STOP School Violence Program

The School District of Palm Beach County proposes to implement the Check-In/Check-Out (CICO) program in 174 schools. The purpose of the project is to prevent and reduce school violence by improving school climate. By training school personnel on using the CICO Multi-Tiered System of Support Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support trauma-informed approach, they will have the skills to guide students to learn acceptable means to self-manage conflict and ensure the most vulnerable students have at least one trusted adult they can turn to at their schools for support.
Project activities include interventions to improve students’ relationship competence with each other and to facilitate their pursuit of school-based adult support beyond that provided for academics. This is accomplished through one-on-one meetings of the neediest students with a caring adult mentor at their school at least once per week. The CICO meetings are a joint effort of the student and mentor using a mutually agreed upon written record of student goals and progress toward meeting them. The mentor encourages the student to reflect on what they did well, how they feel, and what they need to work on. Students learn to self-monitor, internalize successes, and develop self-esteem. Individual student protective factors are increased, while risk factors are decreased.
Expected outcomes of CICO are centered around increasing school safety using an evidence-based solution that ensures a positive school climate. Specifically, the project objectives include: all school-based mentors (n ≈ 1200) completing a 2-hour intensive CICO live training and eight monthly virtual communities of practice follow up sessions per academic year; a minimum of 5% of students participating in mentoring sessions to address conflicts, mitigate their impact and have at least one caring adult they can turn to at their schools for support; and a 10 percentage point increase in positive responses on the CICO pre-post-test for treated students as compared to their peers.