"Ensuring School Engagement and Success for Youth at Risk"

The conference objectives include:

• Highlighting best practices, policies and innovations in reducing the over-representation of youth of color throughout the juvenile justice continuum or preventing the failure to identify youth eligible for special education services.

• Addressing how schools engage students and families in proactive ways to support student re-engagement and success when students fall behind, are truant, or are transitioning back to school from out-of-home placements or court mandated programs.

• Demonstrating how cross-system collaboration among school mental health professionals, community-based organizations and juvenile justice personnel results in improved school outcomes for youth and fewer referrals to the juvenile court. Of special interest would be ways in which such community based collaborations have reduced/eliminated over-representation of youth of color and/or special needs youth being subject to school exclusion (expulsion/suspension) or court-referral.

• Showcasing partnerships among local law enforcement, school resource officers, school personnel, community providers, parents and others that have resulted in fewer referrals to the juvenile court and to successful reintegration (to school and in community) following placement in juvenile detention or other out-of-home settings.
  

• Exploring ways that legislators, school districts and schools ensure school safety without excluding students or relying on overly broad applications of “zero tolerance” or similarly directed school disciplinary policies.

• Learning more about educational initiatives in juvenile court services or in special education services that show demonstrable improvement in youth and family engagement and youth achievement in schools, particularly those premised on Positive Youth Development.

• Affording youth (and their families) the opportunity to tell their stories of overcoming obstacles to school success and how these stories serve as catalysts for change.

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