The mission of the Montebello Unified School District’s Safe Schools/Healthy Students Grant Initiative is to ensure that all students from pre-kindergarten through secondary school excel as productive citizens through a comprehensive developmental system characterized by safe schools, exemplary academic programs, highly qualified teachers, and effective partnerships with families and community agencies. MUSD’s SS/HS Grant Initiative will implement and integrate a comprehensive, community-wide plan that is designed to create safe, respectful, and drug-free school environments and promote pro-social skills and healthy childhood development. The plan focuses on activities, curricula, programs, and services in a manner that responds to the community’s existing needs and gaps.

The goals for Safe Schools/Healthy Students Grant Initiative are:

• Provide a safe school environment
• Reduce violence and provide violence prevention education
• Reduce alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use
• Provide student behavioral, social, and emotional supports that include bullying prevention programs, mentoring, and after-school activities
• Expand mental health services to students and families in need
• Expand early childhood social and emotional learning programs
• Develop partnerships with private and public social service agencies, faith-based agencies, and civic and business organizations
• Create an infrastructure that will support proposed activities during the grant period and after the period of federal funding has ended

Since 1999, the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice have collaborated on the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative. The SS/HS Initiative is a discretionary grant program that provides students, schools, and communities with federal funding to implement an enhanced, coordinated, comprehensive plan of activities, programs, and services that focus on promoting healthy childhood development and preventing violence and alcohol and other drug abuse.

The SS/HS Initiative focuses on five elements:

• Element 1: Safe school environments and violence prevention activities
• Element 2: Alcohol and other drug prevention activities
• Element 3: Student behavioral, social, and emotional supports
• Element 4: Mental health services
• Element 5: Early childhood social and emotional learning programs

This website is designed to provide the public with a communications tool. There are tabs at the top of the page that link the reader to:

• Our project partners
• Grant programs
• Elements of the grant initiative
• News and events
• Community resources

Additional resources, including articles, helpful websites, and information, are included with hyperlinks throughout this website.