Creating trauma sensitive schools requires everyone’s voice—parents, students, educators, community members, policymakers.

TLPI’s long term public policy goal is to ensure that children traumatized by family violence and other adverse childhood experiences succeed in school. TLPI currently focuses on advocating in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to ensure that all our schools become trauma sensitive. We plan to use this web page to keep the community up to date on pending laws, regulations and policies that we think are important for achieving this long term goal.

Join our growing coalition

By clicking the button below, you can join our growing coalition and become an advocate for trauma sensitive schools. Providing us with your home address will help us connect you to your legislators so that you can make your voice heard. We will not share your contact information with third parties.

Join Our Coalition

Share your story

We love to hear from parents, teachers, students—from anyone who has a story to share about why trauma sensitive schools are important. Click the button below and tell us why trauma sensitive schools are important to you. We will not share your story with anyone unless you give us permission. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer consultation and advice about individual children and cases through our website.

Share Your Story

 


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Safe and Supportive Schools legislation signed into law on August 13, 2014

This law will support all schools in Massachusetts to create the safe, supportive and welcoming environments that all children need in order to learn. Safe and supportive environments are the foundation that will help us close the achievement gap and get all students on a course to success. The legislation establishes in law a common framework based on the six elements in the Flexible Framework for organizing all of the initiatives that are involved in creating a safe and supportive environment—initiatives like bullying prevention, truancy reduction, dropout prevention, social emotional learning, and many others.  There will be a statewide Safe and Supportive Schools commission to advise the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on implementation of the Safe and Supportive Schools Framework and TLPI will continue to chair the Safe and Supportive Schools coalition.   Everyone will be needed to ensure this law is implemented in a way that improves learning for all students.  Please come together with others to advocate for safe supportive school-wide cultures by joining our coalition.

Click here for full information on the safe and supportive schools provisions

 


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The Flexible Framework in Law and Policy

Since the release of Helping Traumatized Children Learn, Volume I in 2005, TLPI has been working hard with our partners and collaborators to advocate for education laws and policies in Massachusetts to be organized according to the Flexible Framework, which is based on the core elements of school operations.

This common structure helps schools align the many initiatives they are asked to implement. In turn, this leads to better outcomes for all students—including those impacted by trauma. Click here to see all of the examples of state level laws and policies that incorporate the Flexible Framework.