Home / Blog / Schools & Districts
Ask a district about security film and you usually get one question wearing two coats: “can we fund it” and “does it work” arrive together, as if they had the same answer. They don’t — one is a grants question, answered by a NOFO; the other is an engineering question, answered by a test standard. This post keeps them separate, cites where each answer comes from, and says plainly where we found none.
Published September 7, 2026 · Armored Glass Solutions
The FY26 Change
The DOJ COPS Office runs the School Violence Prevention Program (SVPP), a federal grant for school district security equipment. The FY2026 Application Resource Guide’s Equipment/Technology list reads, verbatim: “› Window film/tint.” It sits next to “Door locking mechanisms/access control doors” and “Entry control equipment” — an ordinary hardening line item. That’s new: the FY2025 equipment list contains no mention of window film, tint, or glazing at all. It appears for the first time in FY26, alongside two other new additions, “Fencing” and “Visitor management systems.”
The constraint we’d rather lead with than bury: FY2026 SVPP is closed. Grants.gov closed August 4, 2026; JustGrants closed August 11, 2026. FY2027 hasn’t been announced — SVPP has run every year FY2023–FY2026, so another cycle is a reasonable bet, but nothing is confirmed. This is a “get your scope ready” post, not a deadline pitch.
Don’t Send It to the Wrong Program
BJA’s STOP School Violence Program sounds like it should also cover glazing. It explicitly doesn’t. The FY25 NOFO: “BJA STOP Program funds may not be used for items considered ‘deterrent measures’ or ‘target hardening,’ which include but are not limited to metal detectors, weapon detectors, security cameras, ballistic glass, gates, fencing… Applicants interested in these type of items should see the COPS SVPP.” COPS’s FY26 guide corroborates the split from the other side: training, anonymous reporting, and threat-assessment teams are “out of scope for SVPP, but may be eligible for funding under the BJA STOP School Violence program NOFO.”
Rule of thumb: physical hardening — film, locks, access control — goes to COPS SVPP. Training, reporting, and threat-assessment programs go to BJA STOP. A glazing line item in a STOP application isn’t a gray area; it’s explicitly barred. (No FY2026 STOP solicitation exists as of this writing; FY25 closed October 31, 2025.)
SVPP Mechanics That Matter to a District
Eligibility. SVPP names school districts, school boards, and law enforcement agencies as eligible applicants, then draws the line: “Individual schools not operating as school districts and independent schools and private schools… are NOT eligible to apply as primary applicants.” A standalone private or parochial school doesn’t apply directly — see below.
Match and waiver. Recipients “are required to contribute a local match of at least 25 percent… The local match must be a cash match.” Exception: microgrants under $100,000 have the 25 percent match waived, with roughly $1M reserved for “rural, tribal, and low-resourced schools.”
Worth raising with any vendor: equipment “must be American-made” to the maximum practicable extent, and installation “should be compliant with all applicable codes, including the building and life safety codes.”
The NEPA trap. If a project bundles film into new construction or remodeling, “recipients must comply with… NEPA prior to obligating, expending, or drawing down award funds… The compliance process may take several months.” Ask early. FY26 terms: up to $500,000 per award, 36 months from October 1, 2026, ~$73M total, ~200 awards anticipated.
What’s Actually Open in California Right Now
California Proposition 2 (AB 247, passed November 5, 2024) is the one channel open today. Its statutory purposes name school security directly: “Construction projects or the purchase of furniture or equipment designed to increase school security or playground safety.” ($10B total, $8.5B for K-12.) But it isn’t a standalone security grant — it’s continuous filing through OPSC (Form SAB 50-04), riding inside a district’s modernization project, and it now requires a board-approved five-year facilities master plan. OPSC’s own caveat: “Inclusion on this list is not a guarantee of future funding.”
Two other routes point away from public districts entirely. FEMA NSGP is limited to 501(c)(3) organizations; its AEL entry (14EX-00-BSIR) names “breakage/shatter resistant glass, window wraps/films/velums, etc.” Cal OES CSNSGP is likewise nonprofit-only, closed December 12, 2025, and its list doesn’t name film specifically (a catch-all clause might cover it — not verified). Both matter to private and parochial schools, not public districts.
What the Guidelines Actually Recommend
PASS (Partner Alliance for Safer Schools) publishes the guidelines most cited in this space. We’re citing the free 6th Edition (2023) throughout; the 7th (July 2025) sits behind a registration form we haven’t read. Tier One “Establishes a foundation that is a baseline layer of security. All schools should work towards adherence to Tier One measures.” Security film on entry glazing sits at Tier 1, in two places — not an add-on above the baseline.
Building Perimeter, Tier 1: “Security window film at least 14 millimeters thick (350 microns) should be installed on all exterior door vision panels and sidelites… to deter or delay the ability of an attacker to breach a doorway using a firearm or other tool/weapon.” Classroom/Interior Perimeter, also Tier 1, repeats the standard for classroom and shelter-in-place doors. (PASS: “Door vision panels are windows incorporated into a door”; “Sidelites are narrow windows immediately adjacent to a doorway.”)
Worth flagging because it shows we read the source: PASS writes “14 millimeters thick (350 microns).” The parenthetical is right, the unit word isn’t — 14 mil (how film is actually measured) is roughly 356 microns, matching “350”; 14 millimeters would be 14,000 microns, not a film. We’re citing 350 microns (14 mil) and noting the typo rather than repeating it.
Ballistic glass sits three tiers higher: “Security glass… that meets or exceeds the UL Level 3 standard for ballistic protection” is Tier 3, not Tier 1 (UL 752 Level 3 ≈ .44 Magnum handgun, not rifle). Film is the layer PASS says every school should be working toward; ballistic glazing is further up the continuum.
