Education Week - October 2, 2024 - 10

EDWEEK EXPLAINS
How One Grant Can Help Schools
Recover From Shootings
By Olina Banerji
The Sept. 4 school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder,
Ga., in which four people were killed, brought renewed national
attention to gun violence on K-12 grounds. The fallout-both
emotional and economic-of such violent incidents can last years.
In the wake of a tragedy, schools need immediate financial
assistance to fund a slew of emergency services to rehabilitate
their communities. School and district leaders can lean on a
relatively lesser-known source of funding called Project SERV,
or School Emergency Response to Violence.
Project SERV provides short-term, emergency funds to school
districts, state education departments, and institutes of higher
education to help them recover from a " violent or traumatic event
in which the learning environment has been disrupted, " according
to a spokesperson of the U.S. Department of Education.
Over the last five years, Project SERV grants have been
administered to schools, colleges, and universities in a variety of
situations. For example:
The Newtown, Conn., school district received $6.3 million
after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20
1st graders and six educators were killed.
The Hawaii State Department of Education received
$2.1 million to give to schools after a series of wildfires in 2023 led
to the widespread destruction of property and loss of lives.
The Uvalde, Texas, school district was awarded a total of
$3 million between 2022 and 2023 after a gunman killed
19 students and two educators at Robb Elementary School.
Four historically Black colleges and universities-Howard
University in the District of Columbia, Texas Southern
University in Houston, Texas, Delaware State University in
Dover, Del., and Claflin University in Orangeburg, S.C.-were
awarded a total of $2.4 million to address disruptions caused
by bomb threats in 2023.
The Wynne school district in Arkansas was awarded $320,000
in 2023 to hire mental health and case workers after a string of
tornadoes damaged classrooms and homes in the community.
In the wake of a school shooting or an unexpected natural
disaster, school leaders are often unsure of the specific assistance
they need, said Kathleen Gombos, the principal of Sandy Hook
Elementary. Gombos was appointed three months after the
shooting, and oversaw the recovery and rebuilding efforts,
which included a temporary move to a new school building in a
neighboring town.
" It's not possible to just add a million dollars to a school's
budget [after a tragic or traumatic event]. There aren't general
funds available for dealing with something like this, since school
budgets are set a year in advance, " Gombos said.
Here's what you need to know about the history of this littleknown
federal grant, how schools benefit from it today, and how
advocates want it to change in the future.
When did Project SERV begin?
In 1998, President Bill Clinton's administration proposed a
" federal crisis-intervention team " to respond to violent incidents
at schools after a spate of school shootings in Jonesboro, Ark.,
Springfield, Ore., West Paducah, Ky., and Pearl, Miss.
The Clinton administration planned to earmark $12 million
for services like crisis intervention experts and mental health
counselors for students and teachers. The idea was to set up a
response mechanism akin to the kind of support that communities
receive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after a
hurricane or earthquake.
The proposal saw little uptake by Congress in 1998. But the
1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado
spurred Congress to fund Project SERV as a competitive and
discretionary grant in 2000. The grant fund is under the purview
of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education in the
Department of Education.
The first sizeable set of grants awarded were to the schools
affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks-grants totaling
$8.7 million were awarded to school districts in New York, New
Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, and the District of
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 2, 2024 | www.edweek.org
How big is the Project SERV fund?
In the 2001 fiscal year, Project SERV had a budget of
$10 million. Now, Project SERV has a budget of $5 million.
Under the National Activities for School Safety program, the
Secretary of Education is required to reserve $5 million for Project
SERV annually. Project SERV funds are rolled over to the next
fiscal year, if they aren't used fully in one.
The funds are disbursed to schools at the discretion of the
Secretary of Education, and their size or duration may vary
according to the scope of the incident and the resources needed
to recover.
What can Project SERV fund?
After a disruptive or tragic event, schools need a multitude of
services to return to normalcy. Project SERV grants can be used to
hire mental health counselors, social workers, and school resource
officers, or SROs, in case of a school shooting.
SERV grants can also help schools procure temporary security
apparatus such as non-permanent metal detectors and security
cameras, as well as hire extra guards in the short run. Schools may
also use the grant toward relocation costs to a new building site-
like Gombos did for Sandy Hook Elementary students.
Greg Johnson, the principal of West Liberty-Salem High School
in West Liberty, Ohio, used the $160,000 awarded to his district
in 2018 to hire an SRO, a law enforcement officer, and a part-time
mental health counselor. The school had experienced a shooting
in January 2017, when one student opened fire in a bathroom on
another student, who, though critically injured, survived.
