THE PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP MODEL:

Introduction: To provide a safe educational environment and a safe heaven for our next generations, teachers, parents, and students must work together. It is understand that without a steadfast approach and response from all stakeholders it will not just happen. It is our responsibility to do something to stop social deterioration.  To overcome the unsafe school environment we are proposing a safe school model. This will be achieved through a public-private partnership.  The Public-Private Partnership Model stems from the belief that anything can be achieved if everyone actively participates in the process and put their best efforts forward.   The model is composed of the following steps:

Establish Trust and Respect

Develop Communications Between Parents/Guardians

Watch Them Attentively

Ask For Help

Treat Children Differently

Let Them Speakup

Listen To Children Attentively

Be Open And Trustworthy

Hold School Responsible

Establish Academic Achievement As A Core Program For All

Establish Effective Communication Between Other Agencies

INTRODUCTION:

To provide a safe educational environment for our next generations, teachers, parents, and students must work together. It is understand that without a steadfast approach and response from all stakeholders it will not just happen. It is our responsibility to do something to stop social deterioration. To overcome the unsafe school environment we are proposing a safe school model.  This model is based on public-private partnership. 

The Public-Private Partnership Model stems from the belief that anything can be achieved if everyone actively participates in the process and put their best efforts forward.   We all recognize that the school environment is not as safe as it should be.  By simply recognizing this fact only we cannot make any difference.  Should we like to make a positive change in decaying school environments we all must believe in this fact, we all must live with this fact, and combine our efforts for a positive change.  When the majority of our stakeholders think that there is a need for a change and everyone work towards that change, then change will occur.

We know that our social policies are defined and dictated by a certain group of people.  In most of the cases, this special group has limited access to the general mass regarding what general mass want, how they like to see the outcomes of these policies.  This special group depends on some limited data in formulating any policy.  This same principle is also applicable to our public school system. There are school boards, who define policies for school systems.  These boards are dedicated to provide a good service within their limits.  They are focused on the school systems only, they do not have any authority to cross the boundary of their own jurisdictions.  They can not dictate other social mores which might dictate our school systems.  They are limited by protocols, public policies, and laws.  Hence it is certain that these school boards alone will not be able to make a miraculous change in public school policies.

Since we believe that a change is needed in the public school environment, we must act together.  Our public private partnership model will include, school administrations, school staff, parents, guardians, students, neighborhood organizations, and law enforcement agencies.  In teamwork, these issues can be discussed in an open forum and policies will be generated based on consensus.  To formulate acceptable policies there should be some ground rules which are based on trust and mutual respect.

ESTABLISH TRUST AND RESPECT:

The most important task for the whole group is "trust".  Trust must prevail throughout the system, and between all participants. Without trust nothing can be achieved. All the problems we are encountering in the school system are due to lack of trust between students, between students and teachers, and between parents and teachers. 

Another important issue is respect.  In this society, respect has deteriorated to an alarming level.  Morale of a society diminishes with the decrease of mutual respect and mutual trust among fellow citizens. Our main goal is to achieve a healthy society, where children will learn and grow in a peaceful environment.  Everybody demands that the childhood should be a protected nich, a blooming time in human life cycle. Social morale cannot be improved without improving the trust and respect among the participants within society.

DEVELOP COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN PARENTS/GUARDIANS:

The importance of parent involvement in resolving these problems is significant.  As in the case of the Columbine (see the Time magazine link), the Brown family was afraid for the life of their son, since Eric Harris had threatened their boy.  Eric's website noted that he would like to kill lot of people including Brooks Brown. The Brown family informed the police which took no  action.  Harris was so violent that Brown family was afraid to bring the issue to his parent. Although Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Klebold were friends for years, still she did not consider informing her about the content of the son's friend Eric's website.  Mrs. Brown even did not allow Mr. Brown to call or fax a printout of the page to Mr. Harris, thinking that it might only provoke Eric to violence. Recalling their previous experience Mrs. Brown was sure that Mr. Harris would not discipline his son. 

