talking about here. When we say the data allows us to do data based planning and decision making at a kind of practical and timely level, that’s really, again, taking to heart the nature of our school violence interrupters work as opposed to maybe data or like eval findings that inform bigger, broader policy agendas or budgets. So one example, our team here… Our multidisciplinary team includes roughly 20 to 25 school violence interrupters every year. But at San Francisco, there are 72 elementary schools, including K to 8, 13 middle schools, and 14 high schools. We mainly prioritize the middle school and high school grades. And that subset is still way more than just like 1 VI per site all day, every day. So there’s really necessarily a need to prioritize our efforts having data reports come in, incident reports come in from our VIs, from our school district partners, from JPD. They really help us move the conversation every year to prioritize annual coverage so we know which sites have significantly more activity or need more support requests that are being issued our way based, again, on what we hear from the folks who are out there in the field.

So it’s, you know, again, just a really practical level of using data that comes in to inform some pretty really effective coverage planning. Another example is that Jasmine already mentioned. We’re really fortunate that Jasmine and Simone have been nurturing an active communication and partnership with our colleagues at the Municipal Transit Agency, our MTA here in San Francisco. And we say this because, you know, we do get reports and discussion from our school VIs that just note floating patterns of incidents at specific transit stops, specific transit routes throughout the city. And as that information comes in from school VIs, we’re able to then relay it to our colleagues at MTA so that they can also deploy transit ambassadors to support youth and community safety as kind of like general monitors at those sites. So it’s again like that pipeline of information coming in that translates to us making, you know, specific actions that really support safety and presence out in the field. Another example is that school VIs will routinely recap incident contexts with our full teams, and we often prompt them to share what’s within means like reasonable about underlying conflict sources, you know, what are…

Who are additional students or campus relationships to track so that we can get ahead of potential escalations. What are observations about other relationship dynamics? And after observing a growing number of incidents related to specific topics or characteristics, we have nudged our CBOs to develop really structured group sessions at specific campuses that support youth in moving through whatever that subject matter or topic is in that moment for their own developmental moments. So, again, getting a little more concrete, more recently, we’ve been observing that there’s more serious fights happening between girls, girls like girl to girl. We’ve also been noticing and hearing back incidents that are focused on targeting Newcomer students. And again, just hearing these anecdotes and having them, you know, build up enough records from the field, CBOs have made moves toward just structuring group relationship building for girls, healthy community and supportive relationship development among Newcomer students at those pockets of campuses where we’ve kind of flagged those to be really serious cases. So these are just, you know, small, practical examples of what we mean when we talk about using data for learning and improving here. And I know that there’s also the angle of gauging if school VIs are making a difference at that broader scale of student experiences and school climates.

So thanks to data again that we’ve been able to compile, we’ve been able to observe and learn that year by year, school campuses continue to prompt responses and requests to VIs at really consistent rates. But at this point this year, midway through compared to midway through last year, we’re also noticing that again, with a stable level of requests and deployment of VIs, we’re seeing that there’s a decrease in high priority or higher severity incidents, which here in San Francisco, we’re translating to a few criteria, incidents that entail, like injuries or hospitalizations or those that are driven by groups of three or more youth, or incidents that involve allegations of weapons. So of all the different incidents that folks get called out for… That VIs get called out for, we’re glad to see that this particular subset is on the decline at this point in the school year. I think Simone’s gonna mention a couple of additional safety and school connectedness sentiments that are improving in a moment. But again, just noting that data is again supporting us in learning, calibrating and just recognizing that we are contributing to some positive changes out in the school.

And shifting over into training and learning, we also know if it doesn’t get scheduled, it doesn’t get done. And so as a data analyst for this team, I’m really thankful that for every major convening, every major moment of just reflection, training and partnership development, we also do really include a moment to share back this data with all the VIs, the program directors across our agencies, the senior leaders and at the school district, so that again, we can share our understanding of what’s happening and share our understanding of problems and share understanding of what needs to be done, share interpretations of problems, because we might dissect certain trends in different ways, right? So again, just thankful that that moment in space is really created to pay attention to the data that’s coming in from the field to strengthen shared understanding and shared response. On the training front… Yeah, so we also continue to schedule in data reflections at each training. But the fact that we’re just really continuing to commit time and space to training and learning activities has been a major factor to spotlight for success that I think we’ve been able to see in the city as well.

