Monroe County School District - STOP Violence Program

The purpose of this project is to implement school safety solutions to prevent violence and improve school climate, by providing targeted support for immigrant students who have historically been underserved, marginalized, adversely affected by inequality, and disproportionately impacted by crime, violence, and victimization.

Monroe County has experienced an influx of migrant families with a concurrent increase in juvenile crimes. This has overwhelmed local resources such as law enforcement, community mental health, and schools. There has been a steady increase in community crimes, and in the last two years there has been a 119% increase in school arrests. Immigrant youth represent high percentages of offenders, children’s shelter occupants, and students with disciplinary actions. Immigrants coming into Monroe County are arriving already exposed to high levels of trauma and then are met with high cost of living, lack of housing, and lack of community resources. Youth then have to navigate an educational system that is foreign to them while not having the English skills to do so. This leads to immigrant students having multiple risk factors for juvenile delinquency. It also creates a system where teachers feel ill equipped to meet the educational, behavioral, and mental health needs of our immigrant students, thus leading to low perceptions of school climate.

Monroe County School District proposes to implement Project WINGS: Welcoming Newcomers Nurturing Growth and Success. The program will provide a four-week trauma informed orientation program for newcomer students who have experienced community, gang, and/or familial violence in their home countries, and/or violence during their journey to the United States. The program will also improve school climate by providing trauma-informed cultural awareness training for teachers. Primary activities include developing an English Language Learner (ELL) Task Force, hiring two certified teachers/counselors to provide social-emotional English language immersion and delivery of the district’s behavioral expectations curriculum, providing small group and individual therapy for program students, developing a community-based Spanish and Haitian Creole parent-school liaison program to increase parental involvement in school, and providing teachers with Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBIR) training. Expected outcomes include decreasing risk factors for juvenile delinquency for immigrant youth, increased self-reports of feelings of school safety and overall well-being of our newcomer students, improved positive responses to behavior as a result of TBIR training, improved school climate, and greater access to school and community-based services for our immigrant/newcomer population that has been adversely affected by crime, violence, and victimization.