State Education Agency to Announce New Security Grant

The agency overseeing the state’s primary and secondary public education has announced plans to release a formula-based grant application to support school safety in the coming weeks.

More specifically, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) plans to release its 2023-2025 School Safety Standards Formula Grant application to allow for pre-award for items purchased on or after June 1, 2022.

According to TEA’s website, the grant program will calculate formula allocations based on a per-pupil amount per local educational agencies (LEA) basis. Funds will be distributed by per-pupil counts ranging from age 3 to 21 for student enrollment as reported in the state’s October 2021 Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) submission.

So, who qualifies for these funds?

The agency’s website states: “Public school districts and charter schools with a reported enrollment of at least one student from the October 2021 PEIMS fall snapshot submission will be eligible for funding.”

New charter schools that opened in the 2022-2023 school year before Oct. 27, 2022, will also be eligible for minimum grant award amounts.

For context, on Oct. 27, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the transfer of more than $874.6 million to support public safety and recovery initiatives, including school safety. As a result, the TEA has specified that private schools plus any new charter schools opened after that date will be ineligible to receive grant funds.

Those that qualify, however, can spend any awarded funding on security-related items identified by the needs of each local educational agency. The only requirement is that any awarded funds must first be spent on items needed to comply with the state’s School Safety Standards Rule.

That means all funds must first be spent on ensuring all school system instructional facilities have access points that are “secured by design, maintained to operate as intended and appropriately monitored.”

For more information about the grant program, click here.

Other noteworthy grant opportunities include the TEA’s 2022-2024 Silent Panic Alert Technology Grant.

The agency released the formula grant program “on Oct. 28, 2022, to provide grant funds to LEAs to purchase silent panic alert technologies for campuses as a measure of school safety,” TEA’s website states.

According to the agency, the technology acts as a silent system signal generated by a device, either manually or through software applications, to signal an emergency situation such as an active shooter.

In this case, the grant falls under the School Safety Standards Rule by providing schools with an alarm system and school system communications infrastructure.

For more information about the grant program, click here.