School district cashes in grant

Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools belatedly distributes awards as federal funding perks up again, officials explain. The Newport-Mesa Unified School District won a $1.2-million federal grant this week for elementary school counseling, one of only 14 districts in the United States to do so.

More than a year ago, Newport-Mesa applied to the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools in Washington, D.C., for a three-year grant to pay for elementary school counselors and other related services. The office approved Newport-Mesa’s application last year, but could not award it and other schools a grant due to lack of funds.

This week, though, the office belatedly distributed the awards as federal funding perked up again. By coincidence, the elementary school counseling grant came shortly after Newport-Mesa netted an $8.23-million federal grant for its Advocates Supporting Kids (ASK) intervention program.

“We certainly hoped we’d get them simultaneously,” said Jane Garland, Newport-Mesa’s spokeswoman and the chair of the program. “We have some great ideas at Newport-Mesa and they complement each other. We were saddened when we didn’t get the grant last year and when we got the good news this year, we realized what it would do to enhance both projects.”

The grant from the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, which pays $400,000 per year, is the third that Newport-Mesa has received. The district previously won federal counseling money in 2000, the first year the grants were offered, and in 2003.

Taken together, the elementary counseling grant and the Advocates Supporting Kids program form a complete unit of sorts. The program, also supported by a three-year grant, involves putting together school zone teams to counsel individual students and mentor families. The elementary counseling grant, which services only primary sites, provides behavioral instruction to children in larger groups.

When schools volunteer for the program, teachers and other faculty conduct surveys to find the most troublesome spots on campus in terms of citizenship: the playground during recess, swings, hallways, even bus stops. If the school pinpoints an area where tempers often flare, it enlists a counselor to speak to children about appropriate conduct.

“We rotate children through in teams and have an adult assigned to each station so they know what appropriate behavior is like,” said Susan Astarita, Newport-Mesa’s assistant superintendent of elementary education.

The ultimate goal of the program, which Newport-Mesa has personally dubbed “Project Safe Connections,” is to prevent antisocial tendencies in students and prevent factors that may lead to violence. Loretta McDaniel, the competition manager for the counseling grant program, said the government began distributing the funds when the American School Counselor Assn. and other advocate groups began lobbying for them.

“We haven’t done a national evaluation yet, but from what I’m hearing from folks who’ve received the grants and hadn’t had counselors before, it’s helped them identify children who are in danger of being high-risk,” McDaniel said.

Newport-Mesa administrators said the grants have led to a new atmosphere on campus. At California Elementary, fifth-grade students have begun acting as peer counselors, helping to resolve disputes among younger children on the playground. In another program, dubbed “Invisible Mentors,” adult counselors provide advice to troubled students and report their progress to administrators, but don’t tell the students that they are officially being monitored.

“We assign adults to kids, but the kids don’t know it,” said principal Kelli Smith. “The kids just think this adult is being really nice to them every day.”

After the district won its first two counseling grants, all but six elementary schools -- College Park, Kaiser, Mariners, Newport Coast, Pomona and Victoria -- volunteered for services. This year, Astarita and leadership development director Christine Jurenka plan to extend counseling to the six remaining sites, plus nine that participated in prior years.

The Office for Safe and Drug Free Schools chooses applicants for the elementary counseling grant through a three-member panel. Districts are rated on project design, need for services, management plans and more, with only the highest-rated applications being accepted.

To maintain the grant for all three years, a district must submit annual reports to show that it is making progress. If the district fails to implement new services, it may find its grant rescinded.

“They can’t take this whole first year planning,” McDaniel said. “They have to implement.”