Interactions for Peace
District Wide Research Data
SAN MARCOS, CA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
Bob Harman, Director of Student Services
Memorandum
To: Eden Steele, Founder and Director of Peace Patrol
Re: Positive Impact of Peace Patrol
Date: August 18, 2009
Peace Patrol took root in the SMUSD approximately fifteen years ago shortly after staff members attended a county workshop that included a presentation by Eden Steele about a program she called Peace Patrol. After visiting schools in the South Bay, this enthusiastic group recommended a pilot program at one elementary school in our district. It was such a success that within five years, Peace Patrol was operating on all six of the district’s elementary schools. Today, all eleven SMUSD elementary schools have extensive Peace Patrol programs.
Funding for the Peace Patrol varies from year to year, but has averaged $1,000 per school for the last five years. Each school uses the money to pay a small stipend to a teacher who serves as advisor, purchase vests or T-shirts, clipboards and paper materials and cover the cost of an end-of-the-year celebration honoring the efforts of all participating students. Funding comes from a variety of sources including: Title IV, Safe and Drug Free Schools as authorized by No Child Left Behind legislation (ending this year), county, community and law enforcement collaborative safe schools’ grants and SMUSD general funds. Total funds allocated in 2009-10 equal $11,000 not counting parent contributions unique to each school.
Over the last few years, the SMUSD has required all programs receiving district funding to provide data that demonstrate program effectiveness. Data used to evaluate Peace Patrol includes: annual suspension rates, absence/truancy rates and student responses to questions about violent behavior such as bullying, threatening or intimidation and fighting as asked on the biannual California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS).
In the 1992-3 school year, pre Peace Patrol, 158 students from all six SMUSD elementary schools were suspended, most of them for threatening to cause injury to other students including bullying and for fighting. Last year (2008-09), 165 elementary students were suspended from 11 schools. District enrollment has more than doubled during those 16 years, yet the total number of suspensions is almost the same. In other words, the suspension rate for violent offenses committed by elementary aged students has decreased by just over 50% since the Peace Patrol program began in the SMUSD.
California classifies a student as a “chronic truant” once he or she accumulates three or more unexcused absences in one school year. While it is impossible to determine why all truancy occurs, research tells us over and over, especially with younger students, that bullying is cited as the major reason for nearly one-third of all absences. Since the expansion of our Peace Patrol program a few years ago, the SMUSD truancy rate has dropped from 26% to 21%. When we examined results from student responses on the 2009 CHKS, we found that a significant reduction had taken place in the number of fifth-grade students who reported fighting (from 50% to 41%), involvement in harassment or bullying (from 49% to 41%), or who thought they saw someone with a weapon at school (from 18% to 15%). We believe that there is a direct correlation between the drop in truancy/absences and the perceived safeness on our elementary campuses as reported by our students on the 2009 CHKS.
It is also felt and is supported by the data that the Peace Patrol program has contributed to campus safety, improved attendance and a greater feeling by elementary school students of connectedness to their schools (CHKS data indicate an increase in school connectedness from 53% to 57% in the last four years).
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