Yuba County - Probation and School Success Program (PASS)
The P.A.S.S. Program began its collaboration with the Marysville Joint Unified School District in 1986 and expanded in 2003 to include the Wheatland Elementary School District. The primary goal has been to counteract factors interfering with student learning and performance with a comprehensive and multifaceted approach, this collaborative approach includes:
- Facilitating student and family access to effective services and special assistance as needed.
- Responding to, and where feasible, preventing school and personal crises
- Supporting transitions by assisting students and their families as they negotiate school, grade changes, and daily transitions.
- Focus on increasing the partnership between home and school
- Increasing community involvement and support to develop greater community partnerships which will assist students at the site level.
This is a preventative program that focuses on a decrease in violence, child abuse reduction, a diminution in referrals to the criminal justice system, coordination of resources at the school level, and behavioral strategies that foster resiliency. This proactive approach is the core of the program. The program incorporates high standards for learning, related to social and personal functioning. Enhancing the individual potential of student’s results in measurable outcomes that include:
- Increased academic performance
- Increased promotion rates
- Decline of violence in school sites
- Reduction in suspensions
- Increased family involvement
- Fewer referrals for specialized assistance
- Increased sponsorship by the local community
- Focus for the 2009-10 school year will be on increasing attendance among all students. This will reduce the number of truancy contacts. Truancy has been earmarked as the gateway to juvenile crime.
Many of the students involved in the program are members of “low wealth
families.” The P.A.S.S. Program provides multifaceted services to address
the barriers faced by these families. The officers account for the human diversity
in their daily practices in ways that help to address barriers to learning and
promote healthy development in these students. Significant individual and group
differences must be considered as we strive to enhance our competence with respect
to our target population. This is a dynamic of the program, and an on-going
process not a goal or an outcome.
Environmental factors in the lives of these children sometimes create barriers
to learning that must be addressed so students can benefit from their education.
This often becomes the focus for intervention. The program stresses the importance
of parental commitment in nurturing, supporting, and facilitating the desired
change in their child. Parental involvement is tantamount to a child’s
success at school, and P.A.S.S. Officers are involved in making these parents
active participants. Parents often see these interveners as allies rather than
enforcers.
P.A.S.S. Officers take responsibility for coordinating resources on a school-wide
level to address the barriers to learning. Analyzing how existing resources
are used and clarifying how they can be used even more synergistically and effectively
is the goal for every officer. By creating a caring and supportive climate within
the face of law enforcement, school-wide changes have resulted that both minimize
violence and enhance feelings of competence and connectedness. This effort begins
in the primary grades and maintains the continuum through high school, and also
for the 2009-10 school year, alternative education programs. Programs at each
site adapt to the diversity of that particular school environment.
The success of the P.A.S.S. Program can be directly related to the principles
that generated its founding:
- Implementation of a quality multi-agency program
- Work-based learning
- Importance of community
- Caring and knowledgeable adults
- Provide social support and advocacy
- Children as resources
- Parent/guardian involvement
- High standards and expectations
- Long term support services and a continuum of follow-through
In conjunction with the P.A.S.S. Program, since 1990 an officer from the Yuba
County Probation Department has been assigned to the Yuba County Office of Education
Thomas E. Matthews School. This school site services at-risk youth from Yuba
and neighboring counties. This specialized program equips students with the
tools necessary to be successful. P.A.S.S. Officers have been assigned through
the Wheatland School District since 2003 at Bear River and Lone Tree School.
This year an additional officer was assigned to Wheatland Elementary. Budget
cuts have eliminated the Wheatland Elementary position since it will be combining
next year with Bear River. The services of the officer will now include elementary
students. At each school site our officer’s assist in developing a school-wide
atmosphere that encourages mutual support and a sense of community among students
and staff. This collaboration between the Marysville Joint Unified School District,
the Wheatland Unified School District and the Yuba County Office of Education
has created a collective vision that ensures that everyone involved is a stakeholder
in the betterment of our community.
