MILWAUKEE - Barbara Green sits between two teenagers who have been gossiping about one another and arguing in school hallways. The girls - defiant, puffed up with the pain of mistrust and flashing the stoic hostility of surviving the street - are enrolled in the Milwaukee Public Schools’ Violence Free Zone (VFZ) initiative.
The intervention and prevention program, created by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is now in 28 schools in seven cities nationwide, including Washington, but has seen rapid success and garnered national attention in Milwaukee, where it has cut youth crime, decreased suspensions and is helping kids improve in school.
On a rainy Friday morning, the girls have asked Miss Green, a youth adviser at the 1,150-student Custer High School, for mediation - a new method in place at their school that will resolve a simmering verbal dispute that has rankled their girlfriends and threatened to boil into something beyond teenage name-calling and telephone mischief.
Miss Green, minus any principal or teacher and acting as an adult referee of sorts, wants to forestall an in-school fight and teach the girls a lesson in dignity, showing them that problems can be discussed without anger - something many of those enrolled are not used to as they navigate adolescence amid poverty and the rough turf of their urban existence.
After hearing each of the girls out, she weighs in.
“You can’t bring what is going on at home as an excuse to behave badly in these hallways,” warns Miss Green, 42, a former gang member who once sold drugs but has turned her life around and now is acting as a de facto judge.
Like many of her fellow youth advisers, she came from the students’ world and carries enough credibility to make them listen - and hear. She knows they can do better, if they can remain strong. She provides the power of expectation.
“You kids have a lot on your plate because of your lifestyle, your environment,” Miss Green acknowledges softy, making eye contact with one girl long enough to draw tears.
“You know you are special and you do matter. You don’t have to carry this by yourself. Don’t keep it all bottled up.”
For many at Custer, she has become a mother, although she shies away from that distinction, allowing that few of her students have parents or adult figures in their lives whom they can trust not to let them down. She tries to discipline firmly but pump them up with encouragement.
“You are too good for this, you are beautiful girls, and whatever it is, it’s small and you can beat it,” Miss Green says, growing quiet as she allows her words - and the teens’ fractured emotions - to settle.
Eventually, they apologize and hug, leaving Miss Green feeling good about defusing the situation but knowing she has plenty more mediations ahead at the school where she is one of six VFZ youth advisers whose job is not only to enforce good behavior but also to help the teens excel academically.
Commitment and cost
Most advisers in the program do it because it’s personal, she confides: “I was a violent teenager, but when I was bad, nobody gave up on me.
“We’re all here just trying to get these kids off the streets and living a little longer,” she says later. “They are dying at a rapid pace in Milwaukee.”
Indeed, as in many urban areas around the nation, school crime was a rising problem for the 87,000-student district. According to reports released from the 2005-06 school year, Milwaukee police responded to more than 11,000 calls to public schools, a figure the police union president dubbed “shocking.”
In 2006, the district put into place its own Gang Intelligence Unit to educate parents and staff about gang membership. That same year, the district also began the Violence Free Zone program.
Today, that program has blossomed to more than 900 students and 53 youth advisers across seven high schools. And there’s solid evidence that it’s working.
According to data provided by the district and the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, violent incidents are down 23 percent and school suspensions have fallen 9 percent, a figure that provides positive affirmation that things are turning around.
Peace is not cheap. Cost for the program runs about $315,000 per year per school, but the district, buoyed by the early results, is committed to continuing it, says Kristi Cole, a veteran principal who oversees the program as head of Milwaukee Public Schools’ federally funded Safe Schools/Healthy Students program.
Money for the VFZ program comes from several sources, including the U.S. Department of Labor’s Futures First program, the Safe Schools/ Healthy Students initiative from the departments of Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services, and is supplemented through the support of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise and 11 Milwaukee philanthropies, she said.
“We would like to expand to one or two more large, comprehensive high schools in the fall,” Miss Cole said. “It will depend on money.”
Like others in her district, the hardworking Mrs. Cole is quick to say that the VFZ program is not a one-stop solution to solving youth violence problems. There are several other interventions in place that may have helped Milwaukee schools improve their record on student conduct, but thus far, its track record speaks for itself.
Superintendent William G. Andrekopoulos, who has been on the job at Milwaukee Public Schools since 2002, says he’s committed to the VFZ program “because it works.”
