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Tools for Life: Relationship-Building Solutions (TFL) is a program designed to improve school climate and safety through the proactive development of elementary and middle school students' interpersonal skills (relationship-building and communication) and intrapersonal skills (self-regulation and resiliency). In the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years, the Jackson (Mississippi) Public School District (JPSD) implemented TFL in grades 1 through 8. RAND researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether TFL, integrated into existing school practices, positively affected school climate and safety in the district.

This project described the implementation of TFL in JPSD, calculated its costs, and evaluated the program's effectiveness. TFL was designed to improve whole-school change in relationships among staff and students, but the project researchers found that implementation of TFL in JPSD schools was generally shallow, and the program was rarely, if at all, implemented across a whole school as it was designed. TFL had little impact: After one year of implementation, there were no practically or statistically significant differences between schools that implemented TFL and those that did not in measures of students' social and emotional, school climate, behavioral, or achievement outcomes. In addition to the uneven implementation of the program, methodological limitations of the study and contextual factors in JPSD may have contributed to these finding.

Bullying, fighting, and other forms of interpersonal violence occur frequently in elementary schools, and are associated with student distress, poor school functioning, and increases in aggression, delinquency, and other behavior problems. Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) is a holistic, multi-tiered, evidence-based approach for preventing and reducing aggression and other problem behavior in school. However, the majority of PBIS schools struggle with more intensive interventions, which many students who present aggressive and disruptive behaviors need. School mental health (SMH) offers promise for addressing these limitations in PBIS. However, SMH lacks an implementation structure and as a result a student must effectively be at a crisis level to be referred for services. Because PBIS and SMH have operated separately, the impacts of both initiatives have been limited.

To address these limitations, the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) has been developed by leaders from national centers for both initiatives, providing specific guidance on PBIS-SMH interconnection through effective teams, data-based decision making, implementation support for evidence-based practices, and ongoing quality improvement to assure responsiveness to school and student needs. Involving partnerships with school districts and community mental health agencies in two school districts located in South Carolina and Florida, 24 schools implementing PBIS with fidelity were randomly assigned to the three conditions: the ISF, PBIS and SMH, or PBIS alone (8 schools per condition). Data were collected from school records, teacher and student reports, and school implementation teams. The impacts of ISF were compared to the other two conditions on school climate and safety, student exposure to violence, problem behavior and discipline problems, and access to and quality of services.

This project examined the implementation of student threat assessment in Florida public schools. Researchers investigated threat assessment training and implementation, which types of threat cases schools experienced, and how cases were resolved. This project used a mixed-method approach with four broad research questions: (1) What are stakeholder reactions to training and implementation of threat assessment in their school? (2) What are the characteristics of threat assessments conducted in Florida public schools? (3) What relationships exist among academic, disciplinary, and legal outcomes for students receiving a threat assessment? (4) Are there adverse disparities in student outcomes associated with race, ethnicity, or special education status?

The data produced by this study include three Case Data datasets (DS1-3), comprised of Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) case data on student threats from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years; two Training Survey Data datasets (DS4/5), containing results from surveys of participants who completed Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) trainings; and Needs Assessment Survey Data (DS6) from a survey of district school safety leads assessing needs and concerns about their district's threat assessment process.