Texas School Safety Center Named 2019 Young Hearts Matter Texas Partner For Change

SAN MARCOS – The Texas School Safety Center (TxSSC) at Texas State University has been named the 2019 Young Hearts Matter Texas Partner for Change by the Texas Council on Family Violence (TCFV).

The award recognizes an organization whose partnerships and efforts have given voice to violence prevention and have inspired systemic community-wide change across the state.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than 11 and 7.5 percent of female and male teens, respectively, report experiencing physical dating violence in 2018. Additionally, sexual dating violence was experienced by more than 14 percent of female teens and 5 percent of male teens in that same period.

“Every year the Texas Council examines the fatalities of women by a male partner. In our most recent report of the 136 victims, the youngest was 14,” said Gloria Terry, CEO of the Texas Council on Family Violence. “Further consider that six victims were 19 or younger. This dynamic underscores the need to elevate the leadership of young people—they are instrumental in forming solutions to change these outcomes.”

The TxSSC is a unique organization that strives to build safer school communities through a variety of projects and strategic relationships.

The TxSSC is an official university-level research center at Texas State tasked by the Texas Education Code and Governor’s Homeland Security Strategic Plan with key school safety initiatives and mandates. Specifically, the TxSSC serves as a clearinghouse for the dissemination of safety and security information through research, training and technical assistance for K-12 schools and junior colleges throughout Texas.

The TxSSC has been a longtime partner with TCFV, helping to increase school safety and the responsiveness to survivors of dating violence. The two have collaborated to design a dating violence curriculum that will be deployed statewide in summer 2019.

The new curriculum has been created to help school resource officers be fully equipped with knowledge and strategies to respond to issues of dating violence, bullying and sexual assault.