So Jasmine already mentioned our model taking anchor with Chico Wells, a long standing community leader deeply committed to keeping young folks safe and disrupting conflicts that could bring them harm. Riding back to days of him leading a program called Brothers Against Guns. And as DCYF worked to grow this initiative there was connecting Chico with other CBO leaders and also bringing in national subject matter experts from NICJR and NICJR really helped us build a foundational awareness of what school VIs’ professional duties, activities and skills consist of. And really again, just deeply ingrained that value of communication and coordination between agencies and between tiers and ranks within our own agencies. So we continue to hold these kind of like quarterly convenings of our full multidisciplinary teams. We also hold monthly convenings of all of our program directors and just multiple layers of engagements. But particularly when it comes to these quarterly trainings which take a full day of the full multidisciplinary team, we’re rolling with a pretty nicely established and well engaged agenda. There’s some key objectives that we retain for each day, which is really just building and strengthening relationships across organizations, providing and clarifying guidance from this project’s backbone institutions, meaning us at DCYF and also the school district and also presenting in the field VI staff with new understandings and skills to improve their abilities for handling day to day VI roles.

So the actual day of experiences, they’ll shift a bit each time. We aim to be responsive to feedback from our participants and emerging needs and topics that can pop up. But some examples of what these days look like will range from including guided breathwork for wellness. You know, like we’re recognizing that school VIs are responding to some tough situations and we want them to practice moments of pause and care. And we’ve also been facilitating or we’ve also included moments to facilitate group reflections on personal values or cultural definitions of respect. As you know, this varies across us as adults and it’s helpful for us to gauge that as adults where that then translates to young folks also having those shifts in perceptions lead to moments of conflict. We also include protocol presentations from folks like the district’s director of emergency planning. And for skill building, we’ve also had moments where we do things like facilitate scenario role plays of conflicts to de-escalate and then create moments for peer feedback to just share and again like reflect how some of that in the moment execution went and could potentially be adjusted. So from holding spaces like this on a really routine basis, we’ve been really observing deep growth in all of our partners, particularly among our school VIs across our different CBOs.

We’re seeing and really glad to see that there’s a really visible camaraderie and bond connected in the bond that’s kind of rooted in their connecting and sharing in their shared role. They have shared experiences on a day to day and they share that commitment and they have that care for the work and that care for each other. And as institutional leads, we at DCYF and the school district, we’re creating direct lines for feedback, understanding challenges in the field and we do sincerely try to work out solutions as we hear from our folks who are out there in the field. And as we’ve been noticing such really solid growth and expertise growing in our school VIs, we’ve also been pivoting a little bit more to give… To turn over spotlight, turn over the platform to them so that they can share the assets that they’ve built within themselves to their own peers. And that’s also been boosting a different level of just like peer to peer engagement, peer to peer interaction. I mean considering that these days are full days of training, strategy planning, data review. We just had one last week and we were just really glad to see that.

Yeah, we start the day with a data review and five, six hours later they are still raising hands, they’re still committed to learning, they’re still sharing questions, they’re being honest and sharing appreciations for each other and the full day of learning. These are some quick notes and summary spotlights from the data and ongoing training front and I’m now going to pass over to Simone.

Simone Combs: Great, thank you, Ryan. Well, hello everybody again, my name is Simone. I am responsible for the day to day operations of the San Francisco School Crisis Support Initiative which we’ve been talking about. You’ve heard a lot from Jasmine and Ryan already. Very strong start, very strong structures, strong data and training. And so much of this work really still is about just strengthening connections, strengthening kind of the culture around this work and just the shared purpose that we have across the different teams that are partnering with us and then also across the different school campuses that we’re supporting. So with that in mind, our Unity Day events are one of the key ways that we bring this commitment to life. So this year is officially going to be our third year hosting Unity Day events across a number of SFUSD high schools and middle schools. And each year the purpose around these events has stayed pretty consistent, which is really to create safe and supportive spaces where students can connect with resources, where they can build positive relationships. And generally these events are really focused on promoting peace and safety on school campuses. So when we first got started, you know, these events were really created as a direct response for the need.

There was just a big need for more like targeted community connected supports for young people, especially for those young folks who are navigating or involved or you know, impacted by conflict. So our initial goal with these particular events was really to drive actually deeper teaming between our school district, like wellness coordinators and counselors and our VI teams. So that was really the initial goal. But over time these events have really grown into like a signature part of the School Crisis Support Initiative. So they are a pretty major touch point where our organization, DCYF, SFUSD and then our community based organizations are really showing up together like super visible. And again, it’s really about reinforcing wellness and safety and respect, like all of those type of themes across school campuses. And so it’s a collaboration across the multidisciplinary team. DCYF and SFUSD have partnered with SFUSD’s wellness teams. There’s a community school team that we partner with. We do partner with counselors like I mentioned before. And then of course, you know, we’re partnering with our all star team of violence prevention and interruption CBOs. And I do want to take a moment to shout out who those CBOs are.

