Local schools have received state grants to improve student safety through a new program supported by Senator Tom Killion.
The School Safety and Security Grant Program was created by lawmakers earlier this year to provide 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.
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.
Every school district that applied for the grant was awarded $25,000.
Grant recipients in Killion’s senatorial district include Kennett Consolidated, Unionville-Chadds Ford and West Chester Area School Districts in Chester County. Delaware County recipients include Chester-Upland, Chichester, Garnet Valley, Penn-Delco, Ridley, Rose Tree Media and Wallingford-Swarthmore School Districts.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of our children,” said Killion. “I am glad that funding from this new program is now making its way to our local school districts. While we have more work to do to protect students in the classroom, these school safety grants are an important first step,” he added.
The new program was created as part of a comprehensive school safety bill that was signed into law in June by Governor Tom Wolf. More than $60 million in new funding was dedicated in the current year’s budget to improve school safety, the Senator said.
Information on school safety measures under consideration in the General Assembly is available online at https://www.pasenategop.com/school-safety/.
For more information, contact Shannon Royer at sroyer@pasen.gov or (717) 787-4712.
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