Los Angeles County Consortium to STOP school violence

Academia Avance, the lead Local Education Agency (LEA) for a consortium of five (5) LEAs (Consortium), seeks the STOP School Violence Grant. The Consortium consists of 16 public charter schools, serving 6,549 students, with 83% qualifying for free and reduced-price meals. All schools are in Los Angeles County, California. The STOP grant will enable Consortium schools to implement programs with the overarching goal of preventing and reducing school violence, addressing all five special purpose areas. The Consortium will implement technology (Area 1) to provide accurate identification of threats and danger. WeTip, an anonymous reporting system, will facilitate reports identifying potential threats. Incident Commander, a phone application to share information during an active emergency situation, will be purchased to mitigate the impact of an active emergency situation.  The Consortium schools will use On-line prevention simulation software called Friend2Friend and Safe & Caring Schools for Educators and Staff. Their objective is reducing school violence through recognition of concerning behaviors and open communication between students and adults. The Consortium will create and institute a multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessment (BTA) team (Area 2) at each school using a Trauma-informed framework with fidelity. BTA teams will utilize an assessment tool called PREPaRE. The BTA teams will receive training, technical assistance, and coaching from the Center for Safe & Resilient Schools and Workplaces (Area 3). Specific training for BTA and other school personnel, mental health providers, and law enforcement will include Trauma-informed threat assessments, Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for in Schools (CBITS), C3 (Collective, Care, Continuum), and Safe Dates. The Consortium will track the number training hours and the number/type of threats responded to. Each school will receive enhanced emergency maps, 6 emergency drills over the grant period, and 2 school safety audits annually. Further, School Resource Officers/Community Resource officers will receive 16-hours of Post certified training on Active Shooter Training, Tactical Response to School and Community Violence and Responding to a Mental Health Crisis (Area 4). Finally, one full-time masters-level School Social Worker (SSW) will be hired to support the prevention of school violence (Area 5). To promote sustainability beyond the grant period, the Advisory Council (AC) and BTA teams will be ongoing; certified Trainer-of-Trainers will be implemented; and a re-prioritization of Local Accountability Planning funds will be reviewed to support the Social Worker position. Moreover, critical issues such as student privacy, data security, racial or identity-based discrimination and bias will be continually evaluated and addressed.