HARRISBURG – Rep. Aaron Bernstine (R-Beaver/Butler/Lawrence) today announced that $225,000 in funding has been awarded to nine school districts in the 10th Legislative District to help improve student safety through a new grant program established by lawmakers earlier this year.
The School Safety and Security Grant Program provides grants to school districts, intermediate units, area vocational-technical schools, charter schools and private residential rehabilitative institutions for a wide variety of projects to improve school safety.
Local grant recipients include Big Beaver Falls Area School District, Blackhawk School District, New Brighton Area School District, Riverside Beaver County School District, Slippery Rock Area School District, Ellwood City Area School District Mohawk Area School District, New Castle School District and Wilmington Area School District.
Eligible uses for the grants include hiring school security officers, purchasing security-related technology, completing safety and security assessments, implementing violence prevention curricula, offering counseling services for students, and creating other programs to protect students.
“The safety and security needs of each school vary, so an important aspect of this program was to ensure flexible funding for schools to meet their own specific needs,” Bernstine said.
Each local school district that applied through the program was awarded a grant of $25,000.
The new program was created as part of a comprehensive school safety bill that was signed into law in June. More than $60 million in new funding was dedicated in the current year’s budget to improve school safety, Bernstine said.
“Our schools should be among the safest places for students anywhere, because if students aren’t safe in their classrooms, they cannot learn effectively,” Bernstine said. “I was proud to support this grant program in June, and I’m pleased to see our schools in the 10th District will be benefitting from it.”
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