So we work with… These are all in San Francisco work with Community Youth Center, Roadmap to Peace, which is a program of Instituto Familiar de la Raza, the Samoan Community Development Center, our Street Violence Intervention Program known as SVIP. We partner with Urban Services, their Tailor Made program. We partner with UCSF Wraparound Project, which is a violence prevention piece that happens out of the hospital. And then an organization called the Young Community Developers. And so all of these organizations are experts in violence interruption and violence prevention. And so like I said, we’re in year three now of these events and definitely the interest and support for these events has grown. So we’re now seeing other city departments who are consistently expressing interest in tabling and participating. So we’re getting the Juvenile Probation Department, the DA’s office. We’ve had firefighters come table in the past. So there’s growing interest, school district leadership and all of that. So it’s definitely kind of growing. Even though the events are really focused, they’re for the kids and that particular school community. But it’s great to see the support growing. And so, and in addition to support, you know, this has also been a moment where our CBO partners are really increasingly being seen as youth violence, interruption and prevention experts.

So at this point, our Unity Days have reached thousands of students across nine different campuses. Once we’re through with this year’s events, I think it will be at 14 campuses. There’s been a diverse group of students that have participated and supported these events. And those students include young folks who have previously been involved in conflicts. Many of them actually were empowered through these events to serve as, like, youth event ambassadors. They helped plan the events, have helped promote those themes I was talking about around peace and understanding among their peers. And it’s really been a demonstration about, you know, when students are given a chance at leadership and a chance to play a positive role in their community, they many, many times do rise to the occasion. The feedback that we’ve gotten about these events has been overwhelmingly positive. We have many more sites who would love to have these events than we’re able to offer at this time. So they are pretty popular now. But one of the main points of feedback that we hear, actually, is that whether we’re talking to students, the administrators on campus, the teachers on campus, a lot of folks are saying that these events really made them feel more deeply connected to their school community.

So that’s been good. And, you know, Ryan was talking a lot about our data. That is really something that we prioritize. And even with these events, we have been able to see the impact reflected in our data. I won’t just say these events, but these events and the work of our violence interrupters. So, for example, last year, we saw a 7% increase in feelings of safety on campus and a 25% increase in the sense of belonging that our students felt on campus. And so these were, you know, these, this… That was significant for us. And this initiative was specifically named as a key contributor to that positive growth. So the other thing I wanted to also elevate is just the kind of intentional and special teaming that happens as a part of the work that we’re doing together. So one standout accomplishment for our team this year was actually the development of our SCSI violence interrupter jackets. So if you can imagine that, that meant that all seven VI teams agreed on one color, color, one design. You know, to get that agreement to happen actually was a big deal. So that was a big milestone that helped reinforce unity across the initiative.

And then also just practically like the jackets VIs do wear badges, identification, but you know, along with the jackets, now this really is helping ensure that our VIs are easily identifiable when they’re responding to incidents and supporting youth on campus. And it’s really just kind of having that level of standardization like visible has also helped us strengthen trust and recognition just across the board, whether it’s school staff, city partners, etcetera. So looking forward, you know, Unity events, we, we’re optimistic that they’ll continue to serve as a model of what we can, you know, the type of thing that we can build together. You know, these events are meeting like immediate youth needs, but we’re also layering in the foundation for like long term safety and well being. And so our goal is to continue deepening this work. We really want to bring in even more schools and partners and youth to do more events to continue creating safe and inclusive and supportive spaces across our city. And so they’re called Unity events for a reason. It’s not just the title. That really is the outcome that we’re going for and we’re committed to doing them each year. And I think I’m leaving it at that.

Brent: Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, again, lots of amazing work y’all are doing. Thank you so much for walking us through that. We just have a few minutes left for questions. I want to be respectful of everyone’s time, but do we have any questions for any of the panelists today?

Heather Murphy: Yes, sir. Emily, at the beginning you mentioned that you had, I think it was three different communities come together to support one grant initiative. And I was curious how you got buy in across different communities to come together and agree on one proposal and anything you would suggest to other grantees looking to collaborate within their region or networks.

