The 2001-2002 school year is well underway. With it, due to events described below, comes a unique opportunity for law-related and civic education in Pennsylvania with the establishment of Law, Education and Peace for kids (LEAP-Kids).

The Law, Education and Participation Project of the Temple University Beasley School of Law (Temple-LEAP) was the home of Pennsylvania’s statewide law-related and civic education (LRCE) program from 1985 to 2001. During that time, Temple-LEAP served as the Pennsylvania point of contact for the national youth for Justice (YFJ) network, which promotes LRCE through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the United States Department of Justice. However, beginning with the 2001-2002 budget year (July1, 2001-June 30, 2002) Temple-LEAP has given up its statewide role to focus solely on Philadelphia-based efforts that directly involve law students. Grants and contracts to conduct statewide training for educators and law and justice professionals, a staple of past Temple-LEAP programming, were turned down by the law school administration in anticipation of this more limited Temple-LEAP role.

The restriction of Temple-LEAP’s focus created a void in Pennsylvania’s LRCE efforts and meant that the YFJ network needed to find a new point of contact in the commonwealth. Pennsylvania’s YFJ home also serves as the regional Teens, Crime and the Community (TCC) center for the Mid-Atlantic States. TCC was housed at Temple-LEAP through this budget year, receiving funding for 14 consecutive years.

LEAP-Kids (Law, Education and Peace for kids) is the successor to Temple-LEAP as the statewide and regional provider of LRCE training and materials. Led by Executive Director David Keller Trevaskis, LEAP-Kids has the mission of promoting good citizenship through law-related and civic education. LEAP-Kids, chartered in 2001 as a for profit educational consulting business, will house the Pennsylvania YFJ site in 2001-2002 and serve as the statewide LRCE center.

LEAP-Kids is working in partnership with the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA). PBA already runs five major LRCE programs across the commonwealth: I Signed the Constitution; Project PEACE (Peaceful Endings through Attorneys, Children and Educators); Law Day; Mock Trial and Stepping Out for Seniors. PBA support of these LRCE programs constitutes a major commitment each year to Pennsylvania LRCE efforts.

A quick review of PBA’s LRCE efforts shows that Pennsylvania lawyers are doing a lot to support the education of the next generation of citizens and LEAP-Kids is working with them to make a real difference in the commonwealth.

The "I Signed the Constitution" program, held in cooperation with the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, is a high profile event that allows thousands of Pennsylvania youth to show their affirmation of American citizenship by signing replicas of the Constitution. The event is held on a date near September 17th, Constitution Day, when the nation celebrates the anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution. This year’s PBA statewide center of celebration will be in Hollidaysburg where social studies teacher Don Imler has hundreds of students and community leaders coming together to honor the rule of law. Hundreds of additional classrooms will benefit from lessons focused on the Constitution that the Bar will distribute prior to September 17, 2001. These lessons, developed by LEAP-Kids, underscore the importance of the rule of law and provide opportunities for educators and students to reflect on the fundamentals of democratic participants in our society. A classroom teacher can create a powerful lesson for students by simply analyzing the rules governing classroom behavior.

The "I Signed the Constitution" program works at any grade level and is the first major LRCE initiative of each school year.

The next program in the PBA LRCE school calendar year is the statewide mock trial program (MTP). MTP is one of the oldest law-related and civic education programs promoted by the PBA. Sponsored by the PBA’s Young Lawyer’s Division (YLD), the MTP annually involves more that 250 schools in a competition that selects Pennsylvania’s representative at the nationals. The MTP started in Philadelphia in 1979 under Beth Farnbach at the Temple University School of Law; Camille Kastalk-Cherry took the program statewide in 1984.

The MTP is the product of many partnerships. The original Temple connection continues with Professor John Drost supervising the drafting of the problem materials by Temple University Beasley School of Law students. Local competitions, generally organized and funded by county bar associations, produce county champions that compete for regional honors and spots in the statewide finals. Plans for 2002 include the possible transfer of the state finals from Carlisle, its longtime host, to Harrisburg. This move will eventually allow the state finals to expand to at least 12 (one per region) and perhaps 16 (with extra teams coming from regions with greater participation) teams.

Oversight of the statewide MTP flows from a committee of volunteer PBA attorneys and interested educators and court administrators. Funding for the statewide program, including paying to send the winning Pennsylvania team to the national competition, comes from the YLD budget of the PBA.

Next up on the calendar is Project PEACE (Peaceful Endings through Attorneys, Children, and Educators) is an elementary peer mediation and conflict resolution education program jointly sponsored by Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher and the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA). 2001-2002 will mark the third school year of Project PEACE.

Project PEACE strives to reduce conflict and violence in Pennsylvania schools by teaching children, who are still in their formative years, how to alter their behavior, control their anger and resolve their disputes peacefully. The children become active participants in governing behavior in their classrooms by taking on the role of mediator. Through the assistance of neutral peer mediators, conflicts are settled in a more positive manner. With fewer conflicts in the classroom, educators can put their energy into teaching instead of disciplining.

The PBA and Attorney General Mike Fisher, through their efforts in educating citizens of alternative means of dispute resolution in the justice system, and LEAP-Kids, through its leadership in school based conflict resolution education and mediation training, offer Pennsylvania schools this specialized training to bring about violence avoidance. By exposing schools to various aspects of the law, students begin to cultivate a greater respect for the justice system. The PBA and office of the Attorney General shared the cost of the program. The goals of Project PEACE are to:

• Promote conflict resolution as an important life skill;
• Develop awareness of and experience with various mediation skills;
• Compare and contrast mediation with adjudication;
• Provide opportunities for students/schools to network with attorneys and mediation professionals; and
• Create a school-based plan to establish a peer mediation program for the 2001-2002 academic year.

Project PEACE is designed for elementary schools. As such, one elementary school from each of the 12 PBA geographic zones is selected by the competitive application to participate in the training. Representing each school is a team of the school principal, two educators/guidance counselors, a parent and a local attorney.

During the retreat, each team goes through intensive mediation training by participating is sessions such as, “When Push Comes to Shove: Looking at Adjudication and Mediation” and “Rewriting the Scene: Learning How to Diffuse Conflict Situations.” By the end of the 2.5 day retreat, all teams write a mediation plan for their own schools. In these plans, schools answered the following questions:

• Needs: What are the needs you see in your school for conflict resolution?
• Program Outcomes: What do you hope to accomplish from this program?
• Obstacles: What are the obstacles you must hurdle to make your program succeed?
• Solutions: How do you plan to solve these potential problems?
• Staffing: Who is going to staff your program? How will staff be selected? How will staff costs be covered?
• Funding: How will you fund your program?
• Space: Where will the program be housed?
• Scheduling: What is the timeline for your program?
• Assistance: What assistance do you need to achieve success?

Law Day, held each year on May 1st, is the final LRCE event on the PBA school calendar. For the past two years, the PBA has produced and distributed a booklet of lessons designed for judges and lawyers to use when they visit classrooms. LEAP-Kids will work with the PBA , as in past years, to produce the lesson materials in the Law Day booklet.