Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 16:46 -0400 From: The White House <Publications-Admin at Pub.Pub.WhiteHouse.Gov> Subject: 1999-04-23 Fact Sheet on Helping to Keep Our Schools Safe To: Public-Distribution@[198.137.240.100] Precedence: Bulk Document-ID: pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/4/23/15.text.1 URL:
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1999/4/23/15 .text.1 Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: White House Electronic Publications Keywords: Colorado, Crime, Economy, Education, Fact-Sheet, Fiscal-Policy,
Government, Judicial-System, Mountain-States-Region, Regulation, Security,
Social, Social-Values, Staff-Report
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary ________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release April 23, 1999
President Clinton:
Helping to Keep Our Schools Safe
April 23, 1999
Today, President Clinton will announce new assistance for the community of Littleton, Colorado and added resources for communities to help keep students safe at school. Specifically, he will announce: (1) up to $1.5 million in immediate supplemental funding from the Justice Department to assist the victims, their families, and the Littleton community with expenses relating to the recent school shooting; and (2) $70 million in Justice Department grants to help fund more than 600 school resource officers in 336 communities across the country.
Expanding assistance to victims. In response to the recent tragedy at Columbine High School and subsequent requests from Colorado authorities, the Justice Department will provide up to $1.5 million in immediate funds from the Crime Victims' Fund to support:
-- Direct compensation to victims and their family members for
funerals, uncovered medical expenses, lost wages of parents,
and private mental health counseling for victims;
-- Additional personnel and overtime costs for critical incident
stress management services for first responders to the crisis;
and
-- Added victims services and counseling personnel to help meet
the immediate and longer-term support needs of the community.
Helping schools work with law enforcement to prevent crime and violence
-- Adding over 600 police officers for schools. School resource officers provide schools with on-site security and a direct link to law enforcement agencies. The President will announce that the Justice Department COPS Office will release $70 million to fund more than 600 police officers in schools in 336 communities across the country. Today's announcement is the first installment in meeting the President's pledge made at the White House Conference on School Safety to provide funds for up to 2,000 officers in schools this fiscal year.
-- Building on the President's successful community policing initiative. In addition to helping communities hire school resource officers, the COPS Office is providing $17 million through a School-Based Partnerships initiative. This initiative emphasizes using community policing principles and problem-solving methods to address the causes of school-related crime. The grants will help strengthen partnerships between local law enforcement and schools, and help them to focus on school crime, drug use and discipline problems. Schools have until the end of April to apply for these funds.
Encouraging communities to adopt comprehensive school safety strategies. In addition to today's announcements, the President will urge communities to apply for funds through the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, which will provide up to $180 million this year -- and a total of $380 million over the next three years -- to help 50 communities develop and implement community-wide responses to school safety and youth violence. This initiative, which was also a product of the White House School Safety Conference, represents an unprecedented collaboration between the Departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services to provide comprehensive educational, law enforcement, mental health, juvenile justice, and other services to help communities prevent youth violence and drug abuse, in and out of school. Communities have until June 1, 1999 to apply for as much as $3 million each through this initiative.
Sending out 100,000 additional guides on the early warning signs of violence. Next week, the Departments of Justice and Education will distribute 150,000 additional copies of Early Warning Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools. The guide, aimed at teachers, principals, parents, and others who work with young people, provides information on how to identify and respond to the early warning signs of troubled youth that can lead to violence in schools. In addition, the guide also instructs schools on how to develop a violence prevention plan and provides a crisis procedure checklist for schools to use if violence occurs. Finally, the guide lists actions students can take -- such as listening to troubled friends, involving trusted adults, and asking law enforcement to conduct school safety audits -- to help create safer schools. More than 200,000 guides already have been distributed to schools across the nation.
###