'Work Together As A Community': Elbra Wedgeworth Focuses On Youth Violence In Denver Public Schools

DENVER (CBS4) - After a call for action from students, staff and faculty, Denver Public Schools has acted quickly to try and provide more resources for a community dealing with a rash of violence this school year. DPS announced a new coordinator and grant program to "end youth violence."

"Since the beginning of this year there's been at least five students who have lost their lives to violence, and that's five too many," said Elbra Wedgeworth, a DPS graduate and the new senior adviser for DPS. "We need to work together as a community to be able to deal with that. You need a lot of different players to coordinate to work together."

There's likely no one better positioned in Denver to bring sides together. Wedgeworth worked for decades inside city government, is credited with guiding the 2008 Democratic National Convention to Denver and operating it flawlessly, and spent time working at Denver Health.

The plan now is to bring Denver Health, the city, and DPS together to help the students and staff at the district.

"You basically have to do a multi-agency kind of coordination, not only working with the City of Denver, and Denver Health and the police department and it's all hands on deck to try and figure this out together," she said. "There's not one fit all on this, there's different voices that need to be heard and a lot of the voices that have been heard by parents, and teachers and principals, in term of their concerns by this. We just need to address it because this is our next generation we're talking about. So this is very serious."

Wedgeworth has already met with 11 principals in the Montebello and Green Valley Ranch areas of the city. She also has concerns about incidents in southwest Denver.

"Students have to deal with mentally and physically and emotional issues that's happening with this violence. That is very serious for them," she said. "As a community, as Denver, we need to be concerned about this. We need to work together to resolve it immediately. Because as of the first of this year, we've had five youth lose their lives and that's five too many and we need to address this as soon as possible."

To help Wedgeworth with the mission she is now leading, DPS announced a $5,000 grant program with the city.

In a statement from the district, "Grants will be about $5,000 per participating school, and multiple schools or regions may choose to collaborate on a proposal together to receive a larger grant award. Examples of programming include:

• After school programming, either academic or co-curricular.
• Opportunities with existing DPS partners and/or vendors.
• Any other creative or proven idea to improve the safety and wellbeing of our students."