Julie High

“The Azusa Youth Empowerment Project is designed to build AUSD’s capacity to integrate and sustain CRE training and peer mediation programs in the district’s secondary schools. During the grant period, the project will involve two middle schools and two high schools. A fifth campus - either middle or high school -- will be included as well. The requested funds will be used to expand school site leadership teams at each school and to expand the district’s CRE leadership team. Each school site team will include a combination of administrative, certified and classified staff. District level staff and other community partners, such as after-school and mental health providers, will also be included. These teams will participate in WJC’s year-long leadership development program, ABCs of Conflict, which is taught by the WJC CRE Program Team, and includes conflict resolution theory and basics, youth justice re-imagined, implicit bias, restorative justice, bullying prevention and how to run a peer mediation program. After the training, WJC coaches each school site team, helping them bring restorative circles to a wide range of classrooms, recruit and train peer mediators, create case referral systems, collect outcome data and use that data to guide the Project’s evolution. ”