Education Council Hosts School Safety Program

Keeping kids safe at school is the lesson for the day for the Education Council, a coalition of administrators, teachers and parent representatives from 50 West Valley schools.

A violence prevention expert will join the group today to discuss ways to identify and handle problem behavior. City Councilwoman Laura Chick will host the discussion.

The recent shooting deaths in Littleton, Colo., put school safety in the forefront of the discussion set for 8 a.m. at Reseda High School.

Participants will include Dan Isaacs, assistant superintendent of operations for the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Billie Weiss, executive director of the Violence Prevention Coalition of Los Angeles.

Weiss said she will stress the need for a community effort to address and resolve both the obvious and underlying issues of school violence, and the need to focus on the everyday signals of problems.

“You can’t leave it to the police or the schools. It takes everybody,” she said.

Weiss and others will discuss the need for heightened parental awareness of what their children are doing day to day.

“We don’t have the answers. We have suggestions. We know some things work,” she said.

Obie Slamon is a parent representative for the schools her two teenagers attend.

At the meeting, she will be looking for answers to her daughter’s questions about how to intercede with friends and other students who seem to need help.

Reseda High School Principal Robert Kladifko plans to show an short video about one of the school’s prevention programs, Weapons Are Removed Now. The program was set up by staff and students to encourage those with knowledge of problems to tell someone.

Kladifko hopes other schools can implement some of the programs that have worked for his school.

“We need to put our heads together. It’s not as simple as adding more security to our campuses,” Chick said.

Chick formed the Education Council in 1993 to create a network for West Valley schools to address issues of mutual concern.