September 30, 2004 (Washington, DC)-The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice today announced more than $38 million in grants to 24 communities to make schools safer, to foster children’s development, and to prevent aggressive and violent behavior and drug and alcohol use among the Nation’s youth. An additional $933,820 of funding also was awarded to three of these communities by the Office of Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS), U.S. Department of Justice.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative supports urban, rural, suburban, and tribal school district efforts to link prevention activities with community-based services and thus to strengthen local approaches to violence prevention and child development.

This collaboration among the three Federal agencies will help these communities implement a comprehensive plan of education, mental health, social service, law enforcement, and juvenile justice services for youth. The grants announced today will fund 24 new 3-year projects, adding to the 166 SS/HS projects funded over the past 5 years.

The SS/HS Initiative draws on the best practices of education, justice, social services, and mental health systems to provide integrated and comprehensive resources for prevention programs and prosocial services for youth. To apply for SS/HS, FY 2004 grantees and their partners proposed an integrated, comprehensive, communitywide, and community-specific plan to address the problems of school violence and alcohol and other drug abuse. This plan focused on six elements:

• Element 1: Safe school environment.
• Element 2: Alcohol and other drugs and violence prevention and early intervention programs.
• Element 3: School and community mental health preventive and treatment intervention services.
• Element 4: Early childhood psychosocial and emotional development programs.
• Element 5: Supporting and connecting schools and communities.
• Element 6: Safe school policies

A list of grantees and grant amounts follows: