What is a Safe and Supportive School?
A Safe and Supportive School fosters a safe, positive, healthy & inclusive whole-school learning environment. They provide an environment for students to develop positive relationships with adults and peers, regulate their emotions and behavior, achieve academic and non-academic success in school and maintain physical and psychological health and well-being.
A Safe and Supportive School integrates services and aligns initiatives that promote students’ behavioral health, including social and emotional learning, bullying prevention, trauma sensitivity, dropout prevention, truancy reduction, children’s mental health, foster care and homeless youth education, inclusion of students with disabilities, positive behavioral approaches that reduce suspensions and expulsions and other similar initiatives.
Learn more about Safe and Supportive Schools at the Massachusetts Department of Education website:
Massachusetts Department of Education Safe and Supportive Schools Commission
Massachusetts Legislature Title XII, Chapter 69, Section 1P: Safe and Supportive Schools Framework
This website is dedicated to the valuable lessons we can learn from students’ own experiences about how to create better schools. Decisions about schooling are often made without listening deeply to students themselves. But students are in the best position to understand what they need in order to do well in school.
A collaboration of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI), Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC). LEARN MORE