EBF Community School District's Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence grant program.

Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont School District (EBF) will be responsible for oversight of activities performed under the U.S. Department of Justice’s STOP School Violence Program Grant. EBF will serve as the lead LEA in our Rural Iowa Safety Consortium (RISC), which includes the following school districts: Albia Community and Davis County. Our RISC Consortium comprises LEAs in rural areas within four counties (Davis, Mahaska, Monroe and Wapello), which are located in Southeast Iowa. RISC includes 8 elementary, 1 middle, 1 middle/high, and 1 high school serving 3,540 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12. Our STOP grant program is designed to improve K-12 school security by providing students and teachers with the tools they need to recognize, respond quickly to, and help prevent acts of violence and ensure a positive school climate. Our STOP program will improve school safety through the development of comprehensive programs that include both purpose areas: 1) training school personnel and educating students to prevent student violence; 2) developing and implementing multi-disciplinary threat assessment teams and operating a technology solution. RISC will ensure that all implementation strategies, policies, and protocols created under this grant program address critical issues such as student privacy, data security, race, national origin, disability, religion and sex-based discrimination and bias. EBF has designed a management plan to achieve all the objectives of the proposed program on time and within budget, including clearly defined responsibilities of staff, community partners, and contracted service providers. Programs and activities include training to support identifying and intervening with students who may pose a risk to self or others, which includes Youth Mental Health First Aid, implementing a trauma-informed framework, specialized training for mental health professionals working in consortium schools. Suicide prevention and awareness curriculum for students enrolled in participating schools. Consortium schools will receive training and technical assistance to enhance individual threat assessments and conduct school safety audits, which include training in Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, emergency exercises/drills, and updated plans. Our RISC program will implement the ReportIT anonymous tip line that will include reporting threats, crimes, and suspicious activity through a variety of mediums (telephone, text, social media applications, and a web-based platform), which is particularly important as approximately 30% of the population we serve does not have internet service. Our management and implementation plan are based on collaboration with all law enforcement agencies supporting our Consortium schools.