Local
EXCLUSIVE: D.C seeks to bolster schools’ anti-bullying policies
Office of Human Rights to partner with Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights on effort
Suzanne Greenfield of the D.C. Office of Human Rights (Photo courtesy of Elliot Imse)
The D.C. Office of Human Rights will partner with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights to work with public and charter schools in Washington to strengthen their anti-bullying policies.
Under the voluntary initiative, schools will complete an assessment of their implementation of D.C.’s anti-bullying laws and efforts to combat the issue in eight components designed to create a safe environment for students in the classroom. These include compliance with anti-bullying laws, engagement from school officials and staffers and the collection of data that accurately gauges the issues.
The participating schools will also receive technical assistance in areas in which they could potentially improve.
The Iowa Pride Network initially developed the framework — the Safe School Certification Program — after lawmakers in the Hawkeye State in 2007 passed a sweeping anti-bullying law.
The group convened a task force to develop components — including student, family and community engagement, the use of so-called evidence-based programs and practices to improve a school’s climate towards bullying and providing training for all staff — after it became concerned the schools needed support and training to achieve the statute’s goals.
“Through our framework, technical assistance and coaching, schools aren’t just implementing the letter of the law but the spirit of the law,” Ryan Roemerman, program director of the Safe School Certification Program, said. “By taking part in this program, not only are schools recognized, they are ensuring that their time is focused on efforts that truly create safe learning environments for all students.”
The RFK Center partnered with the Iowa Pride Network under its new anti-bullying initiative — Project SEATBELT (Safe Environment Achieved Through Bullying prevention, Engagement, Leadership and Training respect) — it launched last month.
Project SEATBELT chose D.C. as one of four cities in which to pilot the program.
Deborah Temkin of the RFK Center said these “initial efforts” with the D.C. Office of Human Rights are the “first steps to bringing the program” to the nation’s capital.
“We know that schools across the country and in D.C. are really wanting to do the right thing,” she said. “We know there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for bullying, so our real solution is to help them understand what their context is, what’s working in their context, what may not be working as well and what they may need to focus on a little bit more in order to really accomplish the key components of a safe school and then give them the support and assistance to do so.”
The D.C. Office of Human Rights has given the RFK Center a $40,000 grant to implement the program in which 14 public schools in Iowa currently participate.
“We want this to be a part of how [D.C. schools] do everything,” Suzanne Greenfield of the D.C. Office of Human Rights said. “We want it infused in their sort of mantra of school policies.”
The D.C. Office of Human Rights and the RFK Center announced their partnership slightly more than a year after D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray signed a bill that requires city agencies that work directly with young people to implement an anti-bullying policy.
The Youth Bullying Prevention Act of 2012 established an anti-bullying task force that includes representatives from D.C. Public Schools, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Mayor’s Office on GLBT Affairs, SMYAL and other government agencies and community organizations.
The task force in January released recommendations designed to ensure agencies comply with the law that takes effect on Sept. 14. These include models that ensure anti-bullying prevention efforts reach every D.C. resident, focusing specifically on those youth who are either at-risk for bullying or more likely to become bullies and working with bullying victims and those who have victimized them.
D.C. Office of Human Rights Director Gustavo Velasquez in May hired Greenfield — who had previously worked at Advocates for Justice and Education, D.C. Public Schools and PFLAG — to implement the city’s new anti-bullying law.
“I want to support the good work that’s being done and make it better,” Greenfield told the Blade as she discussed the RFK Center partnership.
Maryland
Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat, to retire from Congress
Md. congressman served for years in party leadership
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and LISA MASCARO | Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the longest-serving Democrat in Congress and once a rival to become House speaker, will announce Thursday he is set to retire at the end of his term.
Hoyer, who served for years in party leadership and helped steer Democrats through some of their most significant legislative victories, is set to deliver a House floor speech about his decision, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.
“Tune in,” Hoyer said on social media. He confirmed his retirement plans in an interview with the Washington Post.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
Kennedy Center renaming triggers backlash
Artists who cancel shows threatened; calls for funding boycott grow
Efforts to rename the Kennedy Center to add President Trump’s name to the D.C. arts institution continue to spark backlash.
A new petition from Qommittee , a national network of drag artists and allies led by survivors of hate crimes, calls on Kennedy Center donors to suspend funding to the center until “artistic independence is restored, and to redirect support to banned or censored artists.”
“While Trump won’t back down, the donors who contribute nearly $100 million annually to the Kennedy Center can afford to take a stand,” the petition reads. “Money talks. When donors fund censorship, they don’t just harm one institution – they tell marginalized communities their stories don’t deserve to be told.”
