students and school discipline

Spotlight: Vernon

Spotlight

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CT just start—unequal treatment of youth

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using youth behavior data

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Respect goes viral

Anti-bullying programs often focus on the bully. In Vernon, educators took a broad approach that incorporated bullies, victims and not-so-innocent bystanders.

A Girls Empowerment Group at Rockville High School works to build empathy in bullies while helping girls who are bullied to better stand up for themselves. It also targets the largest group in the school, the kids who watch this behavior day-in and day-out. Some simply fail to speak up. Others post videos of fights online. “They learned that they’re part of the problem,” said Jerry Griffin, the schools administrator who oversaw Vernon’s JUST.START grant. The lessons learned by girls in the group have “gone viral” as they spread a new attitude of respect and responsibility to their friends, he added.

After the group completed the school year, 100 percent of the participants said that they felt comfortable in the group and had learned about getting along with their peers there. Some girls who were group members last year are now back as facilitators.

Vernon became a JUST.START grantee in 2011 and saw a decrease in arrests that year, a trend the district wants to continue, said Griffin. Funding helped support a case manager for the town’s Juvenile Review Board, which saw an uptick in cases. The position is being continued with support from the Youth Services Bureau and a local non-profit, KIDSAFE CT. The funding also helped create a middle school group that supports at-risk students.

The district has a new emphasis now on “helping kids stay out of trouble,” said Griffin. “We assume all the time that things have to be the way they are,” he explained. “There’s no reason we can’t be proactive with kids.”