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Campus Safety Voices, available on Spotify and Apple streaming platforms, features timely conversations on a wide range of topics affecting K-12 schools, institutions of higher education, and healthcare facilities.

The pandemic has put a major financial strain on K-12 schools and institutions of higher education, so the Biden administration and Congress have authorized $165 billion of funding to help campuses recover. That’s on top of the $82 billion that was approved in late December during the Trump administration.

This is an excellent opportunity for school districts and colleges to make investments in desperately needed infrastructure improvements.

According to Fred James, who is Siemens’ national business director for higher education, “I think we have to appreciate that this is the second and third round of this funding, and the language and guidance coming out from the Department of Education continues to broaden.”

This means the new round of funding can be used for a wide variety of solutions that improve the long-term safety and health of students, faculty and staff, such as ventilation systems, video surveillance technology, access control, emergency notification systems, lighting and more.

In this interview, I spoke with James; David Santo, Siemens’ Smart Infrastructure national mechanical services segment head; and Jesse Craft, Siemens’ energy services portfolio manager on how campuses can participate in these federal funding opportunities.

In addition to funding, Santo and Craft talk about the clean-air and ventilation options for campuses to combat COVID-19 now, but also other pathogens that can cause the flu, asthma and other health problems in the future.

“There’s a lot to work with here, and there are a lot of options for using this funding,” said James.

Campus Safety also has many other articles that provide helpful tips on how to obtain grant funding. Those articles include:

• How to Write a Technology Grant Proposal for Your Campus
• 12 Common Mistakes Campuses Make When Applying for Grants
• When Responding to Grant RFPs, Give Them What They Want
• Finding Funds for Your Equipment, Programs and People (Part 1 of 2)
• Finding Funds for Your Equipment, Programs and People (Part 2 of 2)