Sponsors (32)
The bill directs federal funding to school-based, trauma-informed violence-prevention programs—boosting supports for high-risk students, underserved and tribal schools, and educators while concentrating resources in schools, increasing federal spending, and imposing eligibility and reporting limits that may leave some community interventions and rising-need areas without support.
Students at highest risk for gun violence (including children and youth) gain access to evidence-based, trauma-informed school programs that aim to prevent violence and support healing.
Students in high-need and underserved areas, including Bureau of Indian Education schools, receive targeted funding that can improve equity in resources for violence-prevention and support.
Teachers and school staff receive professional development and expanded access to trauma support and mental-health services to better support affected students and manage classroom impacts.
Limiting the program statutory focus to school-based interventions may leave out non-school community violence-prevention efforts, reducing support for community organizations that also prevent gun violence.
The program authorizes $25 million per year in federal spending, increasing the federal budget footprint and potentially raising trade-offs for other priorities or requiring offsets.
Eligibility tied to high local homicide or arrest rates could exclude communities with rising but shorter-term or different patterns of violence from receiving grants.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Refocuses an HHS grant authority to fund evidence-based, trauma-informed school programs that prevent youth involvement in gun violence and supports staff training, partnerships, and data collection.
Official title: To authorize the establishment of a comprehensive school-based violence prevention program to assist youth at highest risk for involvement in gun violence in local communities and schools, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 12, 2025 by Jahana Hayes · Last progress June 12, 2025
Refocuses and renames an existing HHS statutory part to create a targeted grant program that funds comprehensive, school-based violence prevention programs aimed at youth at highest risk for involvement in gun violence, including schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Education. Grants are awarded by HHS in consultation with Education and may be used for evidence-based, culturally competent, trauma-informed K–12 and under-19 programming, technical assistance, community partnerships, staff professional development, and data collection. The bill mainly updates allowable grant activities, narrows the prior "children and violence" authority to school-based gun-violence prevention, relocates the statutory part and numbered sections, and explicitly lists permissible program elements such as trauma healing, social-emotional learning, connections to mental-health and community supports, and harm-reduction strategies.