There was a time when parents used to talk to each other and resolved different issues, but now a day we can see that they do not communicate with each other.  As a result we witness tragedy.

Communications play an important role in children's behavior. Of course, parents should love their children.  Parental love for children has an effect on the children's behavior.  If our children are not well behaved, we must devise a method so that their behavior can be changed.  We will not suggest "go and punish your children", rather we will say try to communicate with them.  Try to identify the problems that they are facing and the frustration with which they are suffering.  A proactive communication can resolve many problems not allowing them to become deeply rooted in a child's mind.  When children feel that they are leftover nothing great can be expected out of them.  In the case of two boys in Columbine, it is well documented that they loved their parents.  The recorded videos demonstrate this fact. They were committed to the violent act and they also knew the consequences. Yet, they planned to go forward with their mission.  They felt sorrow only for their parents, not for their own lives, nor for the lives of their peers or teachers.  These facts give us a clear picture about the communication gaps between these children and their parents.  It means that both parents failed to provide adequate quality time for their children.  Should they have done so, the story would have been different.

In this society we are busy with our own lives, own jobs, and competing to achieve our goals for a better future.  We became machines in this environment. But unfortunately we forget to understand the main fact - understanding our children. The same fact may be true in the case of the Klebold and Harris families.  We are practically avoiding our children.  We are giving a wide range of freedom to our children.  We completely forgot our own past, the time during our school lives, we have not analyzed the social differences between times.  We think that it is wise not to bother children in their regular life.  This approach is wrong and results in failure.  Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were piling ammunition in the basement of the home, they kept their videos recording their plans, they had their own web site depicting their ill motives. This did not happen in a day - it took a long time.  The question is, were all these activities ignored by the parents? Did the parents conceal the truth from themselves?.  Was there any value for their children in their lives? If they respond that they did not observe anything unusual, then one must say that they never cared about their children, they took a the position "to hell with them". 

WATCH THEM ATTENTIVELY:

It is practically impossible to admit that the parents had not observed anything in their children' behaviors.  Some respondents argue that they must have observed something unusual in their children' behaviors, but they did not act accordingly or failed to discipline these boys.  The Time magazine December 20, 1999, noted that one of the Columbine students, Nathan Dykeman (although a problematic witness) reported that Eric told him that Eric's father found a pipe bomb at the house which Eric and his father took out and detonated. On one occasion the Brown family complained to Mr. Harris regarding the throwing of an ice ball at their car, but Mr. Harris did not discipline his son.  On another occasion when the clerk of the weapon store called Harris' house, saying "Hey your clips are in".  Mr. Harris received the phone call and responded that he did not order any clips.  The clerk mistakenly informed Eric's father, thinking that he was talking to Eric. Mr. Harris even did not inquire as to whether or not the clerk was dialing the right number.  Based on the published information we did not observe any evidence that Mr. Harris took any appropriate action, especially in the case of gun clips, knowing the fact that Eric had a bad reputation, since Eric and Dylan served one year of community service for a past crime.

ASK FOR HELP:

When we fail to discipline our children and they are out of control, we should seek help from other sources. Help can come from the parents of our children's friends, school administrations, or from law enforcement agencies.  In this high-risk society we must act appropriately.  If we take the information in the previous paragraph as true, we can come to two possible conclusions:  Eric's parents communicated with Eric and tried to change his way of life, which did not work, or the parents did not take any action knowing that Eric was out of control.  In either case is it not sufficient enough to seek help from the appropriate authority?  What prohibited Eric's parents to come forward and talk to the Klebold family, what prohibited them to bring the issue to the school administration, or to law enforcement agencies?

