S.A.F.E. Grant Info

Spring 2012 In-Services
The spring in-services will take place in late May and early June around the state and will showcase public education resources and roll out the new 6th grade evaluation tool.

FY ’12 Grant Contracts
FY '12 Student Awareness of Fire Education or S.A.F.E. Program award letters have been mailed to fire chiefs. Please return the signed contract and the contract signatory authorization form (the one where the community says who can sign contracts) to DFS as soon as possible. Once you receive your copy back of the executed contract you can begin to incur costs.

FY 2011 S.A.F.E. Grant Year-End Report doc format of FY 2011 S.A.F.E. Grant Year-End Report   - FY '11 S.A.F.E. funds should be expended (or encumbered) by December 31, 2011 and the FY '11 Year-End report was due January 31, 2012. If you have any unspent FY '11 funds, please use the page in the report to file for a six-month extension. Be sure to include your student evaluation results!

S.A.F.E. FY 2010 Annual Report
This statewide annual report of the Student Awareness of Fire Education Program includes exciting results from the first year using the 3rd grade evaluation tool. It allows us to prove that students are learning what we think we are teaching and to know where there is room for improvement. Massachusetts may well be the first state in the nation that is conducting this sort of rigorous, consistent evaluation of its fire education.

Student Evaluation
Are Students Truly Learning What We Think We Are Teaching Them?
Evaluation is key to the success of the S.A.F.E. Program. How do we know if the students really learned what we thought we taught them? Are they getting all the key concepts by the time they reach certain milestones? Let's check and see.

No matter which grades your S.A.F.E. Program focuses on, there are certain key behaviors that we expect students will have learned along the way. Our goal is to find a way to measure if students have indeed learned those key core concepts of fire and life safety by the spring of third, sixth and tenth grades, without taking away the flexibility that local school and fire departments have in designing their S.A.F.E. Programs and selecting their target age groups.

Using the MA Fire and Life Safety Education Curriculum Planning Guidebook AND the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Health Curriculum Frameworks, the Department of Fire Services has developed a third and a sixth grade evaluation tool for use by S.A.F.E. educators. The tenth grade tool is in development. By recording the results we strengthen our resolve to provide the best educational opportunities possible to our young learners.

Third Grade Evaluation Tool
Here are the links to the third grade evaluation tool, the spreadsheet to use as the master scoring database, a sample of the database, and a guide on how to give the test and to use the database. Please feel free to contact S.A.F.E. staff with any questions.

Sixth Grade Evaluation Tool
Here are the links to the sixth grade evaluation tool, the spreadsheet to use as the master scoring database, a sample of the database, and a guide on how to give the test and to use the database. Please feel free to contact S.A.F.E. staff with any questions.