Chalkbeat

11 young people have been shot in Philadelphia this week

2024-03-07T15:17:34+00:00

Eleven Philadelphia students were shot at bus stops less than a mile from their schools this week in separate incidents that have sent shockwaves through schools across the city.

Eight of those students, all between the ages of 15 and 17, were injured by gunfire on Wednesday afternoon at the intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman avenues in Northeast Philadelphia at a SEPTA bus stop down the street from their school, Northeast High School, according to city police.

On Monday, Dayemen Taylor, a 17-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, was killed in a shooting that injured two other young people at a different SEPTA stop at Ogontz and Godfrey avenues.

The incidents were among four shootings this week on or around SEPTA buses, a setback coming as city data shows gun violence is declining overall in Philadelphia. Nearly 55,000 students use SEPTA to get to and from school every day.

Philadelphia School District Superintendent Tony Watlington announced in a statement Wednesday night that Northeast High, which educates over 3,200 students, would be going remote through the rest of the week. Watlington said an emergency crisis response team will be on-site at the school “to support our students with grief counseling and whatever emotional assistance they need.”

Watlington also dispatched counselors to Kennedy C. Crossan School, an elementary school across the street from Wednesday’s shooting.

Jayme Banks, the Philadelphia School District’s deputy chief of prevention, intervention, and trauma, told Chalkbeat on Thursday the emotional impact of the shootings has reverberated throughout multiple nearby schools and student populations. The district will be providing counseling services for four or five other schools this week in addition to Northeast High School, Banks said.

Some Crossan students were leaving their building and witnessed the shooting on Wednesday, Banks said. There were some George Washington High School students aboard one of the SEPTA buses who also saw the eight students shot.

“People are affected in many different ways, and it’s important that we give them the space and time to process all of it,” Banks said. She added that the “trauma is so pervasive that we have to pour our resources and supports into everyone. Every student, family, teacher and community member.”

In a press conference Wednesday night, Watlington said he was “just absolutely heartbroken and angry that innocent children walking home from school would be impacted by gun violence.”

He said his office is “absolutely committed” to “improving outcomes” for students so that “when parents send their children to school, they can expect them to return safely to them.”

Kevin Bethel, Philadelphia’s police commissioner who used to serve as the district’s chief of school safety, said Wednesday “it is hard to sit here and see, in three days, 11 juveniles shot, who were going and coming from school.”

Banks said as the district and city plan a broader response to gun violence, “the impact has to be greater than therapy alone. We really need to pour [support] into our community so that everyone can heal together.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

This violence prevention strategy could redefine safety for Philadelphia’s high schools

2024-01-11T17:35:27+00:00

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Kevin Rosa’s office at Bartram High School has a couch for conversations, a computer for recording music, and a stash of barbering supplies for anyone who needs a quick trim.

It’s also a place where students in the school’s Youth Violence Reduction Initiative can go when they’re involved in a conflict or just need a break.

Travis, 17, is one of 30 male students participating in the program. Travis said Rosa’s office would be his first stop if he felt himself falling in with people who might get him involved in a dangerous situation. “In this school that’s the only person I will really open up to,” he said. (Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms for students interviewed for this story to protect them from potential violence or threats of violence stemming from their participation in the program.)

As the program coordinator, Rosa juggles myriad responsibilities. He helps Travis and other students finish their schoolwork before they play video games or record rap tracks. If they have an unexcused absence from school, he visits their homes. Some of the students have been through the juvenile justice system, and some have violent incidents in their records.

“There’s a lot of things that we know that idle time does, so we try to fill the idle time, try to reinforce positive behaviors,” Rosa said.

The Youth Violence Reduction Initiative is the Philadelphia school district’s latest attempt to secure safer futures for the teens most at risk of engaging in violence. The one-school pilot is Philadelphia’s version of the national Comprehensive Gang Model, a set of strategies used in other cities that include one-on-one mentoring, group counseling sessions, tutoring, and — when needed — law enforcement supervision.

Youth Violence Intervention Program Coordinator Kevin Rosa poses for a portrait at Bartram High School on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, in Philadelphia.

The initiative doesn’t provide direct services such as counseling or tutoring, but instead students are referred to community-based organizations.

The effort began about a year ago with $1 million in federal funding, and district leaders say it’s Philadelphia’s first formal, evidence-based violence reduction initiative inside a school. If it succeeds, the initiative could redefine safety on the city’s highest-risk campuses.

