The Sept. 4 college taking pictures at Apalachee Excessive College in Winder, Ga., through which 4 folks had been killed, introduced a renewed nationwide consideration to gun violence on Ok-12 grounds. The fallout—each emotional and financial—of such violent incidents can final years.
Within the wake of a tragedy, colleges want fast monetary help to fund a slew of emergency providers to start out rehabilitating their communities. College and district leaders can lean on a comparatively lesser-known supply of funding referred to as Undertaking SERV, or College Emergency Response to Violence.
Undertaking SERV offers short-term, emergency funds to high school districts, state schooling departments, and institutes of upper schooling to assist them recuperate from a “violent or traumatic occasion through which the training surroundings has been disrupted,” based on a spokesperson of the U.S. Division of Training.
During the last 5 years, Undertaking SERV grants have been administered to varsities, schools, and universities in quite a lot of conditions. For instance:
- The Newtown, Conn., college district acquired $6.3 million after the mass taking pictures at Sandy Hook Elementary, through which 20 1st graders and 6 educators had been killed.
- The Hawaii State Division of Training acquired $2.1 million to provide to varsities after a collection of wildfires in 2023 led to the widespread destruction of property and lack of lives.
- The Uvalde, Texas, college district was awarded a complete of $3 million between 2022 and 2023 after a gunman killed 17 college students and two educators at Robb Elementary College.
- 4 traditionally Black schools and universities—Howard College within the District of Columbia, Texas Southern College in Houston, Texas, Delaware State College in Dover, Del., and Claflin College in Orangeburg, S.C.—had been awarded a complete of $2.4 million to deal with disruptions attributable to bomb threats in 2023.
- The Wynne college district in Arkansas was awarded $320,000 in 2023 to rent psychological well being and case employees after a string of tornadoes broken school rooms and houses in the neighborhood.
Within the wake of a faculty taking pictures or an sudden pure catastrophe, college leaders are sometimes not sure of the precise help they want, stated Kathleen Gombos, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary. Gombos was appointed three months after the taking pictures, and oversaw the restoration and rebuilding efforts, which included a brief transfer to a brand new college constructing in a neighboring city.
“It’s not potential to only add one million {dollars} to a college’s funds [after a tragic or traumatic event]. There aren’t basic funds obtainable for coping with one thing like this, since college budgets are set a yr prematurely,” Gombos stated.
Right here’s what it’s good to know in regards to the historical past of this little-known federal grant, how colleges profit from it as we speak, and the way advocates need it to vary sooner or later.
When did Undertaking SERV start?
In 1998, President Invoice Clinton’s administration proposed a “federal crisis-intervention group” to answer violent incidents at colleges after a spate of faculty shootings in Jonesboro, Ark., Springfield, Ore., West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss.
The Clinton administration deliberate to earmark $12 million for providers like disaster intervention consultants and psychological well being counselors for college kids and academics. The concept was to arrange a response mechanism akin to the form of help that communities obtain from the Federal Emergency Administration Company after a hurricane or earthquake.
The proposal noticed little uptake by Congress in 1998. However the 1999 mass taking pictures at Columbine Excessive College in Colorado spurred Congress to fund Undertaking SERV as a aggressive and discretionary grant in 2000. The grant fund is below the purview of the Workplace of Elementary and Secondary Training within the Division of Training.
The primary sizeable set of grants awarded had been to the colleges affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults—grants totaling $8.7 million had been awarded to high school districts in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, and the District of Columbia for “emergency counseling.” (In some circumstances, college students and workers had misplaced a mum or dad or relative within the assaults.)
How massive is the Undertaking SERV fund?
Within the 2001 fiscal yr, Undertaking SERV had a funds of $10 million. Now, Undertaking SERV has a funds of $5 million.
Underneath the Nationwide Actions for College Security program, the Secretary of Training is required to order $5 million for Undertaking SERV yearly. Undertaking SERV funds are rolled over to the following fiscal yr, in the event that they aren’t used absolutely in a single.
The funds are disbursed to varsities on the discretion of the Secretary of Training, and their dimension or length might differ based on the scope of the incident and the sources wanted to recuperate.
What can Undertaking SERV fund?
After a disruptive or tragic occasion, colleges want a large number of providers to return to normalcy. Undertaking SERV grants can be utilized to rent psychological well being counselors, social employees, and faculty useful resource officers, or SROs, in case of a faculty taking pictures.
SERV grants may assist colleges procure short-term safety equipment resembling non-permanent metallic detectors and safety cameras, in addition to rent further guards within the quick run. Colleges may additionally use the grant towards relocation prices to a brand new constructing website—like Gombos did for Sandy Hook Elementary college students.
Greg Johnson, the principal of West Liberty-Salem Excessive College in West Liberty, Ohio, used the $160,000 awarded to his district in 2018 to rent an SRO, a regulation enforcement officer, and a part-time psychological well being counselor. The college had skilled a taking pictures in January 2017, when one pupil opened hearth in a toilet on one other pupil, who, although critically injured, survived.
