The Impact of Safe Schools/Healthy Students Funding on Student Well-Being: A California Consortium Cross-Site Analysis: Thomas L. Hanson, Amy-Jane Griffiths, and Michael J. Furlong

Abstract

Since 1999, the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative has provided communities in the United States with funding to implement a comprehensive set of programs and services that focus on creating safe school environments, promoting healthy childhood development, and preventing youth violence and alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use. This chapter describes a repeated-measures, quasi-experimental design with SS/HS funded schools and matched-comparison schools to examine the extent to which student health risks, protective factors, and academic performance changed in SS/HS schools compared to similar schools that did not receive SS/HS services. Results suggest that student well-being variables such as, student health-related behavior, protective factors, and academic performance improved more in SS/HS grantee schools than in similar schools that did not receive SS/HS funding among fi fth graders and seventh graders. Among ninth graders and eleventh graders, SS/HS funding status was not consistently related to changes in student well-being. When examining the degree to which SS/HS impacts varied across grantee sites, results indicated that three sites exhibited the most consistent positive program eff ects. An examination of program practices in the sites with the most consistent improvements in student well-being indicated that more students were exposed to SS/HS services, staff received professional development in more areas, andmore partners participated in the initiative. Implications of these results for future implementation of comprehensive school safety are discussed.