Talking+Points+for+Phone+Calls

Type in the content of your page here. Talking Points – SDFSC States Portion · Eliminating the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) program would… o  decimate the school based prevention infrastructures currently in place.

o leave the vast majority of our nation’s schools and students with no drug and violence prevention programming at all.

o provide large, time limited, competitive grants to a very small number of recipients that will not be sustainable over time.

o cause most local education agencies (LEAs) throughout the country to lose all of their foundational funding to support school based drug and violence prevention/early intervention services.

o create an unfunded mandate for data collection and result in the loss of statewide data collection infrastructure that the SDFSC program has provided.

· It is critical to maintain the SDFSC program because: o lower reading and math scores are linked to peer substance abuse- not to individual student use as one might expect.

o on average, students whose peers avoided substance use had test scores that were 18 points higher for reading and 45 points higher for math.

o the challenges in students’ learning environment, particularly substance use, must be addressed in order to increase the academic performance of our youth.

o recent evidence supports the fact that “social and emotional learning” programs increase academic achievement, and help students avoid engaging in high risk behaviors such as illegal drug use.

o the primary Federal program currently funding “social and emotional learning” programs, such as Life Skills training and PATHS, is the SDFSC program.

· The Federal Office of Budgets and Management has registered the States portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools Grant as INEFFECTIVE because no data is submitted to them from Director of Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, Federal Department of Education, ** William Modzeleski **. o Pennsylvania and other states have submitted data for the last 15 years on the program’s effectiveness. However, Modzeleski does not pass the data forward nor has the office created a national database for the delivery of these data. o It is important that the Congress repair this program which funds a strong infrastructure. In the field, we welcome change, and welcome new skills and knowledge to help students and families.