Implementing the Enhanced Safe Communities Safe Schools Model

Safe Schools (SCSS) Model. The SCSS Model’s comprehensive approach to school violence prevention employs a step-by-step process for helping schools implement best practices in violence prevention using school data, implementation science, and community partnerships. Since 2016, the SCSS Model has been implemented in over 150 schools in Colorado. This project proposes significant enhancements to the SCSS Model that includes a web-based toolkit and an optimized training strategy to make scale-up feasible to diverse and historically underserved populations. A diverse group of user experts (e.g., teachers, counselors, administrators, youth advisors) will provide feedback on the SCSS Model enhancements to ensure cultural relevance and accessibility. Multidisciplinary school teams and their community partners will receive training and technical assistance to support data collection and prioritization, selection and implementation of trainings and evidence-based practices, and sustainability.

The project has three main goals for improving school safety in schools: develop an innovative web-based toolkit and optimized training strategy to enhance the SCSS Model; train school staff, students, and community partners using the enhanced SCSS Model including trainings on positive school climate, bystander reporting, information sharing, trauma-informed mental health support, and behavioral threat assessment; and collect process evaluation data on the enhanced SCSS Model to evaluate implementation, support continuous quality improvement, and encourage sustainability.
The project includes a strong multidisciplinary team of partners, school safety experts, and skilled trainers including the University of Colorado Boulder, Navajo Nation, National Center for School Safety, National Association of School Resource Officers, Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), and the I Love U Guys