Lori Esslinger used a stepladder to make her points during the Communities That Care annual meeting Dec. 4 in Whitehall.

Esslinger, a parent, pastor and prevention educator, said Salisbury Township is making progress toward putting a Communities That Care system in place but it has required a lot of steps.

"Some of the steps have been baby steps. Some of them have been missteps, where we haven't quite made it," Esslinger said. "Some of them have been two steps up and three steps back. And that's the way it's felt in Salisbury."

One of the most important steps forward was getting school administrators on board. Esslinger said the key was scheduling meetings during the school day.

"It's really nice to have the administrators on board as we're trying to think about some of these things," Esslinger said.

CTC began with the administration of the Pennsylvania Youth Survey given to students in order to identify problems in the community which could lead to antisocial behavior. CTC analyzes survey data and establishes priorities.

"We struggled with defining three specific things because our data was really even keel," Esslinger said. The data did not show any one item as being more significant than others.

Still, the Salisbury group identified three problems low commitment to school, poor family management and academic failure.

Esslinger said the group is in the process of getting additional information on all of these issues.

For example, Esslinger asked what exactly it means to say students have a low commitment to school.

"It's really about the kids thinking courses aren't stimulating enough," Denise Continenza, a Penn State Extension educator who co- ordinates the CTC effort, said.

Academic failure does not mean kids are flunking out, Continenza said, adding Salisbury has a high graduation rate. It could be students who get good grades but think they should be getting even better grades because of pressure they put on themselves or receive from their families.

Principals from both the middle and high schools are doing focus groups with the students to find out more, Continenza said.

Esslinger said the group needs more data to figure out exactly what the roots of these problems are.

"The next step for us is to get more data and that is what is going to empower us to move forward," Esslinger said.

She stepped on the steps of her ladder as she spoke about the next task.

"It just feels as if we're kind of getting forward and then something comes up that makes us take another step back." Esslinger said. "That's not a bad thing but it certainly slows down the process, which is a frustration."

Moving ahead, she said, the group is working to make parents more aware of CTC's existence and what it is.

"The Falcons are strong. They're going to fly high whether they step up or down, forward or back," Esslinger said.

"They're going to make it work."