The Honest Limits
This is the part that gets skipped most, and it comes straight from PASS’s own Secure Visitor Entry Center white paper (July 2023) — not a competitor or a skeptic. The most consequential sentence in the whole fact set: “currently there is no testing standard solely for film applied to an existing window, as the testing criteria takes the frame assembly into account… the entire pane of glass could be pushed out of the window frame. Manufacturers will market their films as an ‘equivalent’ rating, assuming that the existing glass and frame will meet the prescribed testing requirements.” An “equivalent” rating assumes the frame already meets the test — it isn’t a rating the film earned on its own, because no standalone standard exists to earn it against.
What actually decides the outcome, per PASS: “the quality of the field installation and the anchoring of the product beyond the frame.” The glazing was never the whole system: “Consideration must also be given to the door, door frame, hardware, lock, and surrounding wall… no solution will 100% prevent a determined assailant from gaining access to the building.” And: “while upgrading the security level of glazing, the same rating must be applied to the surrounding walls.” A hardened door in a soft wall is a mismatch PASS calls out directly.
Ballistic Is Not Forced-Entry Delay
PASS draws the line: “Security glazing is most commonly categorized into two types: ballistic and force protection.” Ballistic measures whether a projectile penetrates, with no requirement the glazing stay in its frame. Force protection measures whether an attacker can make an opening big enough to get through, and how long it takes: “Ratings are achieved by either resisting a specific load or length of time.”
ASTM F3561, written for the shoot-then-breach scenario, states in its own scope: “This test method is not to be used for ballistic resistant glazing rating,” and test projectiles “are permitted to perforate the entire specimen” — it measures how long the assembly holds together, not whether a bullet gets through. That’s why PASS calls “bullet-proof” misleading: “the glazing is only rated for a specific quantity of a certain caliber of projectile.”
Two common misapplications worth checking on any spec: UL 972 is a retail hit-and-run test — a steel ball dropped on a storefront window — and DoD’s own assessment says “This testing is at a level below the ‘very low forced entry severity level.’” And UL 752’s numeric “Level 1–10” scale — the “UL Level 3” language PASS itself uses — was replaced with letter designations in Edition 12, October 2023. A spec still citing “UL Level 3” uses pre-2023 terminology.
Is It Required?
No US model building code requires forced-entry-resistant school glazing. A 2025 proposal (G88-25) to add that to the International Building Code — Group E entrances rated to ASTM F3561 — was disapproved 13–0: “Registered design professionals may not have expertise to do a forced risk assessment… We should not be mandating a specific approach… The FBI report on school shootings say that forced entry is not the problem.”
One state has gone the other way by statute. Tennessee’s Public Chapter 448, effective July 1, 2025: “If a public school building… is constructed or remodeled on or after July 1, 2025, then the building must have installed a clear window film or security glazing that meets a nationally recognized test standard for forced entry resistance, such as the ASTM F3561 test standard…” It’s the one confirmed state law we found.
On California: our search turned up no statute or code requiring school security glazing. But our review of the state building code wasn’t exhaustive, and we won’t convert “we didn’t find one” into “there isn’t one.” That’s a question for your district’s code official, not a claim we’re prepared to make for you.
What a District Should Do Next
Whatever the funding path, the groundwork is the same and brand-agnostic. Identify the actual entry glazing — exterior vision panels and sidelites first, per PASS’s Tier 1 language, then classroom and shelter-in-place doors, then any secure vestibule glazing. Ask any vendor for the tested assembly a rating actually applies to, not just a film datasheet — since no standalone standard exists for film applied by itself, the honest answer involves the frame and the anchoring, not the film alone. Ask how it attaches. Then get it — openings, product, attachment method — written down as a scope before a grant window opens.
How We Work
A call in usually gets a callback the same business day. We schedule a free in-person site assessment anywhere in LA or Orange County, where we measure, photograph, and assess the actual threat — rather than price from a description alone. The written spec typically follows within two business days, with good, better, and best options and manufacturer data sheets attached. From there it’s the district’s call: keep it, shop it, or book us. If the job goes forward, our own crews install it, and the manufacturer warranty is registered to the customer — not held by us.
Questions
No. No US model building code requires it — a 2025 proposal to add it to the International Building Code was disapproved 13-0. COPS SVPP lists window film as allowable equipment a district may fund, not equipment it must install. Tennessee is the one confirmed state law requiring it. We found none in California, but our code review wasn’t exhaustive.
No. FY2026 applications closed August 4, 2026 (Grants.gov) and August 11, 2026 (JustGrants). FY2027 hasn’t been announced, though SVPP has run every year since FY2023.
Not as the primary applicant. SVPP excludes individual and private schools from applying directly — eligible applicants are school districts, school boards, and law enforcement agencies. Private and parochial schools are the intended audience for FEMA NSGP and Cal OES CSNSGP instead, both 501(c)(3)-only and both closed as of this writing.
No — different tests measuring different things. ASTM F3561, the forced-entry standard, states in its own scope that it is not to be used for ballistic resistant glazing rating. PASS calls the term bullet-proof misleading, since a ballistic rating covers only a specific caliber and quantity. UL 972 is neither — a retail burglary test DoD rates below its lowest forced-entry severity level.
Keep Reading
How AEL 14EX-00-BSIR funds security glazing for eligible 501(c)(3) organizations.
Read the post →The first 30 days: naming an owner and what a glazing quote needs to contain.
Read the post →Reading two written specs side by side — what actually makes one comparable to another.
Read the post →Free in-person site assessment anywhere in LA or Orange County. We measure, photograph, and assess the actual threat, then send a written spec — no obligation.