Safe Team program in Tulsa Schools may be in trouble

A successful group aimed at helping teenagers cope with problems and avoid crisis, may soon be a thing of the past. <br><br>Tulsa Public School's Safe Team is in financial crisis. News on 6 anchor

Monday, September 16th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

A successful group aimed at helping teenagers cope with problems and avoid crisis, may soon be a thing of the past.

Tulsa Public School's Safe Team is in financial crisis. News on 6 anchor Terry Hood says Booker T. Washington and Bixby High School piloted the Safe Team program with grant money four years ago.

Now the grant money is gone and Tulsa Public Schools doesn't have the money to keep Washington's program going. Bixby schools say the program is too important not to support. "So I think itâ€™s crucial. I know that there are kids who said to me last year I might not be here if we hadnâ€™t had safe team and I believe that.â€ Lydia Wilson's job as Bixby Safe Team coordinator is to reach out to teens.

And help them reach out to each other. And she say's the crisis intervention program is working at Bixby High School. â€œBut I do know there was some instances in which we could had some really tragic outcomes at school for kids and because we had the program we didn't."

A key ingredient to the programs success is the teens themselves. In this class, they're working on icebreakers for their mentoring program. But their main role is just to be there for their peers. Amanda Villucci, Bixby senior: "I think its so important just because you know that there's always someone to go to you know what I mean and even if you don't know who's in Safe Team you know there is a Safe Team so there's somebody to go to."

Megan Ernce, Bixby senior: "They know we're in safe team so they can come to us and say I have this problem and talk about it with us and let us know what's going on and we try to help them so they donâ€™t have to go to a teacher or something 'cause that doesn't always help." Now itâ€™s a fellow Safe Team that needs help.

Booker T Washington, the birthplace of the Safe Team program, doesn't have the money for a coordinator.

Megan Ernce, Bixby senior: "I think every school should have it I think just two of us having it, just Bixby and Booker T, isnâ€™t enough to begin with so that they lost theirs that's really upsetting."