Bullying is a major threat to school safety and appears to be increasing at alarming rates. Leaders throughout the entire school community need to understand the implications and ramifications of bullying on both the student who bullies and students who are bullied. This imperative mission calls for transformational leaders, armed with strong policy tools, to solve this challenge. State anti-bullying legislation and attendant regular local school district policies are the foundation and cornerstone for effective and efficient bullying prevention and intervention initiatives. This content analysis examined anti-bullying legislation for nine northeastern states to determine the comprehensiveness of their legislation. Additionally, the policies of 351 randomly selected regular local school districts in those states were analyzed to determine compliance with state legislation. Policies were assessed and scored using the "Content Analysis of School Anti-Bullying Policies" measurement tool developed and validated by Smith et al. (2008). Findings indicate a strong link between effective anti-bullying legislation and attendant school district policies. A disparity among the nine states in the northeast region in both the quality and comprehensiveness of the anti-bullying legislative guidance to public school districts was observed. Further, there was a clear but inconsistent relationship between the score for a state's legislation and the scores of its school districts' policies. This confirms that states are not enforcing the legislation and districts are not reviewing their policies in order to conform to legislation. These findings support specific recommendations for those leaders interested in transforming anti-bullying policies at local and state levels. These transformational leaders will then be able to evaluate and develop effective anti-bullying policies to make schools a safer place. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]