Will serve as advisor on school safety policy, preparedness, and response

Bobby Kipper, founder and executive director at the National Center for the Prevention of Community Violence (NCPCV), has been named the School Safety and Discipline Specialist in the School Safety Office for the Virginia Department of Education.

In this role, Kipper, who has nearly three decades of experience in school safety and community anti-violence initiatives, will help the Virginia Department of Education develop a comprehensive statewide school safety policy, will serve as an advisor on school safety preparedness and response, and will provide analysis about school school safety incidents.

“I am excited to join the Virginia Department of Education and work with this impressive, passionate group of people,” Kipper said. “Together, we can implement multidisciplinary strategies to help keep all children in our Commonwealth safer,” Kipper said.

While in this role, Kipper will continue to serve as executive director of the nonprofit NCPCV, which he founded in 2009. Kipper sees the positions as a natural alignment of his heart, passion, and experience. He will also continue to serve as a subject matter expert and special advisor to the Virginia Center for School Safety, a role he has served for about 17 years.

Kipper cut his teeth in law enforcement and public safety with the Newport News Police Department, where he was a crisis negotiator, skills that today he brings with him when advising on school safety and de-escalation strategies. In 1999, Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore appointed Kipper as the program leader for 4-SAFE VA in the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. In that role, he provided technical assistance for schools and communities on safety issues, and developed professional development courses about school safety for Virginia.

In the years that followed, Kipper went on to create several successful anti-violence and anti-bullying programs and became a noted author of several books and publications about bullying and violence, including:

• “No Bullies: Solutions for Saving Our Children from Today’s Bullies”
• “No Colors: 100 Ways to Stop Gangs from Taking Away Our Communities”
• “Actively Caring for People Policing”
• “Looking For a Hero” D.A.R.E. Program
• “Law Enforcement’s Role in Aggressive School Violence,” Police Chief Magazine
• “Book Bags to Holsters,” School Violence Prevention Program University of North Florida
• “International Chiefs of Police School Violence Reduction Program
• “Class Action,” Virginia Teens and the Law Program/Office of the Governor

Today, Kipper is focused on helping schools across the nation build successful strategies to combat bullying and thwart violence, especially through NCPCV’s GreenZone program.

GreenZone is a tangible, measurable way to identify behavior, promote positive interactions, and create an overall positive environment. By focusing on character development, bullying prevention, and preventing relationship and dating violence, GreenZone outlines how we should speak to and relate to one another wherever we are — at school, at work, at play, or at home.

When schools leverage ProText My School technology with GreenZone training and programs, school officials get a unique edge to better understand how they can help students communicate and promote a violence-free environment. Together, GreenZone and ProText My School are doing something that has never been done before – improving school climate, enhancing campus safety response, and disrupting the process of violence for the nation’s 51 million students.