Johnson's SERV grant took about 15 to 16 months to process
from the time of the shooting. In the meantime, the school had
hired the extra help it needed, so the SERV grant went toward
reimbursing the district for those services. Like Sandy Hook,
West-Liberty Salem held onto its new recruits and used the
district's general fund to pay for those positions once the grant
ran out.
West Liberty-Salem High didn't have an SRO before the
shooting. Now, seven years after creating the position, Johnson
said the SRO has become " ingrained " in the school.
" He reads to kids. He helps coach varsity football. He's in the
lunchrooms and in the hallways, " he said. " He's in full uniform,
and he carries a gun. I think most of our teachers and students
would say they feel safer in the building knowing that the SRO
is present. "
Sandy Hook Elementary used its SERV grant over three
years. One of its key uses was to hire substitute teachers and
paraprofessionals to help the full-time staff cope with teaching in
the aftermath of the shooting.
" I wanted to create a level playing field for the teachers. They
were back two weeks after the incident. And it's not like the
standards changed for Newtown, " Gombos said. " Teachers would
just go home tired because they had to keep coming back to the
place where it had happened. They were barely making it through
the day. "
When substitute teachers were in the classrooms, the full-time
staff got a breather. They could also plan and collaborate and
access mental health support during this time.
The SERV grant also allowed the school to hire
paraprofessionals who helped with the increase in students'
behavioral issues, triggered by the shooting.
SERV grants, however, can't be used to make any capital
investments in a school building, like construction, permanent
metal detectors, or security cameras.
Johnson retrofitted school windows with bullet-resistant glass
and added lock indicators to all the doors. These costs came out
of the school's budget and were not paid or reimbursed by the
SERV grant.
Additionally, SERV funds can't be used toward legal fees
incurred by a district, its employees, students, or their families in
any action taken against them in a civil court.
Columbia for " emergency counseling. " (In some cases, students
and staff had lost a parent or relative in the attacks.)
How can a school apply for a Project SERV grant?
The application is usually four to five pages long and should
contain information about the incident and its impact on the
" learning environment " of the school. Schools will need to
provide details like the number of student absences or any
increase in visits to a nurse or psychologist.
In some cases, however, the Education Department can
expedite the support to a school district, when a large-scale,
traumatic mass shooting takes place, like the ones at Sandy Hook
and Robb Elementary.
In most cases, the Education Department reaches out to the
state's education agency and channels its grants through them-
first to the affected district, and then to the specific school. The
department may also reach out directly to the district and help
them apply for the funding. The grantee must be a state agency or
a school district.
Applications are accepted continuously and there is " no set "
due date.
The Principal Recovery Network, a support group for principals
run by the National Association of Secondary School Principals,
includes information about the SERV grant in its outreach toward
principals who have experienced a shooting or violent incident in
their schools.
What changes do advocates want the Education
Department to make to Project SERV?
The notoriety and scale of an incident appears to matter in
terms of how quickly a school district is helped.
At Sandy Hook, Gombos said the SERV grant had already
been set up by the time she was appointed, three months after
the incident. By contrast, other school leaders may have to wait
months for the funding, especially if they weren't aware of the
grant when the violence or disaster at their school occurred.
Johnson is hopeful that the grant size will increase beyond its
current $5 million appropriation, which might spur the Education
Department to proactively look for more schools to support.
" Mass shootings, hurricanes, or tornadoes, thankfully, don't
happen as often. But there are non-fatal shootings in schools
almost every week, and we've found that those incidents also
traumatize students and staff. Those schools also need support, "
Johnson said.
Gombos and Johnson also suggested that the Education
Department give examples of how the funding has been used by
previous grantees.
Sandy Hook's use of substitute teachers and paraprofessionals,
Gombos said, could help trigger ideas for other school leaders.
Meanwhile, Johnson felt, in retrospect, he could have used SERV
grants to formally train his staff on trauma-informed care to
identify which students were struggling to cope with the events.
Project SERV does assign an officer to oversee how the grant
is being executed and help the grantees re-apply if they need a
second installment. Most schools, though, don't seek additional
funding, the Education Department spokesperson said.
Warman Hall, the director of federal programs for the Aztec
municipal school district in New Mexico, which experienced a
school shooting in 2017, said the department could also consider
creating different bucket of grants for natural disaster recovery,
separate from the just-in-time funding to recover from a violent
incident in a school.
" It would be nice to have a separate grant for this because,
unfortunately, it seems to be a perennial issue, " he said.
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