Posted on 01/14/2010 6:59:13 AM PST by KeyLargo
Chicago Sun-Times suntimes.com Member of Sun-Times Media
CPS' Project Protection
$60 mil. to be spent on citizen patrols, student mentors, more
January 13, 2010
BY ROSALIND ROSSI Education Reporter/rrossi@suntimes.com
The most dangerous stretches of streets around 12 Chicago public schools will be protected by the "eyes and ears" of paid citizen safety patrols under one phase of a $60 million anti-violence campaign unveiled Tuesday.
Such groups also will be called upon to function as paid, pseudo "truancy officers," visiting the homes of truant kids at 38 of the system's most violent schools to find out why students are cutting school. » Click to enlarge image Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman waits in a hallway at Robeson High School after a press conference Tuesday. (Brian Jackson/Sun Times)
Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman made clear Tuesday he is reaching out to the community for help -- and offering jobs amid a dour economy in return -- as he filled in some details of an anti-violence plan sketched out in September.
A centerpiece is a "probability model" that identified 1,200 students as being at high risk of being shot, and pinpointed 200 of them as being at "ultra high risk."
Less than halfway into the school year, Huberman said, 50 percent of the ultra-high risk kids have stopped coming to school. And, he said, of the 102 CPS students shot this school year, 40 percent were among those at high risk or more of such a fate.
Under the plan -- bankrolled with two consecutive years of $30 million in federal stimulus dollars -- this school year $18 million will be focused on the 38 high schools with the biggest violence problems and plans their administrators and other have written to create a "culture of calm" on their campuses, Huberman said.
Another $10 million will go toward student mentors for at-risk kids, and $2 million will be spent on safe passage at 12 high schools with the most trouble spots.
Each school's safe passage plan is different, said CPS Security Director Michael Shields, but the plans focus on 43 "hot spots'' and 30 dangerous corridors, or stretches of street, around the 12 high schools. In the coming days, CPS will be asking community groups to submit proposals for providing safe passage workers.
"The community can be our eyes and ears," Shields said. "They will supplement police in making sure students are safe. ... They will be out protecting young people and making sure they get home safely."
Safe passage workers will get training on how to "de-escalate" volatile situations, Shields said, but he would not say whether they would be given walkie-talkies or other equipment.
"It depends," Shields said. "We're in uncharted waters. We want people to be safe. We'll probably have discussions about that."
CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said the question of criminal background checks has to ''be evaluated carefully'' as some potential community groups contain people who have turned their lives around after troubled pasts.
Huberman said one clear theme among the 38 plans submitted by schools is that they want help combatting truancy. Many are expected to hire community groups to act as pseudo "truancy officers" to help them track down missing kids, he said.
"We will give them a list of kids [to locate] by 10 a.m.," Huberman said. "We will, in essence, deputize them."
Truancy workers will be trained, will hit the streets in teams, but will be using a "problem-solving model" of addressing truancy, rather than a "law enforcement" model, Bond said. Their main goal will be to find out why students are not in school so officials can get students the help they need.
Jitu Brown, president of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, welcomed the use of community groups, saying community workers with knowledge of a neighborhood can have a "more humane perspective" on school problems than police.
"We know the issues. We have a sense of what creates conflicts in a neighborhood," Brown said. "Working with community-based organizations is smart."
Police Supt. Jody Weis said police have held virtually daily conference calls with principals and school officials to share intelligence and get to the cause of problems. That might be why violent incidents are down 38 percent compared with last year, CPS officials said.
And they all get to wear brown shirts.
Comments from Chicago police officers about the Obama Chicago citizen thug patrols here:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13350456&postID=1876810287581166571
I see Nazi Germany coming.
We really need to get this guy out of office now.
God help us. Can anyone say Basij militia?
Another 60 million taxpayer dollars going to pay back 0bama’s campaign contributors.
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