Research and Evaluation on School Safety: The Structure, Services, and Products of State School Safety Centers

This report is the second in a series that highlights findings from an evaluation of State School Safety Centers (SSSCs) being carried out by WestEd's Justice and Prevention Research Center and funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The first report in the series utilized survey data from school safety key informants (e.g., SSSC staff, state educational agency [SEA] staff, policymakers) who were knowledgeable about the current SSSC context and their state's SSSC history (McKenna et al., 2021). The report focused specifically on SSSCs over the past 2 decades, after the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999. To build on the first report, this report describes the characteristics, practices, structures, and services of current SSSCs to examine variation in SSSC landscape, structure, and activities. The specific objectives of the evaluation are to: (1) document the history of SSSCs across the United States following the massacre at Columbine High School, a seminal school safety event in 1999 that prompted the creation of several SSSCs; (2) describe the characteristics, practices, structures, and services of current SSSCs; (3) assess the perceived impact of SSSC services from the perspective of diverse stakeholders, including SSSC intensive service users, SEA and state Department of Justice (SDOJ) staff, policymakers, SROs, district superintendents, and school principals; and (4) utilize the information collected to develop a framework that outlines promising structures and practices to facilitate the development and improvement of SSSCs and to guide future research to examine the impacts and outcomes associated with SSSC practices.