Health & Wellness
Girl scouts: Cherry Creek Sc hools.
Let’s Talk About Menstruation
How students, teachers, and parents are combating period poverty and promoting menstrual literacy.
Lauren Campbell and Annaliese Austin present full pad dispensers and thousands extra to Liberty Middle School in Aurora.
By Anna Sutterer
O
ne in four teens nationally has missed class due to lack of access to menstrual supplies, according to a report by the Alliance for Period Supplies. For some Colorado students, a lack of access to hygiene products and sufficient menstruation education poses even more challenges. “People need to know that this is happening here,” says Geoff Davis, whose organization, Period Kits Denver, provides period supply kits to local groups and people experiencing homelessness. He’s received emails from schools; one telling of a student from Brighton in the health aid office because she’d been changing tampons every other day in order to ration them. Davis started Period Kits Denver because a friend told him they’ve had to choose between food and tampons before. Neither food stamps
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Colorado Parent | August 2021
nor the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children cover tampons or pads. “This is about dignity,” says Davis. He believes that if a school is buying toilet paper, it should be buying pads, “because both are bodily functions you have no control over.” ACCESS AND SAFETY IN SCHOOLS The new Free Menstrual Hygiene Products to Students bill was signed by Governor Polis in July 2021. Beginning with the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the bill appropriates $100,000 to the department of education for grants. School districts and charter schools with 50 percent or more students on free or reduced lunch can apply for the grants in order to provide tampons or pads in their restrooms at no cost to students.
To Davis, the grant program is positive, but doesn’t solve the whole problem. Costs for a district to purchase dispensers and stock them can be high. For reference, Boulder Valley School District, which has 34 middle and high schools, recently spent $9,000 to purchase 240 dispensers and anticipates a $20,000 bill to keep as many restrooms stocked each year. Lauren Campbell and Annaliese Austin, now sophomores at Grandview High School, recently earned the Girl Scouts Silver Award for bringing period products to every girls’ restroom at Liberty Middle School in Aurora. They crowdfunded $1,200 to purchase six dispensers and got the support of Always brand feminine products which donated more than 75,000 pads. “A lot of people who are impoverished don’t
