Safe & Supportive Schools

The Office of Safe and Supportive Schools (OSSS) addresses;

• the health and well-being of students
• school safety, security, and emergency management and preparedness.

OSSS administers, coordinates, and recommends policy as well as administers grant programs and technical assistance centers addressing the overall safe and health school community.

Safe and supportive schools are critical to the well-being of the whole school community as well as the academic success of students. The Department of Education provides schools, school districts, and state education agencies with resources aimed at creating and nurturing positive school climates; preventing school violence; and protecting the whole school community through school safety, security, and emergency management and preparedness planning. The program offices, grant programs, and technical assistance centers all respond to the recommendations put forth by the Federal Commission on School Safety and serve practitioners as they work to continually protect their school community students, staff, and families.

• Secretary's School Safety Grants Announcement Currently, the Department is competing grant programs addressing violence prevention, school climate and mental health services.
• OSSS Programs (OSSS) is organized into two (2) groups: The Safe and Supportive Schools Group and the Student Support and Academic Enrichment Group. Together, the groups support grantees across the nation and administer numerous programs including the:
  • Project Prevent Grant Program, which enhances schools' and school districts' ability to identify, assess, and serve students exposed to pervasive violence;
  • School Climate Transformation Grant Program, which helps schools and school districts develop, enhance, or expand their systems of support related school climate programs; and
  • Student Support and Academic Enrichment Program (Title IV, Part A), which addresses well-rounded educational opportunities in both the traditional, in-person setting and virtual setting alike, as well as safe and healthy student programming.
• Federal Partners in Student Health Resource Hub, 
  The Student Health Resource hub serves as a portal where K-12 schools, school districts, SEAs, and other stakeholders can access high quality federal and federally supported information, resources, and research that support student health. The goal of this hub is to provide information that supports the physical and mental health of all students as well as healthy, physical school environments. Content for the site is comprised of resources by the Federal Partners in School Health (FPSH) working group, which is an alliance of federal agencies that support healthy school environments.
• Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance (TA) Center, The REMSTA Center is the nation's higher ed and K-12 school safety, security, and emergency management and preparedness hub for information and services (e.g., guidance, training, tools, resources). The REMS TA Center serves K-12 schools and institutions of higher education (IHEs), public and private, as well as their local, state, and Federal partners with shared school safety responsibilities.  They develop and maintain comprehensive, all-hazard, and high-quality campus and school Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs).  These plans focus on continually protecting the whole school community before, during, and after possible emergencies. In addition to its free virtual trainings, the REMS TA Center offers numerous interactive tools such as its EOP Assist software, which helps generate customized plans and its SITE ASSESS app which facilitate the walk-through and safety inspection of campus and buildings.
• National Center on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE), provides training and technical assistance to schools, school districts, and educational agencies to support efforts aimed at creating and nurturing safe and supportive learning environments. The national center addresses a wide variety of topics that impact school climate, ranging from bullying and violence prevention to tools for measuring and identifying needs for school climate. For example, NCSSLE produced and disseminates ED's School Climate Survey and the School Climate Improvement Resource Package.
• Title IV-A Technical Assistance Center (T4PA Center), The T4PA Center provides SSAE State coordinators (SCs) assistance across the program’s diverse content areas in the form of developing and disseminating high-quality resources, information, and trainings, as well as providing access to a national cadre of subject matter experts who can offer targeted technical assistance. In partnership with ED, the T4PA Center works with SCs to identify grant implementation needs, develop a tailored plan to address these needs, and broker support to build capacity at the state and local levels to help ensure Title IV, Part A programmatic success.