Lansing - Melissa Barton snapped pictures of her students as they lined up to sign the School Safety Pledge. After they signed it, they crowded in front of her and asked when they were going to leave.
“First, we’re going to sit down for a minute, and then we’re going to take a tour of the Capitol,” Barton said. “Doesn’t that sound fun?”
Barton, a fourth-grade teacher at Meadow Ridge Elementary in Rockford, joined other teachers, students and community members to kick off the 2002 Michigan Safe Schools Week in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday.
The purpose of Safe Schools Week is to promote safety on school grounds with the help of families, teachers, politicians and residents.
Barton’s students signed a pledge that encouraged students to be aware of issues such as threats of violence or bringing weapons to school. “With everything going on in the world today, it’s important to let the kids know that they should feel safe,” Barton said. “I think with this program, my students do feel safe.”
Craig Yaldoo, director of the Michigan Office of Drug Control Policy, said bullies are one of the most common reasons that students feel unsafe.
The best way to overcome bullies, as well as other safety issues, is to get help from others instead of standing alone, he said.
“One stick alone can be broken, but several sticks together cannot be broken at all,” Yaldoo said.
State Sen. William Van Regenmorter, R-Georgetown Township, says safe schools are essential not only to the students, but also to the state of Michigan.
“The future of our state is in the hands of our students, and we need to do everything we can to make them feel safe,” said Van Regenmorter, who has led the Safe Schools campaign since its inception in 1998.
He called on MSU’s School of Criminal Justice to assemble a team of experts to evaluate safety in schools and remedies to improve it.
“I’m very pleased with the work Michigan State has done with us,” Van Regenmorter said. “When I asked MSU to do this, it was out of the political arena. Safe schools are the issue.”
Sheridan Rhoads, who works out of the school as Safe Schools program coordinator, said the fact that people are acknowledging school safety as a critical issue is very important.
She said the program has progressed significantly since it began.
“The program is working,” Rhoads said. “Recently, I’ve talked to a lot of schools, and they’ve reported that they’ve had little incidents of violence, or none at all. There are a lot more schools and communities working together.”
For more information, go to www.cj.msu.edu/~outreach/safe_schools.
