U.S. Department of Justice: Comprehensive School Safety Initiative

The Comprehensive School Safety Initiative (CSSI) funds rigorous research to produce practical knowledge that can improve the safety of schools and students. The Initiative is carried out through partnerships between researchers, educators, and other stakeholders, including law enforcement, behavioral and mental health professionals, courts, and other justice system professionals. Projects funded under the CSSI are designed to improve understanding that can be applied to schools and school districts across the nation for years to come. The solicitation includes five funding categories with different expectations and requirements to accomplish the purposes of the CSSI:

• Category 1: Developing Novel and Innovative School Safety Programs, Practices, and Strategies. This category is aimed at providing scholars with an opportunity to develop new, innovative, and evidence based programs, practices, or strategies that have not yet undergone evaluation. Applicants are encouraged to propose early-stage or exploratory research and evaluation projects to build evidence for novel and innovative school safety interventions. The innovation grants will support the development of interventions and pilot tests of the implementation of the developed interventions.
• Category 2: Demonstration, Evaluation, and Validation Tests for School Safety. This category seeks to support demonstrations and evaluations of programs, practices, policies, and strategies designed to enhance school and student safety. This category solicits applications for rigorous evaluations of interventions that have already undergone some evaluation and have demonstrated promise for enhancing school and student safety. Applicants are asked to conduct independent evaluations of promising programs. They are also asked to develop the most robust research designs possible that will produce scientific evidence regarding the efficacy and cost/benefit of these programs.
• Category 3: Expanding the use of Effective Interventions through Scaling-up. This category seeks to expand and evaluate the implementation of interventions that have demonstrated positive results and have a strong evidence base. Applicants are encouraged to focus their efforts on specific interventions and expanding them beyond the school level to the district, regional, or state level. The interventions must be ready for scale-up, in that training, materials, and other implementation support must be available at the time of application or must be proposed for development as part of the application.
• Category 4: Research on School Safety. This category seeks to produce research findings with implications for school safety practice and policy. This category is particularly interested in research that investigates common, but understudied practices and strategies related to school safety. Projects under this category will support research to improve the understanding of the potential root causes and related factors that contribute to school violence, as well as the impact and consequences of school violence.
• Category 5: Understanding School Safety in Tribal Schools. The aim of this category is to assess school safety issues as they affect American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) students and schools. A secondary objective is to inform possible future investments in developing and testing school safety interventions in schools with high populations of AI/AN students. This category will fund two-or-more projects to better understand the myriad issues that confront AI/AN students in Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools and in public schools on and off tribal lands.

Amount: Varies by category:

• Category 1: A total of $7,000,000 is available with awards ranging up to $1,000,000 and performance periods ranging from from 24-48 months. Awards will be in the form of grants.
• Category 2: A total of $19,000,000 is available with awards ranging from $500,000-$3,000,000 and performance periods ranging from 24-48 months. Awards will be in the form of grants.
• Category 3: A total of $21,000,000 is available with awards ranging from $3,000,000-$7,000,000 and performance periods ranging from 24-48 months. Awards will be in the form of grants.
• Category 4: A total of $13,000,000 is available with awards ranging from $200,000-$1,000,000 and performance periods ranging from 24-36 months. Awards will be in the form of grants.
• Category 5: A total of $2,000,000 is available with awards ranging from $500,000-$1,000,000 and performance periods ranging from 24-48 months. Awards will be in the form of cooperative agreements.

Eligibility: States (including territories), units of local government, federally recognized Indian tribal governments that perform law enforcement functions, nonprofit and for-profit organizations (including tribal nonprofit and for-profit organizations), institutions of higher education (including tribal institutions of higher education), Local Education Agencies (LEAs), public charter schools that are recognized as an LEA, State Education Agencies (SEAs), and certain qualified individuals.

Link: http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=291243

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