Guest commentary: Character is who you are!

The Yakima School District approached the faith community about a year ago suggesting that the problems associated with area youth were beyond the district's ability to handle alone and requested assistance in addressing concerns related to increased crime and gang activity, oftentimes involving kids as young as nine years old.

This initial effort has resulted in the formation of the Coalition for Character Development. The Coalition now includes Yakima School District, United Way, Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, For a Better Tomorrow, People for People, Citizens for Safe Yakima Valley Communities, Yakima PTA Council, Yakima Valley Young Life, and EPIC.

It has been a long held belief that the public schools have an important role to play in promoting character development in our youth. Districts across the country have wrestled with the challenge of providing character education in schools without violating the separation of Church and State.

In the 1840s, Horace Mann, one of the great education reformers, helped improve instruction in classrooms nationwide, advocating that character development was as important as academics in American schools. Congress, recognizing the importance of this concept, authorized the Partnership in Character Education Program in 1994. This was followed by additional support within the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

What exactly is character education? Character education teaches the habits of thought and deed, which help people live and work together as families, friends, neighbors, communities and nations. It enables us to understand, care about, and model core values such as respect, justice, civic virtue and citizenship, and responsibility for self and others.

Upon such core values, we form the attitudes and actions that are the hallmark of safe, healthy, and informed communities which serve as the foundation of our society. Throughout history, character education has been the shared responsibility of parents, teachers and members of the community.

The intent of the coalition is to form a partnership with parents, schools, organizations involved with youth activities, the faith community, businesses and the community at large, so that our youth hear a consistent message about character traits essential for success in school and life. The plan calls for a character word to be introduced each month and for the community at large to be involved in reinforcing and modeling good character.

The word-of-the-month portion will be rolled out Monday, with the character word "respect" and initially will involve the school district and the faith community. We envision this effort growing to include the business community and local government.

We have the wonderful opportunity to work together as a community -- a partnership between neighbors, bringing life-changing messages of compassion and support to those who desperately need it. This cooperative effort lays the foundation of good character for future generations to build upon and to develop the potential within us all.

For more information on character development, or how to become a member of the Coalition, contact Jessie Garza, Yakima School District, Director of Parent & Community Involvement, 573-7140.

Let's not just talk about the problems involving our youth; let's work together to solve them through character education.

* Benjamin A. Soria is superintendent of the Yakima School District. Dave Edler is senior pastor at Yakima Foursquare Church and a member of the Yakima City Council, whose members also selected him to be mayor.

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