This program is fascinating and innovative – I hope it continues to be successful!

Last school year, 258 public school students were shot in Chicago, 32 fatally, on their way to or from school, traveling through gang-infested territory and narcotics wars on the South and West Sides. In an effort to get ahead of the next killings, the schools conducted an analysis to identify the 250 students most at risk of being shot (by studying profiles of 500 recent victims). Since December, each of those students has had an advocate like Ms. Tinajero on call to offer caretaking and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

National experts consider it to be perhaps the most intensive safety intervention tried in big-city schools; its results are being watched nationally.

"I don't know of anything like this either in scope or scale or intensity," said Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a research and advocacy group in Washington. "It is strikingly well-planned at the strategic level, backed with really unique data and followed all the way down to the kid level with 24/7 coverage. I don't know anything in the country quite like it, that has the promise that this initiative does."

Students in the high-risk category — mostly black and Hispanic boys, some homeless dropouts and some formerly gang-affiliated — are also given jobs...

…Compared with a year ago, this is success. Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools, said that attendance was up and that suspensions and misconduct were down among students with advocates.

Officials were so encouraged by the results that last week the school district announced that the program would be expanded next year to include 1,500 students.

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Graduation Is the Goal, Staying Alive the Prize

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: July 1, 2010

www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/us/02chicago.html