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On April 18, 2001
The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement
officially opened the School Violence Resource Center in Little Rock,
Arkansas. The Honorable Tim Hutchinson, United States Senator brought
the Keynote Address and presided over the ribbon cutting at the new
center. Dr. Alan Sugg, President of the University of Arkansas System
and Dr. Lee Colwell, Director of the Criminal Justice Institute were
on hand to meet and greet the many guests from around the country who
came to celebrate this special occasion. Tommie Canady and Larance
Johnson, the Director and Deputy Director respectively of the School
Violence Resource Center welcomed the visitors and proudly toured them
through the facility. Later the staff of Keys To Safer Schools.com was
privileged to sit with Tommie and Larance and listen as they shared
their vision for reducing the violence that plagues our schools.
According to Mr. Canady, the School Violence Resource Center has
three primary goals:
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To research and evaluate school violence related initiatives,
programs, and information and make their efforts available to the
stakeholders across the nation.
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To provide pertinent school violence information and
resources through a web-based resource center.
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To develop and deliver a school violence educational
curriculum to stakeholders.
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Ms. Johnson pointed out that
they are not operating in a vacuum. They want and actively solicit
input from all stakeholders and interested parties. "There is no
point in producing a product that the schools do not need or do not
want," she said. Mr. Canady stated that they are really concerned
for the urban and rural schools in America. The larger cities
usually have amble resources for programming, but the smaller schools—which
make up the largest portion of education system—often have the same
needs but means of meeting those needs. The School Violence Resource
Center hopes to help these smaller schools by applying the principle
of efficiency. SVRC will conduct all the research into all the
violence prevention programs they can. The results will be
posted on the website so that every school administrator can take
advantage of this work. The superintendent of the smallest school in
the nation will have at his/her disposal thousands of hours of surfing
the Internet, researching many similar sounding programs and
summarizing them for ease of choosing the best suited ones. All of
this will be available at the click of a button.
The Keys To Safer Schools.com staff is excited about being asked to
participate in this process. It is too early to fully tell what role
we might play, but being part of such a program makes us look ahead
with anticipation.
If any of our regular subscribers and/or associates
have programs that you would like to recommend to the SVRC, please
forward the link or other details directly to them (being sure to
mention Keys) or send it to us at Keys@KeysToSaferSchools.com
and we will get it to them for consideration.
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(501)246-8835
SCHOOL
VIOLENCE RESOURCE CENTER