Emily: Yeah, definitely. I am lucky in that our three communities actually have a shared health director. So that definitely does make a difference because he has a relationship with all three schools. But each health department has their own position that’s very similar to mine. So what I did is I reached out to those positions also for help in meeting with the three schools and the school district in Melrose at the time, which is one of our previous superintendents, also helped with some of the communication between the other two school districts as well, to help get them on board. So really it was a team effort in connecting with people in my position to reach out to the schools because they already had those relationships built within those school systems, whereas I didn’t have as much a relationship in Stoneham and Wakefield. So they were really able to assist in that piece of it, and that was really important for us. And they also helped build some of the programming out and get ideas from different community members. And they knew the needs of those specific communities that I might not have known.

So they were also helpful in bringing ideas to the communities as well, just knowing those communities a little better. So I think it speaks onto the fact that I not only found champions within the school, but within the city department, health departments as well, that were able to help foster that relationship with the schools that I wasn’t as familiar with and didn’t have that relationship with.

Brent: Thank you so much for sharing. Other questions.

Casey Kotrba: I have one. The first, like we had mentioned in the beginning, there was definitely a bit of a theme of like, individualized support and understanding what people needed. I wanted to ask, what was the structure or how did you get to discovering what the individual need was? Was it more conversations with one on one with people or conversations with leadership or surveys, data collections, stuff like that? It’s open to anybody too.

Jasmine: Yeah, I mean, I’m laughing, I’m looking at my team. It was a lot of conversations. We had to balance a lot of competing interests and desires and visions and whittle it down to be to get people to believe in the collective vision, which was, you know, ultimately we wanted to see a decrease in the violence on campus, but everyone approaches the work differently. And it took a lot of conversations. I mean, sometimes just to, you know, to show that a little bit behind the scenes. Sometimes I can have a conversation with someone and I can run to Simone or Ryan and say, hey, I need you all to talk to such and such and say this or find out this information so that we can basically learn from each other. Like sometimes people will reveal one element of something and then tell the other person something else. And you’re like, okay, so now how can we put this together? So it is a little bit of a dance. It’s a lot of conversations. There’s a lot of texting. It’s about a meeting. It’s a lot of affirmation. It’s a lot repeating of what I think you just said and what you want us to want us to do.

And then also too, and being transparent about our limitations because sometimes we just can’t do certain things and sometimes there’s like all these other bridges and blocks and things that stop us. And so being transparent about that, like, and saying, like, look, I really want to support you on this, but we can’t do this for a number of reasons. I can run through and tell you, or you can just like decide what you want to do with that information. So that I think that part… The trust building is important, but it is a little lot of conversation talking.

Brent Miller: Right. Thank you. I think, Melissa, this will be the last question. I’m happy to read it if that’s okay. So this one’s from Millini. Several stock grantees, you know, emphasize how crucial it is have to have real access to schools, time on the calendar, physical presence in the building, staff support to make these programs work. But buy in and getting that buy in is a struggle, especially when schools are already feeling overwhelmed or cautious. So, Millini, from your experience, I guess what strategies have been most effective in securing admin buy in and permission to work in schools? And how have you framed that work so leaders see it as aligned with their priorities rather than just one more thing?

Millini: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll try to answer this succinctly. So I think getting them to see the benefit that it has for the them, that we are not a program that is here to add more to their plate, but to take off of their plate and be able to help families connect with resources that can take a lot of time and energy, that we can be on board to help with them. And also improved behavior from students takes a lot off of their plate as well. So I think we’ve heard the phrase sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. And I feel like that kind of encompasses our program where you do need to spend some time figuring out what resources are appropriate, building those relationships, and then students can have that success down the road, which saves them a lot of time. So I think sharing those experiences and then also with administrators who embrace the program. We are not in every single school across the district. And as much as we would like to be, but some leadership is not at a point where they’re able to have capacity for that program or at a point to embrace that.

And that’s just the reality, and that’s okay. But where can we fit in? Where can we highlight how great this work is and how beneficial it is to not only students and families, but as well to administration? So I think it’s just those conversations, building that relationship and talking about our experience and what we have seen and why slowing down really does speed things up. I hope that answers your question, thanks.

Brent: Thank you. Thank you all for sharing your stories today. I think folks are going to get a lot out of this and you know, your lessons learned and kind of what’s working. I heard so many overlapping themes and important things for folks to consider, so we’re so excited to get this out to our audience. For those who are watching, please stay connected to us by visiting nc2s.org for additional success stories and resources. I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Thanks again.