*School Community Relationship

The School-Community Guidance Center (SCGC) of the Austin Independent School District employed three project specialists to work with at-risk and delinquent middle and high school students in 1989-90. Project specialists worked at two locations: the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) located at the Ridgeview Campus and the Travis County Juvenile Detention Center located at Gardner-Betts House (GBH). SCGC was designed to help these at-risk students improve in the areas of school attendance, academic achievement, behavior, and frequency of contacts with the court system. An evaluation of the program determined that: (1) enrollment at GBH (N=715) increased by 27 percent in 1989-90 with a student-teacher ratio of 15:1; (2) recidivism had increased; (3) follow-up data suggest that attending ALC had no effect on academic performance; (4) insubordination, truancy, fighting, and obscene language were the most common referral categories; (5) a new practice resulted in the transfer of 151 overage middle school students to the ALC; (6) while few students wanted to remain at the ALC another semester, more than one-half were more confident about staying in school and most believed that their behavior had improved; and (7) few of the school district's employees had a positive view of the LLC. ( Program statistics are included in graphs, figures, and tables. The student agreement form, attendance contract, goal setting form, and list of community agencies utilized by the SCGC are at...ached.) (ABL