Although the city’s homicide rate has fallen so far this year compared to 2022, violence is an ongoing and urgent issue in Philadelphia, including for its young people. About 10% of the more than 1,500 victims of fatal and non-fatal shootings in 2023 were under the age of 18, according to the city’s latest data.

During the 2022-23 school year, 199 students were shot in Philadelphia, and 33 of those shootings were fatal, according to the school district. Twelve Bartram High students have been victims of gun violence since the start of the 2020 school year, the district said.

The school district has tried to prevent shootings by placing police officers in neighborhoods near schools, deploying monitors on campus perimeters, and launching conflict resolution programs. But the violence reduction pilot Rosa works in represents a different approach.

“Before we were sitting on the perimeter, now we’re looking at something extremely proactive,” said Kevin Bethel, the district’s former school safety chief, who now serves as Mayor Cherelle Parker’s police commissioner.

Student-involved shootings and incidents of students carrying guns are some of the situations project staff are looking at. But they’re also focusing on fights that occur between groups of students who are in conflict with one another. The district says the initiative aims to reduce violence in general, not just gun violence.

“One of our outcomes is gun violence, but I wouldn’t say that’s what we do,” said project director Brandy Blasko. “It’s violence in general.”

The pilot is staffed by Rosa, two case managers, a full-time research assistant, and a project director from the Office of School Safety.

A quote displayed in the office of Youth Violence Intervention Program Coordinator Kevin Rosa at Bartram High School.

While students like Travis are identified by the district as being at risk for involvement in violence, he chose to join — no students are placed there, nor are they required to join. Instead, it’s an option for those who feel they’re at risk and want extra mentorship and support. Although all the students in the initiative at Bartram High are male, female students can also participate.

Jerome, a 16-year-old Bartram student in the pilot, said the district has a role in keeping kids safe from violence. He said that a large number of his peers are carrying guns and will start conflicts with one another just because they want to.

“I don’t feel safe until I get in the house,” Jerome said.

Jerome came to Bartram from a different high school, where he said he was involved in multiple group fights. He said if not for the Bartram High program, he’d still be making “bad decisions” and would have been kicked out of school.

Helping students say no to violence

The U.S Department of Justice developed the Comprehensive Gang Model in the 1990s for use in communities as well as detention facilities. The Youth Violence Reduction Initiative is the Philadelphia school district version of that model; project leaders renamed it because many Philly teens don’t consider themselves gang members.

“To label our youth as gang kids, it’s just not a good idea,” Blasko said. “They’re just kids who just need some direction.”

In a community setting, the model involves a combination of city lawmakers, concerned community members, and law enforcement representatives according to Celeste Wojtalewicz, research associate with the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Gang Center.

“It makes sense to me that a school district could do this right with a combination of principals and teachers and counselors ‚and perhaps parents and also law enforcement, " she said. “School is everyone’s responsibility, and that’s the biggest piece.”

However, the Community Gang Model showed no statistically significant impacts in five pilot cities, according to a 2022 Urban Institute analysis that measured arrest rates and overall violent crime. A 2015 study from Suffolk University did find the model was associated with fewer youth arrests and smaller increases in homicides.

Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said programs that focus on students only tackle a portion of a community’s overall violent crime problem. He also said that schools receiving grant money for violence prevention sometimes just use it to roll out interventions without studying them.

“Essentially the problem with the whole field is research and evaluation,” he said. “I don’t know if the school system is set up to test the effectiveness of their approaches.”

Blasko is tracking the program over the next three years based on 49 performance measures with help from a full-time research assistant hired by the district. Officials plan to release one-year outcome data this month, including updates on student-involved gun violence around the school and among students in the initiative.

Bartram High School in Philadelphia.

Butts says there would have to be intensive study on the schools and neighborhoods surrounding Bartram to prove that the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative changed trends in crime.

The Bartram High pilot involves a multidisciplinary team of counselors, psychologists, and external community partners. That team meets weekly to discuss individual student cases and any serious incidents of violence.

Also at that meeting are representatives from the Penn Community Violence Prevention Team, which handles conflicts in the neighborhoods surrounding Bartram High. They also monitor students who were in the pilot after they graduate from school.

