Texarkana Arkansas Police Department Presents ‘Pride Academy’ July 31st

This is from the Texarkana Arkansas Police Department:

We are gearing up for the 2024 PRIDE Academy, a 3-day long summer camp for children entering Arkansas Middle School. The camp will run July 31-Aug 2 this year at the middle school.

The camp is designed to foster lasting relationships between children and officers, as well as provide guidance for children at a critical juncture in their lives. PRIDE stands for Personal Responsibility in Daily Efforts, and each day of camp will have a theme such as resisting peer pressure, living with integrity, and personal empowerment. The 75 children signed up to attend are all entering sixth grade, which means they’re at an especially impressionable age. When children have unstable home lives, they often develop behavioral problems that result in them receiving only negative attention from adults and authority figures. Some of the kids attending the PRIDE Academy rarely receive positive attention. The camp seeks to change that. It will run from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day, with the last day featuring a graduation ceremony where each “recruit” will receive a diploma, as well as a backpack stocked with school supplies for the upcoming year.

Earlier this year, every fifth grader in the Arkansas-side school district received a letter announcing the academy, and those interested submitted applications from which the camp reached its maximum of 75 recruits. PRIDE Officials then separated the students into five teams, and each team will be assigned police officers to act as team leaders. In assigning the teams, school officials took special care to mix in students from all five elementary schools into every group. The past has shown behavioral issues have become apparent because of groups that form in elementary school and carry over to the middle school campus. By the time these youth come together at the middle school, the dominant and aggressive personalities of these cliques clash and cause most of the behavioral issues the school is experiencing. We hope that by breaking up these cliques and equally dispersing the youth among the teams, it will help to resolve these behaviors within the classroom when they begin the school year.

While TAPD officers are participating in the academy, it’s a community effort. Speakers from around the area will be coming in to address the recruits, and plenty of local volunteers will also be on hand to assist officers. We are so grateful for the long-lasting support of this community and the forever bonds we are creating with our youth. We also want to thank our founder, Kristi Bennett, because without her vision we would not be where we are today. We thank you all and can’t wait to see you July 31, 2024!