“Using community engagement and the support of key community organizations,” he says, “the program has proven to be a pro-active way to support the needs of young people in lieu of them getting trapped in the criminal justice system.”
How it works
Key to the Violence Free Zone initiative’s success is its youth advisers. In Milwaukee, they represent two community agencies with deep ties in the students’ neighborhoods - the Running Rebels Community Center and the Latino Community Center.
The VFZ program’s model leverages solid relationships already built by these centers with neighborhood children and carries that into the schools where, armed with the knowledge of a child’s home life and its challenges, they keep a personal eye on the youngster’s progress.
The advisers become a new layer of support in schools where they and other staff identify youngsters who may need extra attention. According to the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, about 10 percent of students in these schools are responsible for the bulk of disruptions and violence. The youth advisers go after them and ask them to join the program.
Says school board director Danny Goldberg, who represents the district that includes the Latino Community Center: “Youth advisers are the relationship experts and relationship builders. The rigor is up to the teachers.”
By turns, school administrators appreciate being able to focus more on educating and less on disciplining.
“I’m amazed at the feedback we are getting from principals, to hear them say that they won’t have these schools without it,” says Victor Barnett, founder of the Running Rebels Community Center. “It’s a perfect fit for what we do.”
Community center administrators selectively screen, hire and train the VFZ school advisers in coordination with school staff.
While some advisers have criminal backgrounds, they must have changed their lives enough to pass rigorous background checks. One new adviser this fall, for example, is a former member of the Latin Kings street gang. All must have a high school diploma, and they are encouraged to enter college and work on their degrees at night.
They arrive at school early and stay late, working in a supplemental role alongside school counselors, school police officers and teachers, keeping halls clear, attending sporting events and school activities, as well as working on homework and counseling youth in a program that targets both student troublemakers and also those who are leaders.
The job is not for the detached, program officials say. It is a personal and involved role, requiring in-home visits with often diffident parents, after-school trips into violent neighborhoods where they have sought peace with gang members, and one that often has advisers answering cell-phone cries for help in the middle of the night when students have no on else to turn to.
Advisers maintain detailed case files on their students’ behavior, their course work and their lives. The VFZ students must meet regularly with advisers who in turn offer them a safe place to go when they need help not only with school but also personal relationships. The mediation sessions help to work through disputes before they become violent, showing the kids that talk and understanding trump anger and bravado.
“We have so many issues out there, homelessness, violence, more kids than you can imagine who are living on their own,” says Custer High School Principal Kathy Bonds, adding that the advisers have changed life at her school.
“It’s heavy stuff, but this is a good situation,” she says of the program. “We’ve had mediations here with parents, kids with parents, parents with parents. It’s really opened up a conversation. The advisers let the kids know to come to them first before anything is about to jump off.”
Adds Stanley Cole, 44, a father of three who supervises the six advisers at Custer: “It’s been a remarkable change. There used to be a lot of gang fights here. But now, kids are saying ’I need mediation not revenge.’ That means they are looking at different ways to resolve their conflicts.”
Andre Robinson, who heads the VFZ advisers program from the Latino Community Center, says he usually knows right away if a new mentor is right for a school.
“Part of the interview is on the job,” says Mr. Robinson, a burly, street-smart youth activist who looks like an NFL tackle as he wanders through the hallways at James Madison High School where adults who know him call him Dre.
He cuts an imposing figure physically but is deeply serious about his mission - and his students.
“If I bring someone into my school and they don’t feel comfortable talking to kids, they don’t say hi, then I’m sure they aren’t right for this job. A part of the success of this is hiring the right people who can get in there and talk to students, find out what is going on. This is about establishing relationships. Many of the advisers have gone through the same things as our kids - they live in the neighborhood and they look like them - and this helps them to open up.”
Adds Roy Cambronero, a youth adviser at South Division High School who, at 20, looks more like a student than a school employee: “We have a lot of kids here who need to know that if they mess up, it’s not over, and just because they are growing up in the neighborhood, that doesn’t mean they can’t be successful. We have a lot of simple conversations every day so we give these kids someone to talk to. This has a huge effect, and creates a whole chain reaction of trust.”
Families also have been supportive and, by getting to know the adviser, have become more empowered to invest in their children’s education, Mr. Robinson said. They help add to the dialogue and create a united front for the students at school.
