Colorado Legacy Foundation Invests in Bullying Prevention Efforts

(Denver, CO) Today the Colorado Legacy Foundation (CLF) announced that it has selected the following four districts to receive up to $10,000 in bullying prevention grants:   Denver Public Schools, Cherry Creek Schools, Poudre School District, and the Center School District.

“The mission of the Colorado Legacy Foundation is to ensure an effective leader in every school, an effective teacher in every classroom, and students that come to school healthy and ready to learn,” said Dr. Helayne Jones, President and CEO of the Colorado Legacy Foundation. “It is unhealthy for young people to feel unsafe and studies have shown that close to one in five students in Colorado report being bullied.  These grants keep faith with our mission by supporting efforts to provide safe spaces for all children to thrive.”

CLF will partner with these districts to implement comprehensive bullying prevention efforts with special attention to ensuring that students most likely to be bullied are able to learn and achieve in safe environments.  The CLF grants will support training for approximately 5,800 teachers and staff and will impact approximately 60,000 students.

These investments are part of a broader effort to support districts across the state in implementing Colorado’s recent bullying prevention law (HB 1254), which was passed in 2011 to strengthen bullying prevention efforts across the state. The new law requires districts to update their bullying prevention policies to include cyberbullying and to prohibit bullying based on disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, ancestry, or need for special education services.  The tools developed and lessons learned from the initiative will be shared statewide.  The grants are provided with generous support from the Gill Foundation and the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado.