College of Education and Human Development

College of Education and Human Development Faculty at George Mason University Receive an Award from the U.S. Department of Justice that Addresses the Prevention of School Violence

A research team comprised of faculty across several programs within the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) at George Mason University has been awarded a training grant from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in support of their project titled Comprehensive Safety and Violence Prevention in Diverse Middle Schools. This initiative focuses on integrating comprehensive school-based mental health systems as part of proactive violence prevention programming in public middle schools in Prince William County, Virginia. Funding for this project will approach $2 million ($1,932,833) over three years through a competitive solicitation that was announced by the DOJ Bureau of Justice Assistance. Leading the research team as Principal Investigator is Elizabeth Levine Brown, associate professor in the Elementary Education and Educational Psychology Programs. Co-Principal Investigators include Stephanie Dailey, assistant professor in the Counseling Program, and Samantha Viano, associate professor in the Education Leadership and Education Policy Programs. The primary goals of this project are to improve school climate, increase perceptions of safety, and reduce violence in all 17 middle schools within the Prince William County Schools (PWCS) system.

The project team represents a multidisciplinary partnership with each faculty member bringing their own expertise specific to their individual research interests and centered within research-practice partnership at George Mason. Brown is a developmental psychologist and a recognized expert in school-based mental health programming across tiered school-based mental health systems. Dailey has extensive experience in the design of responsive schoolwide violence prevention initiatives and inclusive trauma-informed education. Viano is known for her extensive research on school safety and security, and related implications for educational policy and leadership. Collectively, these three respected scholars comprise a multidisciplinary team that can leverage prior and ongoing collaborations with other universities and national centers, such as the National Center for School Mental Health and the National Center for Safe and Supportive Learning Environments, to inform and strengthen the project’s design, training content, and evaluation strategies.

Central to this project is the recognition that students’ access to comprehensive school-based mental health systems of support can play a critical role in reducing the prevalence of school violence and that creating a school environment conducive to learning requires prioritizing the physical safety and emotional well-being of students and staff. While existing preparation programs for teachers, school leaders, counselors, psychologists, and social workers provide introductory training on how a student’s social, emotional, and behavioral responses can impact their learning, there is an increasing need for more in-depth mental health training to help facilitate a positive school climate and strengthen interprofessional connections within the school community. This project intends to address that need through the development of on-site training for multidisciplinary school personnel that will provide them with the skills necessary to support student mental health as part of a proactive violence prevention program.

Brown provided a general overview of the project. “One of the things that we know from research is that the school climate contributes to the student support provided by comprehensive mental health systems in schools,” she stated. “What we struggle with in comprehensive mental health systems—which are an element of violence prevention—is role clarity and an understanding of multidisciplinary team partnerships within school-based sites to support the mental health needs of students. This grant provides opportunities to train within multidisciplinary teams by bringing together teachers, leaders, school mental health providers, and school resource officers to have a common understanding of procedures and policies to support violence prevention with clear extensions to implementation exercises that can be used across the whole school site. This systemic approach brokers interprofessional collaborations, considers capacity of all school personnel involved, and addresses communication pathways across tiered school-based systems of care.”

Brown noted that the initiative is being developed in tandem with the strategic planning process currently underway within the Prince William County public school division, with an emphasis on identifying areas where synergy with county and state priorities for preventing school violence can be achieved. She explained, “As Prince William County school officials review and evaluate their current strategic plan, we are aligning our work to enhance their current work within school safety initiatives.” Brown and the other team members believe that this approach will facilitate a sustainable mechanism enabling the school division to build the capacity necessary to foster a positive, and inclusive environment that promotes learning and improves the safety and well-being of the school community.

The objective of the project is to facilitate the development of a violence prevention plan that is multi-tiered, developmentally appropriate, inclusive and responsive, trauma-informed, and centered around prevention rather than reaction. The team members explain that an effective violence prevention plan should include early identification and support for at-risk students, clear and fair threat assessment procedures, resilience and coping skill-building, staff and student training, and strong family-school-community partnerships. They are confident that the project as designed can provide Prince William County middle schools with direct support, based on research-driven best practices, that will integrate these components into the development of an effective violence prevention program. “Our team is passionate about working with middle school staff and leaders to both identify what schools need as well as push changes that will positively affect school climate and student experiences,” Viano noted.

The project will be implemented in four phases as described below:

• A comprehensive needs assessment will be conducted across all 17 PWCS middle schools using the School Mental Health Quality Assessment (SMH-QA) which can help identify strengths and gaps that may exist in a school’s mental health intervention services and supports.
• Multidisciplinary teams will be formed at each school comprised of middle school leaders, teachers, school mental health professionals, school resource officers (SROs), and students.
• Evidence-based training focused on school climate, mental health literacy, multi-tiered systems of support, threat assessment, and violence prevention will be co-developed and delivered to school personnel.
• A series of in-school training exercises and sustainability-building activities will be implemented over a three-year period with built-in capacity-building to ensure long-term adoption of best practices.

Brown discussed the initial phase of the project, which focuses on conducting a comprehensive needs assessment at the school and district levels. She explained, “The needs assessment in year one will provide us with a sense of the overall landscape of existing school mental health and comprehensive school safety and violence prevention systems that are in place. This will allow us to determine the availability of multi-tiered levels of support, including prevention and intervention strategies, in identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses.” Brown offered the example of “teaming” or interprofessional collaboration between mental health professionals and educators as one area where intervention through engagement with multidisciplinary teams could be enhanced.

