Why Isn’t Your District Applying for School Climate Transformation Grants for LEAs in 2014?

On 5/13/2014, we published a blog post about one of the US Department of Education’s new school safety grants: School Climate Transformation Grants for LEAs. Applicants can request up to $750,000 per year for up to five years for projects that, “develop, enhance, or expand systems of support for, and technical assistance to, schools implementing an evidence-based multi-tiered behavioral framework for improving behavioral outcomes and learning conditions for all students.” This is a terrific opportunity for Local Educational Agencies such as school districts, charter schools, and consortia of LEAs to obtain funding for programs and resources that support positive student behaviors, social and emotional development, and mental health for students!

If these are areas of need in your schools, here are the top 6 reasons you should apply to this program in 2014 rather than a future year:

1. Student needs won’t be resolved without intervention! Every student deserves a safe, comfortable, equitable learning environment that is supportive of his/her success. Apply in 2014 because your students shouldn’t have to wait any longer for an improved school climate–and can’t afford to.
2. Approximately 118 awards are expected in 2014! While 5-10 years ago it might not have been terribly uncommon to see a grant program make 100-200 awards, those days are pretty much gone. In recent years, programs making 50-80 awards are thought to be making a lot of awards since most programs make under 50 awards in a given year, and many make far under 50. Apply in 2014 because based on the anticipated number of awards alone, your odds of winning will be significantly better than for most current grant programs.
3. If this grant is offered again next year, more likely than not ED will only be able to make about half as many awards (or fewer) unless substantially more funding is allocated. In other future years, the number of new awards may be even smaller. Since this is a five-year grant program, this year–the very first year of the program–is likely to be the year we see the most new grants funded for several years since ED will have to use a portion of the funds allocated each future year to fund the continuation awards in addition to any new awards. In some future years, ED will be funding multiple years of continuation awards. For example, in 2018, ED will be funding awardees in Year 2 (2017 winners), Year 3 (2016 winners), Year 4 (2015 winners), and Year 5 (2016 winners). Continuation awards are typically committed before any new awards are made, as is fair. Whatever money remains in the allocation is available for new awards. In some future years, there may only be enough remaining for a small number of new awards or none at all. Apply in 2014 because it is likely fewer new awards (if any) will be available each future year, as the program will be supporting significant numbers of continuation awards.
4. Applications are due 6/23/2014! While that’s less than a month away, if you begin working this week and work very diligently until the deadline, you still have time to put together a strong application. This is especially true if you recently applied for the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling grants due 4/28/2014 or a similarly-focused funding stream, since much of the need information is likely to be the same. You may be shying away from this application based on the fact that it’s due right as school is wrapping up for some districts and after school has closed for the summer for others. Here’s the thing: many schools are thinking that way, and June and July deadlines for US ED grants sometimes have few applicants for that reason! Apply in 2014 to seize the opportunity to be one of what is likely to be a relatively small pool (comparatively) of brave applicants who apply for a grant at the start of or during their summer breaks and capitalize on increased odds of winning as a result!
5. This program is new this year! As programs age, they tend to evolve. While that is usually in many ways a really good thing, from an applicant/awardee standpoint, it often also means more rules and requirements during both the application and award periods. Apply in 2014 to take advantage of what are likely to be the least demanding application and award period reporting requirements!
6. You can be one of the first! If you have an interest in serving as a leader for other schools in your county, region, state, or the nation, this grant offers you a great opportunity to do that in the area of behavioral health–one of the areas for which until now schools haven’t received much funding at all in recent years despite great need. Due to support by both the President and Congress, that’s about to change. 2014 will be the first year of award for this program, as well as for Project Aware (due 6/16/2014), Project Prevent (due 6/30/2014), and School Justice Collaboration Program: Keeping Kids in School and Out of Court (due 7/21/2014). Apply in 2014 to this and/or any of the three other new school safety grants to be leader and a model for other schools in improving student behavior and mental health to improve student safety and achievement!