School Safety In Pennsylvania: Districts Get $40M For Security

School districts across Pennsylvania have received significant funding from the state to improve safety in schools while also working to address systemic community violence.

A total of 234 districts statewide have received $40 million to implement behavioral health trainings, hire school resource officers, police officers, and additional counselors and psychologists, and to purchase security-related technology.

“These grants are the mechanism we need to create local strategies that will increase safety for our children and our teachers and prevent violence in classrooms and communities across the commonwealth,” Gov. Wolf said in a statement announcing the funding on Wednesday.

Funding comes from the the state's School Safety and Security Commission, a 17-member council which reviewed applications for funding from around the state. Money was disbursed based on those applications, about 75 perent of which requested help with security planning and security technology. The next most popular application was for trauma-informed curriculum.

>>Better Mental Health Access Key To Making Schools Safer: PA Study

The total request from schools applying for funding was $177.6 million, which officials say points to the need for continued funding for related initiatives.

State efforts to address violence in schools were kicked up a notch following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy in Parkland, Florida. A report commissioned by the state last summer to protect students found a few overarching themes to be most important, including "social and emotional learning," increased access to mental health services in schools, and integrating school security with local law enforcement.

An additional $7.5 million was earmarked Wednesday for community violence prevention for 25 districts around the state. These programs address health care at the community and family level, as well as addressing the latter point in that study: improving the way schools and local police work together.

For a full list of grant recipients, see here.