Prince William County won the biggest chunk of $28.8 million in federal grants nationwide to overhaul its schools’ emergency response procedures, topping 97 other public school systems nationwide.
While Prince William landed $672,155 from the Department of Education on Thursday, the much larger Montgomery County school district received just $213,833, significantly less than requested.
The average award for large districts — 76 or more schools — was $600,000, according to estimates from the federal Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. While Prince William has 83 schools, Montgomery has 200 — but its award grant was nearly $100,000 less than the $300,000 award a medium-size district (21 to 75 schools) was expected to receive.
“We applied for well over $600,000,” said Dana Tofig, spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools. He said he did not know why the amount given was so much less. “I don’t even want to speculate.”
The money will go toward training teachers and faculty to move from a Code Red/Code Blue alert system to “a more plain language” procedure, Tofig said.
“There are other factors [than size],” Department of Education spokesman Jim Bradshaw said in an e-mail. “Montgomery County only received a partial award as we did not have enough available funds.”
Prince William County will use the money to emphasize preventing and recognizing potential emergencies, spokesman Ken Blackstone said.
“There will be a lot of training involved in educating the staff.” A smaller portion of the funds will go to communication systems between the schools and parents.
Applicants could earn up to 100 points from a three-person review committee, which ranked the schools and assigned grants until the money ran out. Bradshaw confirmed that Montgomery County did not place high on the list.
Demonstrated need accounted for just 10 points of the 100. The overhaul plan and the school’s resources to implement the project accounted for the other 90 percent.
“Most applicants are able to articulate a need for some degree of emergency management funding, either because they are located in a vulnerable area or lack other resources,” Bradshaw said. “This criteria, while important, does not always help reviewers to determine … which projects will be most successful.”
He said that Montgomery would get a supplemental award if more funds became available, but the amount would depend on congressional appropriations for the grant program that wouldn’t pass until next year.
Public school systems that did not have an existing emergency response grant from the Department of Education could apply for funding. Other local districts already had grants.
