VUSD Awarded $3.8 Million Grant, But for what?

By: Allissa Lozano

Visalia Unified School District was awarded an outstanding $3.8 million dollars from the School Climate Transformation Grant from the U.S Department of Education in hope to improve on emotional, psychological, and social well-being of students and staff in the district.

The funding covers three main domains, the first is engagement, which will focus on the “Cultural and linguistic competence, relationships, and school participation.” The second is safety, which engages the “Emotional safety, physical safety, bullying/cyberbullying, substance abuse, and emergency readiness/management.” Lastly, the “Physical environment, instructional environment, physical health, mental health, and discipline.” as stated on the U.S. Department of Education’s website.

Ben Dhillon, Director of Social Emotional Wellness for VUSD, applied for the grant in July of 2019. “We were one of 69 districts across the country that were awarded the grant.” The overall purpose of the grant was to “provide school districts the opportunity to develop, enhance or expand their systems of support and their techno assistants… like their trainings and all of their support they provide to schools.” This will enhance the overall experience of school for both staff and students.

The grant touches on the issue of mental health and how “School climate plays a critical role in the potential success in the school experiences of a student,” says Dhillon. The mental well being of students is very important, it creates the overall school environment.

The grant is very specific of what it is being spent on, Dhillon elaborates how, “We can’t spend the money on doing specific front line services at school sites, we can’t go and buy materials for schools and we can’t go and hire a teacher or another assistant principal…we have to use it to better our coaching and our support at the district for schools.”

But what the money given to VUSD will be used to strengthen what the district already has. “We are hiring two teachers on special assignment who’s job is to go out, support, train and coach other teachers, in strengthening school climate. We are hiring a coordinator and we are hiring a data analyst because a big part of this is looking at data.” Dhillon says.

The previous state grant Learning Communities for School Success Program had just ended after three years. “That grant was very much focused on school climate…it was still very significant, it allowed us to really fund a lot of the training that we have been doing. For the last three years, we have had school teams who have come through training on building out all of the programs like PBIS, True Ranger and student and staff teams, that was all funded through the previous grant.” Dhillon says. This new grant is able to add on to projects started three years ago.

This new grant adds to the previous grant and the programs that were started with it. This money makes sure that previous programs stay in place and even adds to it. Programs like TRUE Ranger creates an environment that includes and rewards students. Expanding programs like these can push for more social environment changes.

Mr. Luna, Redwood Psychologist, hopes this grant is used to help students day to day. “Access more mental health support for our students, definitely through middle school on up, primary secondary.” The grant supports all the schools.

In school environment Luna hopes it “improves the connectedness between students in the community and connectedness in schools. Redwood has always had a strong connection between student and school but there’s still individual voices out there that are being missed… I hope that there is provided support for those individuals.”

Overall the grant hopes to improve the lives of the students on and off campus and help with school climate not only at Redwood but all across VUSD.