North Penn Gets $20K Grant To Prevent, Reduce School Violence

LANSDALE, PA — North Penn School District has been awarded sizable grant from the state to help stop violence in the school district.

The $20,000 grant comes from the state Department of Education's Safe Schools Program.

There are four Safe School grants who announced funding winners this week: equipment grants, program grants, grants for school police officers, and grants for school resource officers.

North Penn was one of 60 school district across the state to receive the competitive program grant, and one of 31 districts to receive $20,000, which is the maximum amount.

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The money will be used for a number of programs, including improved anti-violence efforts involving schools, local law enforcement, parents, and community organizations, the state said. At North Penn, district officials said one of the key results of this funding would be behavioral threat assessment.

"This past spring, as part of our effort to focus on a holistic approach to school safety, our Safe Schools Committee identified behavioral threat assessment as a key prevention strategy,” Chris Doerr, NPSD Coordinator of Emergency Management and Safe Schools, said in a statement. "With the support of our full board of school directors, funding was added to the 2018-2019 budget to support the development of a formalized behavioral threat assessment team and process within the school district. This grant will allow us to supplement that initiative by conducting high quality training for the newly formed team, District leaders, and key stakeholders."

More than $1 million in program grant funding was announced for districts across the state this week.

"Contemporary school safety tactics must involve much more than simply equipment and emergency drills,” Doerr added. "In order to truly be successful we must identify and implement prevention strategies that address the entire school community. Building trusting relationships, positive school cultures, and open channels of communication help our school leaders identify concerning behaviors at their incipient stage. By building an internal capacity for behavioral threat assessment we will ensure those concerns are evaluated fully and consistently, and result in the intervention needed to keep everyone safe."

In addition to North Penn, several other Montgomery County districts received funding from the same program, including Methacton, Upper Perkiomen, Cheltenham, Agora Cyber, and North Montco Tech Career Center.

Details on exactly what these programs will look like have not yet been made available.

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