The prevention team’s strategy focuses on decreasing impulsive behavior by talking to people about making better choices, said program manager Denise Johnson. She and her colleagues try to learn everything they can about someone’s situation — what their home life is like, how much access they have to guns — so they can offer resources such as family counseling or housing and employment assistance.

“School programs are great, but they only work with the individual during school hours,” Johnson said. “It’s a lot that goes on between 3:30 or 4 to the next morning.”

Rosa and his team sometimes have to look beyond their own resources to stem violence. For example, if a student tells him they’ve been threatened, especially if there’s a gun involved in the threat, he has to activate the Threat Assessment Protocol.

That’s a district-wide policy officials developed two years ago with help from the U.S. Secret Service and the University of Virginia. If a student in the violence reduction initiative receives a threat involving a gun, two Threat Assessment Liaisons will speak with the student who was threatened, try to identify whoever made the threat, and request support from police as needed.

“Sometimes we’re going to the home to see if a child has a gun and making sure they don’t have a gun,” Bethel said. “In some of the very few cases we will make an arrest because we find that it has been confirmed, we’ve identified a threat and we’ve seen it’s actionable.”

Bartram staff also call in community organizations to resolve specific conflicts. For example, Rosa noticed an uptick in fights between female students last school year and went to a Philadelphia organization called Conscious Queens that specializes in boosting girls’ self-esteem.

“Sometimes they get lost on the shuffle because they’re not the ones doing the overt violence,” Rosa said. “But they’re definitely involved with carrying guns, they’re in the car with people, stealing cars. … So we’re hoping to kinda tackle some of that.”

Music recording equipment in the Youth Violence Intervention Program room at Bartram High School. Students record original rap music as one of the activities in the program.

The Youth Violence Reduction Initiative will continue at Bartram under the current grant until October 2025. The district has already received funding from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to expand it to a second school beginning in the fall.

The district aims to find additional funding to do a longitudinal study of the violence reduction initiative’s participants over six or seven years.

Travis, the 17-year-old student, hopes to be a working electrician by then. Jerome wants to run his own Airbnb business.

“If this program was in every school, it would just help everybody see the bigger picture,” Travis said.

He said Rosa taught him how to calm down, control his temper, and focus on schoolwork.

“He gave me motivation to do my work,” Jerome said. “At one point I didn’t believe in myself, and he believed me.”

Correction, Jan. 12, 2024: This article has been updated to correct that the initiative doesn’t provide direct services to students but refers them to community-based organizations. A previous version of this article said the district didn’t provide the services. Additionally, the district has hired a research assistant to track the program. A previous version stated the district had hired a research analyst.

Kevin Bethel leaves top school safety job in Philadelphia to be city police commissioner

2023-11-22T18:51:03+00:00

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has named Kevin Bethel, the School District of Philadelphia’s current chief of school safety, as her new police commissioner.

Bethel has long been a well-respected fixture in Philadelphia law enforcement and school safety circles. During his tenure in the school district, Bethel focused on reforming the juvenile justice system, dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, and promoting “trauma-informed policing.”

As a deputy police commissioner and then the district’s safety director, he also developed a national reputation for his work emphasizing prevention over punishment as an approach to improving student behavior and discipline both in and out of school settings.

In his four years leading school safety for the district, “I believe we have made the schools safer,” Bethel said at his appointment announcement at City Hall on Wednesday. “It’s unacceptable that some students feel unsafe going to and from school.”

This is Parker’s first mayoral staffing announcement, though she doesn’t officially take office until January. She said that she chose Bethel from among three candidates chosen by a search committee headed by former police commissioner Charles Ramsay.

Deputy Chief of School Safety Craig Johnson will serve as interim chief for the district while a search is conducted for Bethel’s replacement, according to the district.

“Chief Bethel is a class act, and I always felt very confident knowing that he was overseeing all efforts to create safe learning environments for our students to imagine and realize any future they desire,” Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington said in a statement Wednesday.

The Board of Education issued a joint statement calling Bethel’s appointment “well deserved” and that his departure would be a “significant loss” for the district.

Bethel’s school safety legacy in Philadelphia schools

A John Bartram High School graduate, Bethel’s oft-repeated motto during his time in the police department and school district has been: “I didn’t become a cop to lock up children.”

While on the police force in 2013, Bethel said he was “alarmed” by how many students were being arrested in the city under a “zero tolerance” policy that saw police called on students as young as 10 years old.