TREAT CHILDREN DIFFERENTLY:

If the parent had communicated with the above-mentioned sources, the whole story would have been different.  Why did the parents not seek outside help?  There is only one answer, our sick and polluted environment.  If the parents disclose these facts everyone in the society would start to hate these boys, their families. This information might have entered in Harris and Klebold's records.  Their boys would have been listed as a criminal in police records.  No parents want that.  This sick social syndrome let the story take it's own course.  We found that fifteen young lives were shattered by the bullets.  In a true sense, none of the victims nor the shooters were solely responsible for what happened in Columbine. These boys were sick, they needed adequate treatment. They were frustrated and emotionally vulnerable.  Most of the students at the school knew that, most of the neighbors might have noticed that.  To be sick is not a crime. It was our failure to take appropriate measures, provide them with adequate treatment.

We need to revisit our own action, we must revisit our self-made social status to identify what's wrong there.  God creates human beings, human beings create their society, and society creates its social structure.  We are unknowingly harming the core of the human being.  We are restoring our social structure and its justice system at the expense of the human being.   We really are placing our social system ahead of the human being.

LET THEM SPEAKUP:

When someone suffers from any type of frustration, depending on the maturity of the person, he/she takes some steps to bring the suffering to an end.  The decisions are nonviolent or they may be violent.  One of the easiest ways we can get rid of any kind of frustration is to bring things out in the open.  This can done by discussing the problem with others, i.e., sharing.  When we speak to others about any problem we can observe two major effects: (1) it releases some of our pain, thereby reduces/eliminates the frustration, and (2) get help from friends and families to resolve the problem.  Therefore, it is important to share our pains with others.

LISTEN TO CHILDREN ATTENTIVELY:

Children feel comfortable when they feel important.  In the absence of internalized importance they feel abandoned. In a good society children are less greedy than elders.  They do not lie, they do not harm others, and they like to live a stress free life.  They do not believe in differences, they think that all are equal.

Children today are intelligent, but in some cases they are diverting their intelligence in the wrong direction.  Of course, children fight each other one day and the next day they are friends again.  Their animosities are not deep rooted.  As they are the most vulnerable class of the society, it is easy to manipulate them.  It is easy to use them in a wrong way.  All the negative things we are observing in children are nothing but the impact of our polluted society, appropriately designated as a "toxic society" by Gabrino.  We need to set a boundary for our children so that the negative impact of the toxic society cannot penetrate our children's environment.  It is surely not an easy task, but should we all try we can make a difference.

BE OPEN AND TRUSTWORTHY:

Children spend more of their time in the school than they spend at their home.  Hence the school environment can have a huge impact on their behavior.  To improve children's behavior we first attempt to fix the problem in the school environment.  The school environment is the environment of social interaction between children, teachers, administrative staff, bus drivers, security personnel, and others who spend some time everyday at the school. If we can improve the school environment and make it as a healthy environment for our children, positive behavior can be achieved immediately.

It is true that all the school violence we are observing are done by a "group" of children.  In most of the cases they are children segregated from the rests.  Some times these children belong to the group who are always unhappy – unhappy from family matters, teachers relationship, school administrations, romantic life, well received groups, and so on.  Reviewing all the information on school shooting it is evident that children in the school know about these "bad-guy" groups; they know that these "groups" are not like others, they are different.  The same phenomenon was prominent in the case of Columbine shooting.  The question arises, knowing the fact that these "Trench-Coat" gangs are going to do something bad, as to why they didn't inform the school authority.  This trench coat group threatened others, sometimes they openly talked about their ill-motivated plans, but nobody brought it to the attention of the school administration.   Some children reported, after the incident, that they were very much scared of this gang.   No one spoke up because they thought that they would be in trouble should these "guys" know about any complaints. It is clear from this news that there was lack of communications between children and school administration at Columbine.  It demonstrates that there was a lack of trust between children and teachers.  Could the children trust their teachers they should have brought the issue to them, and the problem could have been handled differently.  Then the whole story would have been different.  We missed that opportunity due to lack of trust. We all were children, not all of us exhibited socially acceptable behavior.  Some of us were good and some were not.  When someone was threatened by another, that problem was resolved by intervention by the elders.  If it happened at the school, teachers provided resolutions.  No doubt if during that time fights were confined to fist or at worst, we saw the use of knives.  Today we see automatic firearms, therefore the gravity of violence is incomparable with those days.  As a result it is essential to have a better understanding, trust, and respect among the stakeholders.  children know who is bad and who is good.  They also know who can do how much harm.  We do agree that we need to use our skills very carefully, otherwise it might turn in the wrong direction.

