Governor Larry Hogan Announces School Systems Safety Grants Available to Maryland Schools

First $6 Million of Over $37 Million to be Awarded

ANNAPOLIS, MD - Governor Larry Hogan today announced that $6 million in funding is available for local school systems to enhance school safety through training, safety assessments, information sharing, and more. This round of grants will be the first $6 million out of a total of $37.6 that will be made available on a rolling basis.

“Keeping our kids safe is one of our most important jobs, and no parent should have to worry about whether their child is going to be safe in their school,” said Governor Hogan. “This year, we enacted major, bipartisan school safety legislation to create aggressive, statewide standards for school safety, and this funding will help our local schools meet these standards and keep our students safe.”

This initial round of applications will be accepted on a rolling basis through October 31, 2018, and the first of the grant recipients will be determined at the August 20, 2018 School Safety Subcabinet meeting. The remaining funds, which include an additional $7.1 million in operational funds and $23.5 million to help schools improve the physical safety of school facilities, will be distributed in later rounds.

The grants will flow through the Safe Schools Fund, which was created as part of the Maryland Safe to Learn Act of 2018, which Governor Hogan signed into law on April 10. This legislation includes key Hogan administration proposals, such as increased funding for the Maryland Center for School Safety, the creation of aggressive statewide standards for school safety, requirements for the standardized training and certification for all school resource officers, and requirements for each school system to develop behavioral assessment teams to identify and provide interventions for students who may pose a threat to safety.

This funding will be used to conduct the assessments required by the Maryland Safe to Learn Act and to help meet immediate needs of the local school systems. This first round of grants includes $2.5 million for completion of the school safety assessments, and $3.5 million for operational funding to satisfy other provisions of the Safe to Learn Act, such as conducting training for students and local school personnel on de-escalation of situations and identifying and reporting behaviors of concern, conducting training of assessment teams, establishing formal and anonymous mechanisms for reporting safety concerns, and providing information to students and parents on traveling safely to and from schools.

The grant application and instructions can be found here. For any additional information about the application process, please email the Maryland Center for School Safety at mcss.mcss@maryland.gov.