LEWISTON – The Lewiston and Auburn public schools have won a four-year grant worth $1.16 million a year to improve students’ lives in collaboration with numerous community agencies.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative grant is from the U.S. Department of Education, one of 61 awarded nationally.

In all, more than $74 million will be awarded to 29 states to create safe learning environments that promote healthy childhood development and prevent youth violence and drug use.

Highly competitive

The grant, considered highly competitive, attracted 355 applications nationally.

In Lewiston-Auburn the grant will further fuse the cities together creating a community collaborative among the public schools and numerous agencies.

They are the Lewiston-Auburn police departments, Healthy Androscoggin, Advocates for Children, Community Clinical Services, the Center for the Prevention of Health Violence, Head Start, Literacy Volunteers and the Department of Corrections Juvenile Services.

‘Wonderful, wonderful’

Most of the missions the above organizations provide to students will be enhanced, said Healthy Androscoggin Executive Director Angela Westhoff, who wrote the grant.

“It’s wonderful, wonderful,” she said. “This will open more doors for students.”

The grant covers five broad categories: safe school environments and violence prevention; alcohol and other drug prevention activities; student behavioral, social and emotional supports; mental health services; and early childhood social and emotional learning programs.

New efforts in Lewiston-Auburn will include more early childhood development for children up to 5 years old. There’ll be more Big Brother/Big Sisters help for youngsters, more recreation opportunities and after-school programs to limit time students might be alone, and help for parents.

“There’ll be more pro-social activities to keep kids busy and build self-esteem, more work to encourage tolerance and prevent bullying,” Westhoff said. “Kids are going to be happier. And over time, there’ll be improved educational outcomes, less bullying, less juvenile incident reports.”

The grant will allow schools and police departments to build plans for a major disaster that could involve lockdowns or a sudden need to contact parents.

“We’re also looking to deal with dropout prevention of students,” Lewiston School Superintendent Leon Levesque said. “Then there’s the mental health piece. One of the areas that’s been identified that’s really been lacking is the ability to provide mental health services to young people. We’re looking at contracting for more services with Tri-County or other agencies that can help us,” Levesque said.

Police will have better resources to conduct programs to ensure that alcohol is not sold to those under 21. “The whole intent is to have a better community for our youth, one that is supportive,” Levesque said.

Westhoff agreed. “What we found is that clearly we have a lot of needs in Lewiston-Auburn” with poverty. The community has substantial poverty, minorities and a lack of a public health infrastructure, Westhoff said.

Auburn School Superintendent Tom Morrill said support systems for students will be boosted “at a time when there are higher expectations for student performance. Ultimately this will make our student population able to perform at a higher level, and contribute greatly to the community,” Morrill said. “Healthy families make healthy communities.”

The grant is so large it will necessitate hiring a project director to oversee all of the endeavors. Plus, at least another five full-time jobs will be created with managers coordinating efforts in both cities for grades K-6, 7-12, and an evaluator.

During the next four years the intent is to build an infrastructure within the agencies to sustain efforts after the federal money has run out, Levesque said. Planning to put initiatives in place this year has already begun, Levesque said.