“As part of the initial phase,” Brown continued, “we will conduct focus groups to gather the perspectives of school personnel on school climate, staff requirements for tiered levels of services and supports, multidisciplinary teaming, and current school safety and prevention protocols.” Brown explained that the focus groups will include district leaders, school leaders, teachers, mental health providers, SROs, students, and other staff. “Their feedback in those focus group studies will be triangulated with the needs assessment to help us determine our starting places for support and training along with implementation exercises,” she stated. The needs assessment data collected at the school and district levels will be reviewed to see where it might complement the Virginia State School Mental Health and Safety and Prevention Profiles.

Following the comprehensive needs assessment, the next phase of the project will involve creating site-based multidisciplinary teams to address the specific needs that are identified at the school level. Dailey discussed how these multidisciplinary teams will be built, emphasizing that the roles of the school staff serving on the teams will vary from school to school depending on the specific needs of the school. She explained, “Multidisciplinary teams will include key staff at the school. In one school, it might include a school counselor, a teacher, the school resource officer, a school administrator, or perhaps a special education coordinator. At another school, it might include a school psychologist who serves at that school instead of the school counselor. As a part of the comprehensive needs assessment conducted during the initial phase of the project, we will work with schools to identify who are the best people to serve on those multidisciplinary teams.”

Training will be provided to multidisciplinary teams on topics such as school climate, mental health literacy, interprofessional collaboration, school safety services and support, and staff well-being. Implementation exercises will be funneled down to each one of the 17 middle schools in Prince William County and will also be made available to other school personnel who are not members of a multidisciplinary team. This will facilitate capacity building and increase the sustainability of the training into evidence-based practice across all the middle schools in Prince William County.

Dailey pointed out that the training which will be provided will not be static in nature nor will it be “one size fits all.” Rather, the training and implementation exercises will be tailored to the specific needs of each middle school as identified during the initial comprehensive needs assessment. Moreover, the training will be adjusted at specific touch points during the second and third years of the project to ensure it is effective and meets performance goals.

Dailey maintains that one of the important aspects of the approach embraced by the project is that it is proactive rather than reactive. She commented, “School violence is an area that I have done extensive research on. After a school shooting, everyone takes a retrospective look back to try to understand what went wrong. But that kind of approach does nothing to prevent the shooting from happening in the first place. Violence has already occurred. In contrast, we are implementing a very proactive approach. Rather than being prescriptive, we’re engaging schools at a granular level to identify their needs and build on existing strengths.”

Brown offered her perspective on the project approach, adding, “We are considering the contextual needs of each of the schools as they pertain to school violence prevention measures. This allows us to address school violence prevention mechanisms at a targeted school level. The goal is for schools to act preventatively, not reactively, and to establish climate, role clarity, clear interprofessional connections, and organizational resources and procedures that would prevent a dangerous outcome of school violence.”

When asked why they chose to focus their project on middle schools, the team was emphatic in citing the heightened emphasis on peer dynamics and social status that takes place during early adolescence as their primary reason. Dailey commented, “Middle schools are a critical intervention point, as students are undergoing significant developmental, social, and emotional changes. Rates of bullying, aggression, and behavioral challenges often peak during this period. Importantly, students in this age group experience heightened social pressures and emotional volatility, making proactive intervention essential. Yet much of the existing violence prevention research has historically focused on elementary or high school populations, leaving middle schools comparatively underserved.”

While this project focuses on middle schools, Brown believes that its approach could be applied at high school or elementary school levels. She observed, “This work could be tiered up into high school or tiered down into elementary schools. If we capture the value of this work and training across these multidisciplinary experts at a school site and disseminate the work to a broader culture of the school, we can see how this model can be shaped in a way to accommodate the needs of students in high school, or shaped in a different way to address the needs of students in elementary school.”

In their closing thoughts, the team members emphasized that the project is fundamentally strengths-based. “Rather than focusing solely on deficits or risks, we aim to build school climates that cultivate resilience, connection, and student and staff empowerment. Safety is not just the absence of violence—it is the presence of belonging, trust, and proactive support. By embedding these principles into middle school systems, this project will create lasting impacts that extend well beyond the immediate intervention period,” Dailey stated.

It is the hope of the project team not only to reduce incidents of violence, but to create sustainable ecosystems of safety, well-being, and resilience within schools. “By building multidisciplinary capacity and integrating mental health literacy with school safety efforts,” Dailey continued, “the project creates a model that can be scaled and adapted for broader use beyond Prince William County. Importantly, it centers proactive approaches as core to effective violence prevention.” At the same time, as noted by Viano, this project is outcomes-focused with the stated goal of reducing violence in participating middle schools. “Our goals reflect the priorities of the STOP School Violence Act,” she stated. “We want to see these comprehensive efforts result in safer schools, and we will be monitoring outcomes to assess whether we meet these goals.”

Please join the CEHD community in congratulating Elizabeth Levine Brown, Stephanie Dailey, and Samantha Viano on their selection for this award from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance. Their collaboration on the Comprehensive Safety and Violence Prevention in Diverse Middle Schools initiative exemplifies a multidisciplinary partnership that will enhance the physical and emotional well-being and safety of the middle school students in Prince William County Schools.