PTA Strengths

community in making schools safer. Implementing a Parent Teacher Association (PTA), brings parents, administrators and teachers to collaborate on ways to make schools safer.

Resources

Organizations such as the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) work together with schools to collaborate with other community resources to serve and be advocates for students. Their commitment to the well-being of children through strong family and community engagement is their goal (pta.org). Making contact the PTA for a list of community schools where they have an organization and speak with a representative. Teachers and administrators work with PTAs on many issues that may affect the educational well-being of students, but also on ways to keep schools safe

Emotional strengths including helping students to develop the skills of emotional literacy (i.e. respecting others), boosting resiliency factors (i.e. self-esteem), and academic success (Cowen, Wyman, Work, & Iker, 1995). Other positive influences come from the building of family, peer, and school connections. In order for school violence to be prevented, we must continue to interject positive thinking into the planning of programs and interventions. According to Smith and Sandhu (2004), successful prevention of school violence means not only seeking to reduce negative affect and behaviors, but also fostering higher levels of social and emotional

This has prompted the federal and state governments to create laws that address school violence. However, some powers of the federal government are limited by the Tenth Amendment which states that the powers delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states (Yell & Rozalski, 2000). The federal government does not have powers to regulate any issues dealing with education and crime, therefore it is up to each state’s legislation on how they handle schools in their state (IASA, 1994). The primary job of the federal government in regards to school violence is to provide funding for the development of prevention programs (Yell & Rozalski, 2000). However, federal funds can be withheld from states for failure to comply with the concerns of Congress. For example, the federal law The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, 18 U.S.C. § 922