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Illinois School Board Journal
November-December 2000

AVC Model for school safety assessment

Diana McCauley and Carol A. Reitan are with Collaborative Solutions Institute in Bloomington, Illinois.

Mention Littleton, Colorado, West Paducah, Kentucky, Muskogee, Oklahoma, suburban Austin, Texas, Savannah, Georgia, Lake Worth, Florida, or other U.S. communities where news erupted on campus and a school board member's anxiety level is likely to soar. The violent events occurring at these schools within the past three years were not in the worst dreams of school administrators 10 years ago. But, as a result, school boards are scrambling for answers, looking for quick fixes and too frequently purchasing metal detectors as a publicly visible sign of their response to school violence, rather than taking a measured evaluation of what's needed for their students, teachers, parents and the community, in general, to feel safe. The violent acts committed by students in the previously identified communities do not reflect school climate alone. It is a reflection of the greater society's propensity for resolving personal trauma with gun violence, as well.

Because schools are such an important institution in society, the assessment of safety in those institutions requires the response of the entire community. Safety is not something that most school administrators have special expertise in, which is why it may take a community coalition to determine what is needed. If only school administrators are involved in the assessment process, the likelihood of community support being available if or when a crisis arises is greatly diminished. In fact, the "Safe at School" resource manual of the Illinois State Department of Education underscores the use of community committees to work on assessment issues. One way to involve the community in this process is to invite the stakeholders to participate in the entire decision-making process through a "collaborative contract" agreement that includes assessment, visioning and collaborative contract -- what we call the AVC Model.

Definitions of the AVC Model

Assessment: a comprehensive evaluation of the safety program of a school or district that concentrates on the school district's assets (what is good, what needs strengthening, what is no longer relevant, what is needed). A component of the assessment phase of the AVC Model is the audit. This is the process of taking an internal inventory of existing practices, policies and procedures as they relate to school safety. The audit could be started by the school administrators and then have questions added by collaborative stakeholders as the need for additional information is determined.

Visioning: the process of developing an imaginative view of the future as the stakeholders wish it to be. The vision usually would be of a three-, five- or 10-year period in the future. This visioning process is aided by the use of indicators that should be specific, objective and easily measured. Indicators -- variables such as rate of suspension or graduation rate -- are chosen as objective measures of stagnation or change relative to the desired goals of the vision.

Collaborative contract: a written document developed between the community stakeholders and the district that sets forth both broad goals and specific steps that the collaborating community parties must take to achieve stated goals, including a continuous review of indicators to see if movement toward the vision is taking place. Very few collaborations or coalitions are successful over time in the absence of written rules, roles and responsibilities.

How the AVC Model works

We propose the AVC Model because it is not too complicated, has a clear way of generating continuous use and elicits commitment and ownership of those participating in the project. A plan of this kind is less likely to be placed on the shelf since its structure requires "follow through." The AVC Model enables boards to assess the district's current status, establish a vision of where the district needs to be and engage the district in a collaborative contract process that embraces the involvement and support of major school and non-school community stakeholders. While to some, community involvement may be perceived as a loss of administrative or board control, we believe such involvement garners extensive external support and community ownership.

The intended goals of the AVC Model are to have community partners (major stakeholders) reach consensus on a plan to continually assess district/school safety and the factors that impact and/or impede its attainment and provide public moral and financial support for needed change. There are three steps in this process:

1) Identification of major stakeholders to include: building administrators, teachers, students, support personnel, parents, board members, law enforcement officers, social service agencies, neighborhood and other local government entities. Each community would have a different profile of relevant stakeholders.

2) Establishment of a collaborative contract as a means of assuring clear understanding of individual and group roles and responsibilities and support and achievement of the vision.

3) Development of indicators that reflect objective ways of telling whether or not there is movement toward the vision. The use of indicators provides a way of doing a yearly assessment of what's been achieved.

Appropriate indicators

Each school and school district is replete with practices that can easily serve as variables in determining correlation with school safety. We suggest that adopters of the AVC Model select five to seven indicators that reflect the decisions of the community coalition in the process of assessment and visioning school safety within their respective schools and districts. The following list identifies some possible indicators:

Indicators such as the above can assist educators and school boards and their community partners in addressing school safety issues. For example, a school board may find that discipline and safety issues are reduced as the number of student employment hours increase.

No model, including the AVC Model, guarantees a school or district will be violence-free. However, pulling school and community stakeholders together to determine needed safety actions has the best chance of stemming the potential for violence. This is also consistent with the recently released report that communicates desire for school-wide and community-wide environments that foster safety and academic success.

The AVC Model has been applied to school safety issues in this discussion. The AVC principles can be used in other modes of audit-assessment (curriculum, infrastructure, teacher quality) and is equally valuable in an assortment of educ ational/organizational environments.

Other references may also be valuable in pursuing this discussion, including:

Aldridge, Shayne L. (2000). "The Safe School Acts: An alternative to expulsion." The Illinois School Board Journal, Vol. 68, No. 3, pp. 21-23.

Billings, Jessica C. (2000). "Violence in Colorado -- Could it happen here?" The Illinois School Board Journal, Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 13-17.

Illinois State Board of Education: "Safe at School: A resource manual for self-assessment, planning and training to improve school safety." February 1999.

McKnight, John L. (1993). "Building communities from the inside out: A path toward finding and mobilizing a community's assets." Evanston, Illinois, Institute for Policy Research.

Roulier, Monte (Spring 2000). "Reconnecting communities and their schools through authentic dialogue." National Civic Review, Vol. 89, No. 1, pp. 53-65.

Sprick, Randall S. (1985). "Discipline in the secondary class-room: A problem-by-problem survival guide." West Nyak, New York, Center for Applied Research in Education, Inc.

Stephens, Ronald D. (1995). "Safe Schools: A handbook for violence prevention." Bloomington, Indiana, National Educational Service.

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