Promising Practices: Quality Schools (Pueblo City Schools)

Quality Schools

Pueblo City Schools 

Pueblo City Schools has received $2.1 million from CDE's School Bullying Prevention and Education Grant to implement evidence-based bullying prevention programs across its 26 schools.  

Storyline

Officials with Pueblo City Schools had been seeing a steady increase in bullying incidents leading up to the 2015-16 school year and wanted to do something to stop it. The district applied for and was awarded the three-year School Bullying Prevention and Education Grant to implement bullying prevention initiatives across the district. The grant funding comes from marijuana tax revenue, which was approved by the state legislature. Seventy-one schools in 2017 received funding from the grant. 

The money has allowed Pueblo City Schools to purchase the Second Step Social-Emotional Curricula for the kindergarten through eighth grade and partner with a nonprofit organization called No Bully to implement the program. The grant has provided training for teachers on anti-bullying techniques and paid for things like family education nights and materials for schools that emphasize anti-bullying messages.

Tara Roybal, a specialist in the Pueblo City Schools' department of intervention, said bullying incidents across the district have fallen by 62 percent over the past two years the bullying prevention program has been in effect. In this interview, Roybal explains the program's effects and its successes.