Playground Peacekeepers : Simi Valley: Trained to spot squabbling classmates, Atherwood students serve as conflict managers to defuse tensions and urge the antagonists to talk out their dispute.

A red T-shirt can be a powerful thing.

Nasty names, stolen property and well-aimed projectiles start most schoolyard spats at Simi Valley elementary schools. The teaching staff ends them.

But at Atherwood elementary school, arguments often end with the arrival of two youths in red T-shirts--the student conflict managers.

About 40 students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades give up three recess periods a week to patrol the Atherwood playground in two-youth teams, heading off fights before they can start.

Trained to spot squabbling schoolmates, these roving referees defuse tensions and urge the antagonists to talk out their dispute as civilly as possible.

Die-hard bickerers can always try resolving their quarrels in front of adult playground monitors instead, or they can go see the ultimate conflict manager: Principal Beverly Radloff.

But most prefer to talk it out among themselves--in front of classmate referees who will neither judge them nor turn them in.

“When we see kids arguing, we go over to them and we ask, ‘Is there a conflict here?’ ” said fifth-grader Elspeth Llewellyn, 11.

“We ask them, ‘Do you have any suggestions on how to solve the problem?’ The rules are they have to agree to talk it through, no put-downs, no name-calling.”

A few dismiss the managers as snitches or, as Elspeth calls them, “goody-goodies.”

But Radloff said the program seems to be working.

“In the very beginning, they were extremely busy,” said Radloff, who launched the program last fall.

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The red-shirted students rushed from quarrel to spat, helping classmates decide whose turn it was, who should apologize, and who had possession of the ball.

A month into the program, Radloff said, conflict managers were complaining to her, “There’s nothing for us to do. The kids see us coming, and they say, ‘Why don’t we just take it over,’ or, ‘Nah, you can be first.’ ”

Now, arguments often end long before the conflict managers arrive, she said.

“By having (the conflict managers) out there, the kids solve their problems faster,” Radloff said. “They’ve become a deterrent.”

Moments after the lunchtime recess bell rang Tuesday, Josh Silverman, 11, and Michael McCravy, 9, were busy.

A third-grade girl had snatched the baseball cap from a first-grade boy’s head and ran off with him in hot, irritated pursuit.

“We had to chase them all over the playground,” said fourth-grader Michael, breathing hard, his dark brows barely visible beneath the shady bill of his own Tazmanian Devil cap.

“We just, like, asked them what they wanted to do, and they sort of solved it themselves,” explained fifth-grader Josh. “The upper graders are harder, they think you are little kids, and they say, ‘We don’t have to listen to you.’ But the younger kids are afraid of us.”

The next job required more diplomacy, because of the fragility of second-grade friendships.

Two boys begged a classmate to quit following them, after they decided he was no longer their friend.

“I stopped being friends and he’s following me around everywhere I go,” Daniel Goede complained to the red-shirted conflict managers as he and buddy Sean Berben perched atop a jungle gym.

“How long are you going to follow him?” Josh asked.

“Only till he agrees to be friends again,” replied Brandon Leach, 7. “He stopped being my friend for nothing.”

“Well, you think about it,” Josh said.

“I’m gonna keep following you,” Brandon vowed, dangling from the jungle gym.

“Do you want to resolve this?” asked Michael.

“Yes,” the three said reluctantly.

“Will you stop following him,” Josh said to Brandon, then turning to the other two, “if you start trying to be friends with him?”

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After more negotiations, the three agreed to try talking it out, and the team moved on to the slides, where children had been molding wet sand into balls.

“She dumped a mud ball on my head,” groused first-grader Eric Falconer, 7, squaring off with Jenna Amaral, who had six inches, several pounds, one year and two grades on Eric.

“Well he. . .,” Jenna started, but Josh cut them both off.

“OK,” said Josh sternly, outranking them both by grade and authority. “You can’t interrupt.”

Eric repeated the accusation. Jenna said, “Well, we were trying to make mud balls, and they were taking our mud balls.”

“OK,” Josh said patiently. “So next time this happens, what would be better?”

“Try to look into the past and reprogram what you did,” suggested Michael.

“Can I go?” Eric asked.

“NO!” Michael and Josh said in unison.

Josh said, “Instead of dumping a mud ball on their head, you would . . . “

“I’d say, ‘Don’t do that,’ ” Jenna answered.

“Would you take their mud balls again?” Michael asked.

“No,” said Eric sheepishly.

And as the bell rang, the younger children ran back inside, and Josh and Michael wrote up a simple report, then walked to their next class.

The program, said Janelle Meinert, 11, a conflict manager since entering sixth grade last fall, “is a good way to keep the arguments just arguments, instead of fights.”