Montgomery Public Schools Mentoring for Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative Project

The SS/HS Initiative is a joint effort by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice to support schools and communities in creating safer and healthier learning environments. This solicitation invites current Safe Schools/Healthy Student grantees to develop proposals that will increase the capacity of their SS/HS collaborations to develop and implement community-based mentoring programs or to expand and enhance existing mentoring programs and strategies. This program advances the provision of integrated resources for prevention and early intervention services for children and youth by supporting effective evidence-based mentoring services to young people who are underserved. The intent of this program is to demonstrate new mentoring efforts or to expand existing mentoring efforts that work in concert with a grantee's SS/HS comprehensive plan.

Montgomery County Public School's Safe Schools/Healthy Students (MPS SS-HS) Initiative proposes to expand its current school based mentoring efforts by offering community based mentoring to 60 students at risk for truancy, delinquency, school failure and school drop out. Students will be selected for the program from nine targets schools (four elementary and five middle schools). Eighty-four percent of the students in these schools are members of minority groups and 85% are enrolled in the free/reduced lunch program. MPS SS/HS Initiative has demonstrated a strong community collaborative effort involving more than 30 agencies and the structure of this project is based on previous experience with mentoring programs and the use of evidence based standards for mentoring practice. To measure project success, a process evaluation will determine if services are delivered as intended. An outcome evaluation will determine the effect of services on students, parents and staff and changes in student behavior will also be assessed.

CA/NCF