Johnson’s SERV grant took about 15 to16 months to course of from the time of the taking pictures. Within the meantime, the varsity had employed the additional assist it wanted, so the SERV grant went towards reimbursing the district for these providers. Like Sandy Hook, West-Liberty Salem held onto its new recruits and used the district’s basic fund to pay for these positions as soon as the grant ran out.
West Liberty-Salem Excessive didn’t have an SRO earlier than the taking pictures. Now, seven years after creating the place, Johnson stated the SRO has grow to be “ingrained” within the college.
“He reads to children. He helps coach varsity soccer. He’s within the lunchrooms and within the hallways,” he stated. “He’s in full uniform, and he carries a gun. I feel most of our academics and college students would say they really feel safer within the constructing understanding that the SRO is current.”
Sandy Hook Elementary used its SERV grant over three years. Certainly one of its key makes use of was to rent substitute academics and paraprofessionals to assist the full-time workers address educating within the aftermath of the taking pictures.
“I wished to create a stage taking part in area for the academics. They had been again two weeks after the incident. And it’s not just like the requirements modified for Newtown,” Gombos stated. “Academics would simply go residence drained as a result of they needed to hold coming again to the place the place it had occurred. They had been barely making it by means of the day.”
When substitute academics had been within the school rooms, the full-time workers obtained a breather. They may additionally plan and collaborate and entry psychological well being help throughout this time.
The SERV grant additionally allowed the varsity to rent paraprofessionals who helped take care of the rise in college students’ behavioral points, triggered by the taking pictures.
SERV grants, nonetheless, can’t be used to make any capital investments in a faculty constructing, like building, everlasting metallic detectors, or safety cameras.
Johnson, as an example, retrofitted college home windows with bullet-resistant glass and added lock indicators to all of the doorways. These prices got here out of the varsity’s funds and weren’t paid or reimbursed by the SERV grant.
Moreover, SERV funds can’t be used towards authorized charges incurred by a district, its staff, college students, or their households in any motion taken towards them in a civil court docket.
How can a faculty apply for a Undertaking Serv grant?
The applying is often 4 to 5 pages lengthy and may include details about the incident and its affect on the “studying surroundings” of the varsity. Colleges might want to present particulars just like the variety of pupil absences or any enhance in visits to a nurse or psychologist.
In some circumstances, nonetheless, the Training Division can expedite the help to a college district, when a large-scale, traumatic mass taking pictures takes place, like those at Sandy Hook and Robb Elementary.
Generally, the Training Division reaches out to the state’s schooling company and channels its grants by means of them—first to the affected district, after which to the precise college. The division may additionally attain out on to the district and assist them apply for the funding. The grantee should be a state company or a faculty district.
Functions are accepted constantly and there’s “no set” due date.
The Principal Restoration Community, a help group for principals run by the Nationwide Affiliation of Secondary College Principals, contains details about the SERV grant in its outreach towards principals who’ve skilled a taking pictures or violent incident of their colleges.
What modifications do advocates need the Training Division to make to Undertaking SERV?
The notoriety and scale of an incident seems to matter when it comes to how rapidly a faculty district is helped.
At Sandy Hook, Gombos stated the SERV grant had already been arrange by the point she was appointed, three months after the incident. In contrast, different college leaders might have to attend months for the funding, particularly in the event that they weren’t conscious of the grant when the violence or catastrophe at their college occurred.
Johnson is hopeful that the grant dimension will enhance past its present $5 million appropriation, which could spur the Training Division to search for extra colleges to help.
“Mass shootings, hurricanes, or tornadoes, fortunately, don’t occur as usually. However there are non-fatal shootings in colleges virtually each week, and we’ve discovered that these incidents additionally traumatize college students and workers. These colleges additionally want help,” Johnson stated.
Gombos and Johnson additionally recommended that the Training Division give examples of how the funding has been utilized by earlier grantees.
Sandy Hook’s use of substitute academics and paraprofessionals, Gombos stated, may assist set off concepts for different college leaders. In the meantime, Johnson felt, looking back, he may have used SERV grants to formally prepare his workers on trauma-informed care.
Undertaking SERV does assign an officer to supervise how the grant is being executed and assist the grantees re-apply in the event that they want a second installment. Most faculties, although, don’t search further funding, the Training Division spokesperson stated.
Warman Corridor, the director of federal applications for the Aztec municipal college district in New Mexico, which skilled a faculty taking pictures in 2017, stated the division may additionally think about creating totally different bucket of grants for pure catastrophe restoration, separate from the just-in-time funding to recuperate from a violent incident in a faculty.
“It might be good to have a separate grant for this as a result of, sadly, it appears to be a perennial subject,” he stated.
