I have made this community a better place to live by helping out in my school with a program called Youth Court and Project Skip. Youth court is basically a court for minors that do felonies and they go through a formal court however, the punishment isn’t to go straight to jail. Basically, they get the easy way out by doing community service however, if a felony happens again they cannot go through youth court they have to spend the money and go through a formal court. I think this helps the community by giving students an extra chance to fix things up other than going straight to jail.

The second thing that is related to Youth Court is Project Skip. Project skip is a different routine than youth court. In Project Skip instead of a person going to court the person sits in front of a panel of 6 and if they are struggling with school and skipping classes we encourage them to go back to class. We ask them questions that won’t make them feel uncomfortable and try to get to know the person. After, we usually ask them why are you skipping school, what is your intention. If they have siblings then there siblings will think its ok to do that. Then, after the talk with them there is an S.R.O and that person keeps track of this person and calls them once every two weeks to check up and see if they are filling out there log that the student has to get signed by there teachers so we can see if they are improving.

I believe these are great programs for people to stay out of trouble and to have another chance. Although, if the student doesn’t improve and they don’t do there community service then they are kicked out of the program and as for youth court they have to go through formal court. I think if the person has made one mistake and they fix up there problems and know not to do it again then these 2 programs will benefit them. This helps the community because if I had made a mistake and I wanted to get out of it I could go through Youth Court and I do all of my community service and go through my classes then it will get off of my record, but if I don’t then it will stay on my record and it will just make the persons life harder. I truly believe students have benefited from this program and have gotten better from the progress I have seen. After a couple of months of working with the S.R.O they come back and we check to see if there time should be extended or if they are fully done.