Accountability program underway for Sonoma County 5th-, 6th-graders

Heading off young students at the pass, before they get into a pattern of trouble that could lead them to juvenile hall, is the focus of a new program aimed at fifth- and sixth-graders in Sonoma County.

Funded by a $900,000 federal grant, the program was developed and is being managed by Restorative Resources, a 14-year-old Sonoma County nonprofit agency that promotes alternative justice programs.

“The same kid who is in trouble in fifth grade is the same kid who is more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system,” said Susan Kinder, the agency’s executive director.

“Our logic was that we know who these kids are and we should be working with them before they get arrested,” she said.

The program was to be named Stand By Me, but was renamed Somos Circles. Somos means “we are” in Spanish, and the change acknowledges that Latinos are expected to make up the majority of students referred to it, said Kinder.

“If you look at the population, a high percentage of students are Latinos, the younger people in our community are Latino - it’s just that,” she said.

Somos Circles is just getting started. Restorative Resources staff are working with school officials and teachers in 28 schools in six districts to fine-tune and set up the processes of evaluating students for referral. That stage will start in January.

Eighty percent of referrals are expected to be boys, Kinder said, based on the agency’s experience in the juvenile justice system, where it works with 200 people, mostly teenagers.

“The anticipation is that it’s probably 8 to 10 percent of the kids in the school population who are eligible for this,” she said.

About 20 students among the 350 fifth- and sixth-graders in the Wright School District - it has three schools covering kindergarten through eighth grades - currently are identified for the program, said Adam Stein, the district’s superintendent.

The process starts by selecting students who already have had incidents in school requiring discipline, then expands, he said.

“The first ones identified are those children, but we have children identified as having risk factors, too,” he said. “They are things anyone would recognize.”

He said those factors include displays of overly aggressive or physical behavior, children who use a lot of inappropriate language, and students who frequently assume an antagonistic or hostile attitude.

Central to the process are what are termed accountability circles, a strategy developed by Restorative Resources, Kinder said. Structured, one-hour sessions that will be held once a week for seven weeks, they will involve up to 12 students in discussions about life strategies, harms they may have caused in school or at home, and becoming “positive, engaged” members of the community.

The Cotati-Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Sonoma Valley, Windsor and Roseland school districts also are participating.

“In terms of the technique and the opportunity for a student to have an additional resource beyond what is regularly provided, it’s a huge deal,” said Dave Rose, director of student services at the Petaluma City School District.

He said perhaps 1,800 of the district’s 7,500 students are facing the sort of obstacles that can lead to problematic behavior, but it’s too early to know which of those will be referred to Somos Circles, Rose said.

What district officials know, he said, is that students with learning disabilities and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are suspended at a far higher rate than those who aren’t.

“We don’t see the program as fixing this, but we do see it as adding another tool to the menu of options that we can deliver,” Rose said.

Staff Writer Jeremy Hay blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.?pressdemocrat.com. You can reach him at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@?pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@jeremyhay.