“It’s a solid relationship,” he says of the changes with parents since the VFZ program began. “The parents of some of these kids didn’t want to come in and talk to the principals by themselves. Now, they feel more comfortable with an adviser there. We have the safety, the social workers, the administrators, and we need the parents, too. Some of these kids look at us like parents - and that shouldn’t be.”
Expanding to other schools
The program in Milwaukee started two years ago with two pilot high schools. It expanded with four more schools a year later and then in February a seventh school. There was good reason for teachers, staff and parents to invest.
Milwaukee is a school-of-choice district, meaning families can choose which schools their students attend, regardless of where they live. If a school gets bad enough, and enough students leave, the school will be closed, leaving neighborhoods without a key anchor and headed for further decay.
Mr. Goldberg, the school board director, said the choice factor has forced them to be innovative and in return there have been measurable results, including fewer police calls. “If they don’t believe in the safety of a school, they won’t send their kids there,” he says.
While Milwaukee has shown early promise, the program is also in place in six other districts nationally: the District, Baltimore, Prince George’s County, Atlanta, Dallas and Antelope Valley, Calif., near Los Angeles.
Kwame T. Johnson, 25, the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise’s national VFZ project director, says the program was developed by founder Robert L. Woodson as a model for keeping peace in schools and local communities.
It began in the District in community centers about 10 years ago, and it remains in two D.C. schools, Anacostia High School and Johnson Junior High, reintstated by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.
While there is hope that the program in the District will improve student conduct as it has in Milwaukee, Mr. Johnson says the D.C. school district is fraught with administrative challenges that have made it difficult to see marked success there.
D.C. police have been helpful and supportive, Mr. Johnson says, but “the politics make it difficult. We call it an ’innovation no-zone.’”
Still, he says, there has been some progress. “When we first went into Anacostia High School, you had people coming in from outside the school and starting fights. You had 100 kids walking the hallways.”
Staff there said they could not focus on academics because they were forced to handle discipline problems constantly, he said. Neither Anacostia High nor Johnson Junior High had yearbooks, and Johnson had just one working water fountain, he said, noting that both have miles to go before real change can occur.
“The difference between Milwaukee and D.C. is we have a relationship with the school system” in Milwaukee, Mr. Johnson says candidly. “[Mr. Fenty] is trying to focus on schools, but you have layers of administration and there is no incentive to change. We understand that we are operating within a system. But if you don’t have buy-in from the top down, it’s very hard. We have always had support from teachers.”
In Prince George’s County, where the VFZ program has been in place for two years, the superintendent is supportive, but there are ongoing budget problems and it will likely be dropped if money can’t be raised to continue, Mr. Johnson said.
Milwaukee, he says, continues to set the bar for other cities because all of the pieces of support - financial, administrative and community - are in play and key players are committed to seeing it through.
Mr. Woodson, who created the Violence-Free Zone program, says it has been successful because it is specific to youth who come from troubled and often violent circumstances.
“Traditional programs of counseling and mentoring from well-intended outsiders don’t connect effectively. What kids need more than anything else is availability, and our youth advisers are available to kids 24-7,” he says.
“Most traditional professional therapists are not available at 12 on a Friday night,” says Mr. Woodson, who aims to expand the program to Omaha, Neb., and Richmond, Va. “We’ve had our youth advisers actually let kids come into their home when they found out they were homeless. The youth advisers are living proof to young people that the environment doesn’t have to change, and that a violence-filled, drug-infested neighborhood doesn’t mean that you have to be of it. The kids have hearts and eyes opened to examples. They are just living evidence to the kids every day.”
Mr. Goldberg and others in the Milwaukee school district agree that the program enjoys wide support from the top down. He dubs it a big “win” for Milwaukee, showing that the school system is willing to collaborate with local agencies and the community to broaden its outreach for students who struggle.
“Everybody here is on the same page,” he says. “This program says the students will be the solution to the issues inside and outside of a school. The genius of the model is building capacity of the community-based organizations at the same time it’s improving the educational environment of the school.”
Mr. Robinson, the youth adviser leader, measures success by a different yardstick. He spends much time looking into the eyes of kids who lack clean clothes, enough food, a place to sleep and many things most take for granted. Through his program, these broken kids now know they are safer and someone cares.
“You don’t hear about the things that didn’t happen,” he says. “You can’t report that a fight didn’t happen today and no one got shot.
“But all of us here know that things are turning around.”
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