[Photo: AP News]
FRESNO,CA (KMJ) – The California Department of Education received a million dollar violence prevention and mental health training grant.
State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson (below) says the funding is under the federal STOP School Violence Act to provide violence prevention and mental health training to students and staff in school districts that have been the most affected by violence on their campuses.
‘The goal is to stop acts of violence on campuses and allow schools to be what they should be—safe places for students to learn and thrive,” said Torlakson.
To implement the Project Cal-STOP training initiative, the CDE will partner with Sandy Hook Promise, a national nonprofit founded by Nicole Hockley (below), whose son Dylan Hockley was killed in Sandy Hook shooting.
The organization is led by family members who lost loved ones in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School,
[Photo: @NicoleHockley]
According to the 2015–17 California Healthy Kids Survey, a school climate survey of the CDE, 30 percent (or approximately one million) of secondary school students were bullied, victimized, or depressed.
16 percent of secondary school students reported having suicidal thoughts.
Gun Violence Facts https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/get_educated
Over a three-year span, the Project Cal-STOP initiative will train district administrators, school staff, and students on violence prevention strategies and train district and school staff to respond to related mental health crises by expanding CDE’s current Youth Mental Health First Aid trainings.
Local educational agencies will be invited to participate in the Project Cal-STOP trainings, and the training sessions are free.
Click to listen to the report by KMJ’s Liz Kern:
