Lansing School District STOP School Violence Grant Application

The Lansing School District (District-Applicant), located in Lansing, Michigan serving 9,186 students grades preK-12, proposes STOP School Violence project, a school security project to improve school security measures through renovating current tools, policies and procedures to provide students and staff the skills to recognize, respond to and prevent acts of violence[1]. In partnership with law-enforcement, juvenile justice, mental health organizations, and parents and caregivers, The District seeks to reduce incidents of violence, increase knowledge of how to respond to a threat of violence, improve avenues of communication, and bolster feelings of safety. The District will implement a comprehensive, layered approach to school safety by redefining the District’s response and preparation for an active shooter incident. This plan will strengthen local law-enforcement emergency response, enhance early identification and response for students at risk of school violence and in need of mental health support and provide critical training that will create safer school climates at each of Lansing’s twenty-five school campuses.

The identified priorities will serve as the framework for implementation:

Priority One: Implement a mobile phone application that will allow students, staff, and community members to anonymously identify threats of school violence. Priority Two: Adopt a behavioral threat assessment model and implement a protocol that includes a digital case management system, establish a district threat response team to include law enforcement, develop threat response teams at twenty-five schools, and provide comprehensive threat assessment training and ongoing professional development. Priority Three: Provide active shooter training to empower students, faculty and direct service providers such as bus drivers, custodians, and cafeteria workers with an options-based response protocol. Training will rely heavily upon partnerships with local law enforcement agencies.  Additional learning opportunities for students, staff and stakeholders related to personal safety, the impact of trauma, mental health, crisis response and how to respond to and prevent violence will be instituted. Priority Four: To facilitate grant implementation and compliance, the District will provide stipends to staff overseeing project implementation. The District will also compensate staff at all twenty-five school campuses to participate in school violence reduction training and onboarding.

The STOP project will impact the 9,186 students and approximately 1,225 staff across twenty-five schools in the District. Ongoing evaluation of the STOP project will ensure objectives and goals have been met within all 25 schools. Evaluation will provide feedback to promote continuous improvement of programming, and identify components that yield positive outcomes worth sustaining beyond the grant period.