There’s been more than a 25 percent reduction in suspensions across the Milwaukee Public School system so far this school year.
Superintendent William Andrekopolous says MPS is using a variety of programs to keep students in school and learning.
But at a press conference yesterday at South Division, the buzz was all about the program that high school has been using since 2005. It focuses on preventing violence.
WUWM’s Susan Bence reports.
Assistant Principal Mary Kohl says there’s been a transformation at South Division High School.
“I believe that the transformation of what I have come to call our family of learners is truly about the work that the Violence Free Zone does,” Kohl says.
The concept of the Violence Free Zone program is straightforward. It places youth advisors in the building and they become part of the fabric of the school. Students grow to trust and confide in them.
Naomi Perez is one of the seven youth advisors working at South Division.
“I’m here 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, but the job goes so much farther than that. We work with the kids after hours. The kids call us on weekends and evenings. They call me on my cell phone. It doesn’t matter. I have kids calling me because they’re having problems at home. They don’t have anything to eat because they got into a fight with their mom, their boyfriend, because they got into a fight, I mean, all kinds of stuff,” Perez says.
“Is there enough of you to go around,” I ask.
“Not always, I don’t think there ever would be, I don’t think there’d ever be enough of us, but we make it happen somehow,” Perez says.
Jesenia Webster says when she came to South Division there was a lot of violence going on. In the middle of her sophomore, she got into a fight.
“Naomi was the first person there trying to calm me down and talk to me. And then like every day she would like keep track on me. Seeing if I was going to class because I used to skip a lot. So she’d just be checking in on me,” Webster says.
Now a junior, Jesenie says she’s learned not to get mad about small things.
Byron Johnson has spent years studying crime and delinquency, and when he heard about the program South Division is using he was intrigued. So the Baylor University sociology professor took a closer look at Violence Free Zone.
“This is a quick study. One that we didn’t take three years to complete. The results are preliminary. What we are saying is that the results are very positive and it seems to indicate that this program is having an effect. And the interviews that we’ve done seem to corroborate that. Our biggest finding, I think the most important one, is the drastic decrease in violent and nonviolent incidents,” Johnson says.
Johnson says as violence at South Division decreased by 38 percent, suspension rates plummeted too. There’s even some evidence that grade point averages improved slightly.
The violence free program has definitely improved Junior Jesenie Webster’s education.
“I’m going to graduate next year, so I’m going to try not to get into fights and you know, act like a child. I’m ready to be grown, go to college, you know. Be somebody someday,” Webster says.
“So what do you want to be someday,” I ask.
“I want be a nurse, that’s what I want to be a nurse,” Webster says.
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