The University of Nebraska Public Policy Center is working with partners across the state to address critical challenges in school safety, student mental health and emergency preparedness.
“We need to take a holistic approach to school safety. It’s not just about preventing shootings. It’s about providing tools to support students and staff across a broad array of challenges,” Mario Scalora, director of the Public Policy Center, said.
It is with this holistic approach in mind that the Public Policy Center has been working with state and local partners on a variety of school safety efforts.
For example, the center provides behavioral threat assessment and management trainings, which equip educators, law enforcement and mental health professionals to recognize and respond to potential risks for targeted violence. Overall, 2,220 K-12 school attendees completed threat assessment training between July 2018 and December 2024. In the last two years, 830 Nebraska K-12 school personnel received such training in partnership with the Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council and Nebraska Department of Education.
Within Nebraska schools, the Public Policy Center promotes school mental health awareness by supporting sustainable training structures to provide Psychological First Aid for Schools. This program is an evidence-informed intervention model to assist students, families, school personnel and school partners in the immediate aftermath of an emergency. The goal is to reduce the initial distress caused by an emergency and to foster short-and long-term adaptive functioning and coping. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded the Public Policy Center a Mental Health Awareness Training grant to partner with the Nebraska Department of Education to train educators in Psychological First Aid for Schools. To date, 367 educators have been trained, with 87.5% reporting increased knowledge of psychological first aid techniques. The state’s capacity was built further with “Train-the-Trainer” workshops preparing 52 individuals to deliver Psychological First Aid for Schools training regionally so new educators can continue to receive training and better respond to mental health related matters.
The Public Policy Center also supports Nebraska school emergency preparedness through a six-year partnership with Nebraska Department of Education to evaluate its School Emergency Operations Planning Grant. School Emergency Operations Plans typically cover procedures for responding to a wide range of potential emergencies, including natural disasters like tornadoes and floods, as well as manmade incidents like active shooter situations, hazardous materials spills, fires, medical emergencies and pandemic outbreaks. Schools with robust EOP procedures in place are better able to respond to emergencies and focus on the safety of their students and staff during unexpected emergencies. The Public Policy Center reviewed nearly 300 Nebraska schools’ emergency operations plans since 2017, hosted 24 safety tabletop exercises with 373 participants, and developed 25 informational resources to enhance schools’ readiness for emergencies.
Nebraska requires school personnel to complete annual mental health training to help equip school personnel with the knowledge to identify suicide warning signs and foster a supportive environment for at-risk students. Center staff collaborated with partners to develop and host an online training course, Building a Suicide-Safe School Community, to meet this requirement. Since 2018, the course has been completed 57,754 times, with 7,143 completions in 2024 alone. These trainings help Nebraska educators to be better equipped to watch out for and support students at risk of suicide.
“Our collaboration on projects has relied on [the Public Policy Center’s] expertise in research to aid us in receiving candid feedback to bring about better outcomes in school safety and mental health programs,” said Jay Martin, director of school safety and security at the Nebraska Department of Education. “Our safety grants require us to meet certain criteria and objectives during the life of a grant and the Public Policy Center utilizes all the information and data we compile over the life cycle to produce a clear and concise report verifying that we our adhering to those goals of keeping school communities safe. They help to hold us accountable in meeting the safety and mental health needs of our school districts.”
Public Policy Center staff evaluated and supported mental health programs in Nebraska’s rural school districts through partnerships funded by the Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education initiative to support students getting more access to mental health in schools. Two projects expanded mental health services, increased awareness about mental health in schools, and built school capacity to support student wellbeing. Center staff presented tools for assessing culturally appropriate mental health services as well as school-based strategies for addressing mental health stigma in rural schools at the Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health. Other partnerships led to the Public Policy Center evaluating the implementation of Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems that helps school districts build sustainable mental health programs that align with state and regional goals.
All of these efforts are working towards making schools safer and more supportive places for students and staff. The Public Policy Center is an integral part of local, regional and statewide partnerships and collaborations dedicated to building safer schools across the state, by connecting research, practice and policy.
