Lightspeed Systems® Announces Partnership with the UGLI Foundation to Address Bullying in Schools and Communities

Partnership Aims to End Bullying at all Levels

Austin, Texas - May 21, 2024 - Today, Lightspeed Systems, celebrating its twenty-fifth year as the global leader in providing digital safety, security, and equity solutions to K-12 education, proudly announced its partnership with the UGLI Foundation, an organization committed to ending bullying behavior. Initial phases of the partnership include extending the UGLI Foundation’s anti-bullying resources to customers of Lightspeed Alert™, Lightspeed Systems’ market-leading student safety and wellness solution.

“According to the Pew Research Center, one in five US high school and middle school students reported being bullied at school, and one in six have been bullied electronically,” said Brian Thomas, President and Chief Executive Officer at Lightspeed Systems. “Bullying has deepened the student mental health and safety crisis across all school districts, and we are proud to partner with the UGLI Foundation to put an end to it.”

Bullying Impacts Everyone

Bullying impacts everyone, extending beyond K-12 schools. Bullying impacts adults and children, and is present at school, at work, and in society at large. Compounding the situation is the always-on, 24x7x365 bullying perpetuated by social media and other technology platforms.

A key part of the UGLI Foundation — which stands for Unique, Gifted, Lovеd, and Individual — is an extracurricular club for students that focuses on spreading kindness and preventing bullying behavior. Grants from the UGLI Foundation fully fund the program and help schools create inclusive communities and a safe space for students to cope with bullying behaviors. The UGLI Foundation funds schools $2,000 to incorporate a club into the school and provides turnkey resources that meet standards for bullying prevention, like those listed in Section 37.0832 of the Texas Education Code.

“We are honored to partner with Lightspeed Systems. Partnerships like this one bring needed information and support to students, parents, and educators,” said Angela Garcia, founder of the UGLI Foundation. “We encourage everyone to support others who have been hurt or harmed, take actions to step in to stop instances of bullying, treat all with kindness, fully accept people’s differences, and include those who are left out.”

"We built Lightspeed Alert to address a growing need and give schools early warning of students in crisis and at risk of harm to self or others,” continued Thomas. “Bullying is often a precursor to those tragedies. Student safety is something we’re extremely passionate about, and my greatest hope is that by working together with the UGLI Foundation, we can end bullying and make solutions like Lightspeed Alert unnecessary.”

About UGLI Foundation

The UGLI Foundation is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to end bullying. Forever. By changing the very definition of the word ugly, our goal is to make the world a kinder place where each person is now Unique, Gifted, Loved, and Individual. The UGLI Foundation offers an array of bullying awareness and prevention programs including UGLI Student Ambassadors that empower students to take a stand against bullying, UGLI Spaces, UGLI Chats and other programs promoting anti-bullying. For more information, visit http://theuglifoundation.org.

About Lightspeed Systems

Lightspeed Systems is dedicated to providing K–12 districts with time-saving solutions to create safe, secure, and equitable education, so they focus where it matters most—students and learning. Lightspeed Systems provides cloud-managed solutions: Security & Compliance, Safety & Wellness and Engagement & Impact, purpose-built for school networks and devices. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Lightspeed Systems serves more than 23 million students using 15 million devices in 31,000 schools throughout 42 countries. To learn more, visit www.lightspeedsystems.com.

Media Contact:

Klaire Marino
Lightspeed Systems
[email protected]