As part of its mission, the Florida Institute of Education (FIE) promotes, develops, and coordinates collaboration among K-12 schools, institutions of higher education, community colleges, and the Florida Department of Education. FIE has been collaborating with the Florida Department of Education for over ten years to provide technical assistance that is utilized throughout Florida’s 67 school districts promoting safe, disciplined, and drug free schools. The Safe, Disciplined, and Drug Free Schools Project is designed to provide alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use and violence prevention education initiatives for schools and school districts.


The Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free Schools Technical Assistance Project is funded by a grant from the Florida Department of Education through Title IV of the No Child Left Behind Act. It provides technical assistance and support to the Florida Department of Education, Office of Safe Schools and to school districts.

The Office of Safe Schools, Safe and Drug-Free Schools’(SDFS) mission is to promote and support safe, discipline and drug-free learning environments for all Florida students. The Office of Safe Schools serves to promote and support safe learning environments by addressing issues of student safety and academic success on state, district, and school levels. Increasing evidence indicates that a number of non-academic factors significantly influence academic achievement. Schools that implement school safety measures, drug prevention programs, and positive school climates that promote caring relationships either directly or indirectly facilitate rising student academic achievement.

Safe & Drug-Free Schools is a cornerstone of youth drug prevention and intervention efforts within the State of Florida. Our purpose is to assist school districts in their substance abuse and violence prevention efforts by providing funds to:

• Support effective programs that prevent violence in and around schools
  
  
• Support effective programs that prevent the illegal use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs
  
  
• Support services and activities, such as K-12 science-validated prevention curricula, school climate approaches, conflict resolution, social skill development, student assistance programs, peer resistance training, parent programs, and peer mediation programs
  
  
• Train teachers and other program implementers/coordinators throughout the state in drug and violence prevention science
  
• Coordinate with related federal, state, and community efforts to promote safe and drug-free schools and communities
  
  
• Recruit partners who commit additional resources and manpower to make programs optimally effective for their communities.

The SDFS program has historically been a catalyst for community involvement, volunteerism and the leveraging of funds from other sources to address drug and violence prevention and intervention through Florida.

Efforts made through the SDFS Project at the district and state levels are a contributing factor to Florida’s academic success. Students need to feel safe and respected at school before they can begin to focus on academic achievement. Since 1999, the number of schools achieving an A or B grade has been steadily increasing. According to the Statewide Report on School Safety and Discipline Data, incidents of violent crimes against persons on school property have been steadily decreasing since 1999.

 

Available Resources

• SDFS Resource Center (multimedia materials available for loan)
  
• Technical Assistance for needs assessment, prevention program selection and implementation, and program evaluation
  
• Professional Development Training including bullying prevention, Internet safety, and cyber-bullying prevention
  
• Emergency Management Training including multi-hazard planning
  
• Statewide Report on School Safety and Discipline Data
  
• Social Marketing Information