Safer, healthier students on way? $6 million grant to tackle concerns

Charlottesville and Albemarle County are jointly receiving nearly $6 million to help bolster programs targeting violence and substance-abuse prevention in schools and childhood development.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students federal grant will be spread out over the next four years between the two divisions. The programs that both school systems will implement through the grant will address a range of issues that concern youth — such as violence and bullying prevention, early childhood social and emotional learning, access to counseling and family-support services and resistance to peer pressure on drugs and alcohol consumption.

The initiative is designed to work all the way from the preschool level through the 12th grade to head off social and emotional troubles that could hinder students’ learning. Combined, Charlottesville and Albemarle was the only grant recipient in Virginia, and received one of 29 grants administered nationwide.

“We were awarded that money because we have a track record of making a difference,” Albemarle schools Superintendent Pam Moran said.

In getting the award, the divisions are finding themselves receiving an unexpected form of economic stimulus. Gretchen Ellis, the director of the Charlottesville-Albemar-le Commission on Children and Families, said that to administer the divisions’ augmented support programs, the grant allows for the creation of 17 positions plus the ability to support eight University of Virginia graduate students who will do counseling.

The grant comes at a time when both school systems have had to cut their budgets, offer retirement incentives or lay off employees because of declining revenues.

Charlottesville schools Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins said that it is not required for the programs to start immediately on the first day of school for the upcoming year. “We do have an opportunity to plan,” she said. That the grant allows for such a comprehensive program, Atkins said, “is great.”

The local school divisions will partner with the Charlottesville and Albemar-le County police departments, the Region Ten Community Service Board, the 16th District Court Services Unit and UVa’s Curry School of Education.

“We’ve got a long history of collaboration on these projects,” said Dewey Cornell, a professor at the Curry School and the director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project.