Special to the OBSERVER

Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES is moving forward on $1 million in grant funding to benefit school violence prevention.

The award from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) supports two programs designed to prevent school violence. One program focuses on mental health through social-emotional learning, youth mental health first aid, and trauma informed care. The second program works to prevent and reduce school violence through expanding and enhancing the training and preparation of school threat assessment and crisis intervention teams. Programs include Train the Trainer programs, providing sustainability for these school safety initiatives for years to come.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything about stability it’s the importance of having a safe and reliable learning environment that can meet the needs of all students,” said John O’Connor, Ed.D., E2CCB assistant superintendent for Management Services. “With this grant, we’ll be able to empower our component districts and BOCES with the tools necessary to provide that safe and stable learning environment.”

The $1 million in new grant funding continues the work of two $250,000 BJA grants previously secured by the E2CCB Regional Grants Cooperative Service, which assisted with the development and implementation of training and programming geared toward school safety. The goal of these programs is to prevent and reduce school violence through expanding and enhancing the training and preparation of schools across E2CCB’s service region. The new funding enhances and expands the programs and teams developed over the past two years.

Under the mental health program, the E2CCB Instructional Support Services division will continue to train component district staff in the areas of youth mental health first-aid training before expanding into trauma informed care. Based on the first round of training, component districts and participants shared a desire to expand training to allow trainees to become the trainers. Thanks in part to this new funding, round two will see the implementation of the Train the Trainer program and an expansion of social-emotional curriculum to include a middle school bullying component. Additionally, the grant will facilitate a contract with the Chautauqua County Department of Mental Hygiene to offer an Adult Mental Health First Aid course.

Similarly, the safety and school threat assessment program will continue with workshops and trainings revolving around threat assessment and crisis intervention. Participating component districts that identified school safety teams will continue to work using the School Threat

Assessment Guidelines (STAG). To determine the best rollout, pacing and timeline for the Safety Assessment & Intervention implementation and sustainability, E2CCB partnered with Dewey G. Cornell and Navigate 360, community-based organization partners, local law enforcement agencies and school districts. Additionally, this funding will help enhance or provide functionality for anonymous reporting systems in participating districts.

“While we’re extremely pleased we were able to secure more than $1.5 million in grant funding over the past two years which focuses on safe school initiatives, the ultimate goal is to ensure the knowledge gained by the trainings offered lives long beyond the scope of the grant,” O’Connor said. “By participating in the Train the Trainers program, we’re enabling our district leaders to carryout this important task of identifying, preventing and addressing mental health crisis and threats our schools face.