National Center for School Safety

The purpose of the FY 2019 STOP School Violence Training and Technical Assistance (STOP TTA) Program is to provide TTA and other support to awardees under the BJA STOP Prevention Training and Response to Mental Health Crisis Program, the BJA STOP Technology and Threat Assessment Solutions for Safer Schools Program, and the COPS Office STOP School Violence Prevention Program, in order to develop a knowledge base and technical assistance delivery model for communities seeking to improve school safety. An important goal for this program is to provide nationwide simultaneous TTA to school districts, public safety agencies, and communities, in an effort to prevent school violence as prescribed in the responsibilities required of BJA and the COPS Office under the STOP School Violence Act. The STOP School Violence Act is designed to improve school security and prevent acts of violence by students against themselves and others.

CA/NCF

The National Center for School Safety (NCSS) at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health has been operating as the training and technical assistance center for the BJA and COPS STOP School Violence Program since 2019. We have serviced over 4000 attendees through a variety of training modalities and on demand assistance, created a web presence that has reached almost 10,000 visitors, and provided responsive technical assistance (TA) through a helpdesk. We also launched a pilot program for proactive TA where 32 grantees participated in an assessment of implementation progress and challenges and met with a TA Specialist resulting in a tailored TA plan for each grantee based on an established rubric. As part of the proactive TA, we also hosted quarterly meetings with the grantees by region to hear updates from NCSS and connect with the grantees in their region. This pilot was successful in helping grantees make progress in their project implementation, but our TA efforts require more resources to expand to 200+ new grantees per year. 

With this supplement, we will focus on expanding TA to increase knowledge and build capacity of future STOP grantees for school safety program planning, adaptation, and implementation. We will also extend the reach of existing and future NCSS school safety expertise and training resources by becoming a trusted source of information and assistance for all future STOP grantees. The goals of the supplement are to:1) Expand proactive TA meetings and site visits to future BJA and COPS STOP School Violence grantees across the four BJA geographic regions (Midwest, East, South, West);  2) Provide extended opportunities for on demand support through ongoing opportunities to connect with other STOP grantees and school safety experts; and 3) Disseminate lessons learned and best practices through online guides including further expanding an implementation guide and developing content from lessons learned in TA specific to STOP grantees. We will hire four additional TA Specialists and a TA Coordinator to provide proactive TA, including in-person site visits, and on demand TA based on our existing successful model.

The National Center for School Safety (NCSS) at the University of Michigan School of Public Health brings together experts in criminal justice, education, mental health, and public health to provide training and technical assistance (TTA) at the school, district, community, and state levels to 750+ STOP grantees nationwide. In response to the Invitation to Apply for Funding to Support the STOP School Violence Training and Technical Assistance Program (STOP TTA), we seek to accomplish three objectives through the proposed supplemental funding: 1) expand our TTA activities to include 200 new project grantees in the 2022 fiscal year; 2) in collaboration with BJA, the United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (USSS NTAC), and the Department of Education (Ed), support a national convening on threat assessment; and 3) expand our existing expertise and training opportunities to develop resources and services to enhance the capacity of SROs and education professionals to effectively identify and respond to students with behavioral health conditions or developmental disabilities and effectively manage students during a crisis. We will accomplish these objectives by leveraging our existing NCSS staffing and subject matter experts infrastructure, bringing in new topic-area expertise in behavioral health and developmental disabilities, and implementing our successful training and technical assistance paradigm.