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American Clearinghouse on Educational Facilities (www.acefacilities.org)

The American Clearinghouse on Educational Facilities’ (ACEF) guiding mission is to provide facility support, training, and resources to public early childhood, K-12 schools, and institutions of higher education on issues related to educational facility planning, design, financing, construction, improvement, operation, and maintenance.  ACEF provides leadership in educational facilities through the ACEF website, social media, webinars, podcasts, and web-based content delivery lessons.  ACEF collects and disseminates the latest research on effective educational facilities practices and develop resources regarding the maintenance of safe, healthy, high performance (green) educational facilities.  ACEF services include:  an online clearinghouse with facility support by email, phone, or live chat; RSS feed, an online nationally refereed journal, national trainings, on-site facility support visits, distance learning events, and various resource materials. 

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students
The SSHS website provides more detailed information about the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative. This site is maintained by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration of the Department of Health and Human Service, one of the three Federal Safe Schools/Healthy Student partners. The National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention provides technical assistance and training to the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative grantees that are funded by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice.

Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center
The U.S. Department of Education began supporting the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance (TA) Center in FY 2004. The Center supports all grantees funded under the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) discretionary grant program (formerly Emergency Response and Crisis Management grant program) by providing emergency management resources, training, and publications. The TA Center also helps non-grantee local educational districts (LEAs) and private schools with improving and strengthening their emergency management plans through the provision of resources, responses to technical assistance requests, and facilitation of Emergency Management for Schools Training events. The TA Center Web site is available at http://rems.ed.gov. A variety of resources are available on the Web site including Power Point presentations from previous training events and a series of newsletters, Lessons Learned documents, and Helpful Hint publications. EMT Associates, Inc. from Folsom, California, manages the TA Center. For additional information on the REMS TA Center, please contact Tara.Hill@ed.gov or at 202-245-7860.

The Safe and Supportive Schools TA Center
The Safe and Supportive Schools Website represents another step the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools (OSDFS) is taking to provide the technical assistance and expertise to keep our students safe.  From this Website, state, district and school administrators; teachers; school support staff; and communities and families can find resources and support to develop rigorous measurement systems that assess school climate and implement and evaluate programmatic interventions. You are welcome to explore and discover, ask questions, and share your perspective. Safe and Supportive Schools TA Center is operated for U.S. ED’s OSDFS by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in collaboration with Child Trends; The Search Institute; Vision Training Associates; Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning; and Decision Information Resources, Inc. In particular, on the Website one can:

• Find out how to get help from the Safe and Supportive Schools TA Center (Center);
• Register for upcoming Center events that feature experts from the field, including Webinars;
• Find high quality products, tools and research by role and topic on the home page’s springboard;
• Refer to the School Climate Survey Compendium of OSDFS-approved surveys;
• Learn about other states and what they are doing to measure and improve school climate;
• Read the latest news on school climate issues.