COLTON, Calif. — A school district here recently rolled out a message of kindness, inclusion, and acceptance to the students and communities it serves on one of its school buses for the second year in a row.
Colton Joint Unified School District’s (CJUSD’s) Kindness Bus, which was the brainchild of Director of Transportation Erick Richardson, serves as a rolling billboard for the CJUSD Kindness Campaign.
The bus was decorated by Bloomington High School art students, who also came up with this year’s theme: "Be happy. Be kind."
District staff members boarded the bus and visited multiple school sites on Oct. 25, which is Unity Day: a day focused on anti-bullying and positive behaviors. Students saw the bus pull up to their campuses and received stickers and bookmarks with anti-bullying messages. Crowds of school staff and students clad in orange — the official color of Unity Day — welcomed the bus, holding posters with positive messages.
In addition to the tour on Unity Day, the Kindness Bus also visited schools in honor of National Bullying Prevention Month throughout October.
CJUSD is focusing on kindness in an effort to prevent bullying by reinforcing positive behaviors, as reflected in the district’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework. The aim is to get the message of the Kindness Bus to stay with students and staff throughout the year.
“Our goal is to spread kindness throughout the entire community and to remind our students and community that being nice matters,” Richardson said.
“As the Kindness Bus rolls through our neighborhoods, you can plainly see that it affects everyone,” he added. “The smiles on faces young and old are enough to know and feel that we are promoting positive behavior in our district. We want everyone to know that we do not accept bullying of any kind.”
Watch video of the event from CBS Los Angeles below.
