The U.S. Department of Education is hosting the biannual Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention Summit on Friday, Aug. 12, 2016 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET. The event will be streamed online here.
Speakers include James Cole Jr., general counsel, delegated the duties of Deputy Secretary of Education; Jim Macrae, acting administrator, Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and Cynthia E. Pappas, senior policy advisor, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. Ann Whalen, senior advisor to the Secretary, delegated the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, will provide closing remarks.
This year’s summit is focused on bullying of particularly high-risk populations: LGBT, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, and South Asian students, and students with disabilities. President Obama has been an ardent champion of bullying prevention efforts throughout his two terms. The U.S. Department of Education has taken the President’s charge seriously to dispel the myth that bullying is a rite of passage. Recently, the Education Department released Dear Colleague Letters on improving learning environments for students with disabilities and transgender students, the latter of which includes a companion document entitled “Examples of Policies and Emerging Practices for Supporting Transgender Students,” and also issued a Dear Colleague Letter regarding the need for tolerance despite differences in race, religion, and national origin.
A new report by the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Bullying Prevention Task Force, which will be released at the summit, highlights the experiences of AAPI students with bullying and provides recommendations from AAPI students, parents, and organizations for how the federal government can help AAPI communities address this issue.
The summit, hosted by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students in conjunction with the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention, an inter-agency working group, is invitation-only for the public and already at capacity.
Members of the media, please RSVP to [email protected].