Content provided in partnership with
Reducing violence in U.S. schools
Dispute Resolution Journal, Nov 1998 by Denenberg, Tia Schneider, Denenberg, Richard V, Braverman, Mark
Ideally, a violence-prevention and response team should include a representative of the union, because the safety of its members is at stake. Decisions can be made collaboratively with management, and the "buy in" of teachers, whose cooperation is essential, can be assured. All too often, however, the district is beset by union-management strife which prevents cooperation on violence prevention.
Constructing a Comprehensive Strategy Sometimes labor relations and student behavior problems can be addressed in tandem. In California's Huntington Beach Union High School District, a comprehensive violence prevention strategy aimed at students emerged from the use of dispute resolution techniques to alter a poor labor relations climate.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
The district encompasses three Orange County citiesWestminster, Huntington Beach, and Fountain Valleyalong with six comprehensive high schools, a continuation school, and an adult education school. In the late 1970s, the district suffered from three teacher union strikes in five years as well as a plague of gang violence. In 1985, Bonnie Prouty Castrey, a federal mediator who lived in the community, was put forward as a candidate for the school board because of her work in promoting labormanagement cooperation. Castrey was told, "Look, we've got to stop fighting. Kids aren't learning, and what's really happening is that we're having a terrible time trying to negotiate contracts." There had not been a contract for 18 months, and children were being forced to decide whether they should cross picket lines in order to attend school. Because of her background, it was thought, Castrey could help create a climate that was conducive to labor-management peace and less troubling for the children.
She was elected, creating a majority that was ready to make labor-management peace. The board, the administration, and the district's three unions selected a conflict resolution process called Relationships By Objective (RBO). RBO is a form of "preventive mediation" pioneered by John Popular at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. FMCS describes RBO as "strong medicine.18It uses the process to remedy the "strained labor-management relationship," which is characterized by "mistrust, suspicion and animosity." In RBO, the parties analyze their problems jointly, decide on common objectives and take steps to reach those goals. Popular became a consultant to the district, helping to build a cooperative relationship and develop trust between the parties.
That trust allowed the parties to deal with one of the district's most pressing issues: gang violence. The police had informed the board that there were 35 gangs in the district's three cities. "We knew that if there were 35 gangs in those cities, there were gangs on our campuses," Castrey recalls. "We needed to know how to prevent any gang operations-or we were going to have dead teachers, dead staff members, or dead kids. None of us wanted that to happen."
During the RBO process, the teachers articulated their desire to revise the disciplinary guidelines. Galvanized by the murder of a 16-year-old in a gang battle, all the stakeholders realized that a preventive strategy was needed. The newspapers were asking whether the campuses were safe. In 1988, mediators from the Northern California Community Justice Center began teaching the faculty and young people conflict resolution techniques. Since then, several hundred have graduated from the Student Conflict Mediation Program. According to Superintendent Susan Roper,
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Home & Garden
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »