The Petal School District is one of only two districts throughout Mississippi to receive a portion of $35.5 million in grant funding from the Department of Justice aimed at developing or improving school safety projects.
Petal’s share of the funding, which is awarded through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services’ School Violence Prevention Program (COPS), comes to $26,550. The monies will be used for a new type of Internet filtering firewall technology for the district.
“A part of the School Violence Prevention Program grant through the DOJ was aimed at using technology to better equip our officers and administrators,” said Andy Schoggin, assistant superintendent of the Petal School District. “So what this (technology) does is filters keywords and things like that.
“We’ve always had one; this is just a different system. It’s a 75/25 grant over the life of two years, so it’s $26,000 for us, and we pay $4,000 for this new filter technology.”
This year marks the second year COPS has provided funding to improve school safety through violence prevention; the $32.5 million will be spread throughout 103 schools and districts. The funds will provide K-12, primary schools and secondary schools with 75 percent funding for safety measures such as coordination with law enforcement; metal detectors, locks, and other deterrent measures; and technology for expedited notification of local law enforcement during an emergency.
The only other district in the state to receive the COPS funds is the Long Beach School District, which was awarded $374,834.
“It’s really helpful,” Schoggin said. “In your overall budget, any time you can reduce it by close to $27,000, it’s really helpful, just because we try to be fiscally responsible with everything we do. So any time we can get something like that, it’s a big assistance to the overall budget.”
In addition to the COPS funds, the Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded almost $53 million to school and districts via three separate funding opportunities: the STOP School Violence Technology and Threat Assessment Solutions for Safer Schools Program ($29.5 million), the STOP School Violence Prevention and Mental Health Training Program ($17.3 million), and the STOP School Violence Training and Technical Assistance Program ($6 million).
The Pearl River County School District received $143,285 from the STOP School Violence Prevention and Mental Health Training Program, which addresses issues like bullying, addiction and interpersonal violence through education session in consultation with school violence researchers, licensed mental health professionals and other officials. Pearl River County was the only district in Mississippi to receive monies from the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s three funding opportunities.
Those three programs, as well as COPS, are made possible through the Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing School Violence Act, which was passed by Congress in 2018. The act authorizes the Department of Justice to manage grant programs that support states, local governments and federally recognized Native American tribes to prevent and reduce school violence.