HOLD SCHOOL RESPONSIBLE:

There is a trend that the school administration does not report any suspicious activities in their school.  They have a fear that if they report about these it will create a public out cry and as a result the school will loose students.   Should the school loose students the school will loose benefits.  The Federal, state, and local governments need to restructure their regulations, the focus should be not on numbers but on quality and safe environment.  There are various kinds of check lists on children behavior are available which definitely can help to resolve the problem.

ESTABLISH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AS A CORE PROGRAM FOR ALL:

The social problem always spills on the school system, since teachers, staffs, and children are all part of the society.  It is very hard to isolate the school from social problems.  To block social problems from penetrating into the school boundary is one of the most difficult tasks.  No matter how hard we try, how much money we spend, we will still see the effects of social problems in the school environment.  By discussing with people of different cross sections we identified that the best non-expensive approach is to reestablish the basic academic environment. The definition of the basic academic environment means the environment where children will learn how to become respectable citizens.  We are talking about the learning process through sharing, allowing all children and school staff and teachers to focus on quality improvement and target their sole mission to excel in life.  An environment in which everyone will forget about their background, race, culture, and will believe and act to demonstrate that being different is beneficial. We should place the academic achievement as a priority for all school districts.

ESTABLISH EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN OTHER AGENCIES:

It is important to establish a good communication system among the schools and other agencies. Schools should have a proactive evacuation plan to handle emergency situation.  According to the Time magazine of December 20, 1999 issue, nearly 800 police officers and SWAT team members were present at the school compound soon after the news of school shooting broke out.  The whole team was in chaos, they were not properly equipped nor did they have the building plans. Eric and Dylan were carrying out their shooting for more than 45 minutes, but police could not identify their location.  If a good communication system between the school and the law enforcement agencies had been in place, it would have been possible to save several lives.  Both the killers were dead by 12:05 p.m., but the SWAT team did not reach Sanders (the dead teacher at Columbine) until close to 3:00 p.m.  The failure was so devastating that one of the victims' parents said,  " When 500 officers go to the battle zone and not one comes away with a scratch, then something's wrong.  I expected dead officers, crippled officers, disfigured officers-not just children and teachers."  Nobody can predict, when, and where this type of barbarous act will occur.  We must be prepared for that, we must have emergency evacuation plans and a decent communication system in place. Schools should be equipped with appropriate surveillance systems, so that the authorities can get accurate pictures of inside the buildings from a remote location.   We do not want to see a repetition of Columbine, where law enforcement agents were standing by helplessly and asking distraught children to draw the layout of the sprawling of the 250,000 sq. ft school building. 

CONCLUSION:

This project takes the view that several societal changes are necessary to establish safe schools.  These changes must take the form of changed values, good communications, increased understanding between parents and children and among children.  Information is needed to allow all concerned to affect change.  The kind of information necessary can best be made available on an interactive website for everyone to access and to provide responses.  Knowledge that is received in advance will help in deterring crime and will contribute mightily to solutions sorely needed for our schools in coping with safety issues. 

This website will increase communication dramatically and will act as a clearinghouse. It will serve as a channel of information and provide information exchange and transfer. In order to bring about societal change in values, attitudes, communication and behavior, change must be made at the grass roots level. The homogeneity of society will be favorably affected.  Our children are our future resources and their health, welfare and education can be greatly enhanced by the Project to benefit all of us, using state-of-the-art technology.