The petition can be found here.
Meanwhile, a decision by several prominent musicians and jazz performers to cancel their shows at the recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center in D.C. planned for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve has drawn the ire of the Center’s president, Richard Grenell.
Grenell, a gay supporter of President Donald Trump who served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term as president, was named Kennedy Center president last year by its board of directors that had been appointed by Trump.
Last month the board voted to change the official name of the center from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump And The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts. The revised name has been installed on the outside wall of the center’s building but is not official because any name change would require congressional action.
According to a report by the New York Times, Grenell informed jazz musician Chuck Redd, who cancelled a 2025 Christmas Eve concert that he has hosted at the Kennedy Center for nearly 20 years in response to the name change, that Grenell planned to arrange for the center to file a lawsuit against him for the cancellation.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit arts institution,” the Times quoted Grenell as saying in a letter to Redd.
“This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” the Times quoted Grenell’s letter as saying.
A spokesperson for the Trump-Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Washington Blade asking if the center still planned to file that lawsuit and whether it planned to file suits against some of the other musicians who recently cancelled their performances following the name change.
In a follow-up story published on Dec. 29, the New York Times reported that a prominent jazz ensemble and a New York dance company had canceled performances scheduled to take place on New Year’s Eve at the Kennedy Center.
The Times reported the jazz ensemble called The Cookers did not give a reason for the cancellation in a statement it released, but its drummer, Billy Hart, told the Times the center’s name change “evidently” played a role in the decision to cancel the performance.
Grenell released a statement on Dec. 29 calling these and other performers who cancelled their shows “far left political activists” who he said had been booked by the Kennedy Center’s previous leadership.
“Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” the Times quoted him as saying in his statement.
District of Columbia
New interim D.C. police chief played lead role in security for WorldPride
Capital Pride says Jeffery Carroll had ‘good working relationship’ with organizers
Jeffery Carroll, who was named by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Dec. 17 as the city’s Interim Chief of Police, played a lead role in working with local LGBTQ community leaders in addressing public safety issues related to WorldPride 2025, which took place in D.C. last May and June
“We had a good working relationship with him, and he did his job in relation to how best the events would go around safety and security,” said Ryan Bos, executive director of Capital Pride Alliance.
Bos said Carroll has met with Capital Pride officials in past years to address security issues related to the city’s annual Capital Pride parade and festival and has been supportive of those events.
At the time Bowser named him Interim Chief, Carroll had been serving since 2023 as Executive Assistant Chief of Specialized Operations, overseeing the day-to-day operation of four of the department’s bureaus. He first joined the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in 2002 and advanced to multiple leadership positions across various divisions and bureaus, according to a statement released by the mayor’s office.
“I know Chief Carroll is the right person to build on the momentum of the past two years so that we can continue driving down crime across the city,” Bowser said in a statement released on the day she announced his appointment as Interim Chief.
“He has led through some of our city’s most significant public safety challenges of the past decade, he is familiar with D.C. residents and well respected and trusted by members of the Metropolitan Police Department as well as our federal and regional public safety partners,” Bowser said.
“We have the best police department in the nation, and I am confident that Chief Carroll will meet this moment for the department and the city,” Bowser added.
But Bowser has so far declined to say if she plans to nominate Carroll to become the permanent police chief, which requires the approval of the D.C. City Council. Bowser, who announced she is not running for re-election, will remain in office as mayor until January 2027.
Carroll is replacing outgoing Chief Pamela Smith, who announced she was resigning after two years of service as chief to spend more time with her family. She has been credited with overseeing the department at a time when violent crime and homicides declined to an eight-year low.
She has also expressed support for the LGBTQ community and joined LGBTQ officers in marching in the WorldPride parade last year.
But Smith has also come under criticism by members of Congress, who have accused the department of manipulating crime data allegedly showing lower reported crime numbers than actually occurred. The allegations came from the Republican-controlled U.S. House Oversight Committee and the U.S. Justice Department
Bowser has questioned the accuracy of the allegations and said she has asked the city’s Inspector General to look into the allegations.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the D.C. police Office of Public Affairs did not immediately respond to a question from the Washington Blade about the status of the department’s LGBT Liaison Unit. Sources familiar with the department have said a decline in the number of officers currently working at the department, said to be at a 50-year low, has resulted in a decline in the number of officers assigned to all of the liaison units, including the LGBT unit.
Among other things, the LGBT Liaison Unit has played a role in helping to investigate hate crimes targeting the LGBTQ community. As of early Wednesday an MPD spokesperson did not respond to a question by the Blade asking how many officers are currently assigned to the LGBT Liaison Unit.
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