Superintendent of Georgia’s DeKalb County School District Devon Horton was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s recently formed School Safety Clearinghouse Advisory Board.
According to the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) website, the board “provides advice and recommendations on the development and implementation of evidence-based school safety best practices of the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse.”
According to Common Ground News, Horton is one of three superintendents on the 26-member advisory board, composed of school safety experts and education leaders who will focus on guidance and recommendations to improve the security of K-12 grade schools.
The board will work to advise Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas and will be under CISA as it works on implementing best practices, and those recommendations will be published on a federal platform, SchoolSafety.gov.
According to Common Ground, Horton released a statement indicating his desire to contribute to creating safe learning environments for students.
“I am honored to serve on this advisory board and contribute to the national effort to create safer learning environments.” Horton continued, “In a world with ever-shifting and elevated threats, I believe our collective experiences will be constructive in helping develop practical solutions that improve protection for our students, staff, and communities.”
The board’s first meeting will take place in Fall 2024, after it was established in October 2023 to satisfy the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act requirements. That act was signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, and among provisions related to gun control, the law expanded federal funding for crisis intervention programs.
According to the Department of Justice, the BCSA “authorized a total of $1.4 billion in funding for new and existing violence-prevention and intervention programs between 2022 and 2026.”
The DOJ also noted that due to this increased funding, more than $73 million in supplemental OJP STOP School Violence grants were awarded to enhance school security.
More than 3,500 school-enhanced intervention teams were created, more than 2,300 schools formed intervention teams, and 141 schools implemented school safety plans, partly due to BCSA funding increases.
According to a White House report on the progress of the BSCA
, released in June 2024, “The Biden-Harris Administration codified and expanded the Federal School Safety Clearinghouse, implementing the Luke and Alex School Safety Act that was part of BSCA. The Clearinghouse, available at SchoolSafety.gov, provides evidence-based practices and recommendations to improve school safety for use by states, local educational agencies, institutions of higher education, state and local law enforcement agencies, health professionals, and the general public.”The report continued, “BSCA provides $1 billion for the new Stronger Connections grant program, which helps schools invest in strategies to keep their students safe. The Department of Education released Stronger Connections funding to states in September 2022. Since then, all states have run competitions for this funding, making awards to more than 2,100 high-need communities. Preliminary data show schools are using Stronger Connections funds to update safety plans, hire mental health professionals and school resource officers, carry out community violence intervention and prevention strategies, install security equipment, conduct school climate surveys, address chronic absenteeism, and implement anti-bullying and anti-harassment programs.”
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