“I can’t lock up a 10-year-old child who comes to school with scissors,” he said.

He described his dismay at a school in Kensington that put bulletproof blankets on the windows due to nearby shootings.

“I lived it when kids have been shot in front of our schools,” he also recalled. “I never thought I would take a job where kids would be killed at the doorstep of a school.”

With buy-in from district officials and others, Bethel created a diversion program for students with no prior delinquency record who committed low-level offenses like fighting or possessing a pocket knife. That program was praised at the time for substantially decreasing the number of students arrested in school from nearly 1,600 in 2013-14 to 251 in 2018-19.

Bethel has also worked to improve the district’s weapons detection process — a pain point that’s drawn public fury.

In 2019, outraged protesters shut down a Philadelphia Board of Education meeting after members voted to make metal detectors mandatory in every district high school. In the years after, random wand screenings, X-ray machines, and other detection systems have been used in high schools and some middle schools.

Some parents and community members have been critical of the practices, which they said can make students feel criminalized in their own schools.

When he announced new school safety measures last August, Bethel said the district would be introducing a new “minimally invasive gun detection system” in 14 middle schools. Those detectors were chosen because district officials were looking for technology “that did not add to the trauma of our young people,” Bethel said at the time.

To be sure, the city still struggles with youth incarceration issues. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June that the city’s juvenile detention center reached its highest population levels ever, with 230 young people in custody. The Inquirer discovered overcrowding resulted in dozens of young people forced to sleep in offices, gyms, or on the floors of “filthy” cells.

As commissioner, Bethel said Wednesday he would work to make police officers a vital part of communities, not just enforcers of the law.

“I’m proud to be a cop,” he said. “We’re not your enemy. We’re here to serve, and I ask you to give us that opportunity to do that. … Raise your voice when it needs to be raised, but let’s be part of the community, let’s work with you.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Roxborough High remembers Nicolas Elizalde, killed one year ago

2023-09-27T21:47:01+00:00

On a strip of ragged grass adjoining the front steps of Roxborough High School, students planted crocuses.

The bulbs, assistant principal Julian Saavedra explained to them, are perennials, meaning they die out but come back every year, bursting out in vibrant colors on patches of ground still waking up from the cold of winter.

The planting happened Wednesday, on the first anniversary of one of the most devastating events in the history of Roxborough High: a brutal shooting mere steps from the school that took the life of 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde as he walked home from a football scrimmage at the field nearby.

Nicolas was actually a student at nearby Saul High School of Agricultural Science, which shares a football team with Roxborough.

To cope and remember, the 600-student school observed a Day of Peace on the anniversary, seeking to bring additional support to a community that is still traumatized. To start the day, students held a moment of silence. Over the past year, they helped paint a mural on the wall of the school closest to where the shooting occurred. The mural depicts, among other symbols, a football helmet filled with flowers and a large rendering of Nicolas’ jersey number, 62.

“We’re getting through it as a team,” said assistant football coach Marc Skinner. “We stand by each other, we talk to each other. … We put our focus on the field and the game and making sure we do the right thing, and not be a part of any situation that would have us in this type of tragedy again.”

Since the incident, Roxborough has partnered with organizations including Healing Hurt People to work with students and others affected. Police in the 14th District have stepped up patrols. The school has more security guards and many programs addressing students’ emotional needs.

But the pain is still raw.

“We continue to support our children with trauma-informed best practices. We share resources with our teachers, and all of our staff,” said Principal Kristin Williams-Smalley. “And we all have a schoolwide social emotional learning program that we have implemented. … It’s an ongoing issue that our children are dealing with.”

Roxborough High principal Kristin Williams-Smalley speaks to reporters

She said that Roxborough lost another student to gun violence in May.

During the last school year, 199 city students were shot, and 33 of those died, district officials said. Less than three weeks into this school year, five students have been shot, and one died. Philadelphia’s efforts to restrict gun ownership have been blocked by the courts and a state law that bars municipalities from enacting their own gun control measures.

Shortly before the shooting, Mayor Jim Kenney had signed a law that restricted gun possession at public spaces in the city, including parks, recreation centers, and pools, but it was overturned in a court challenge.

When Nicolas was killed, four other teens were wounded by the bullets flying out of an SUV that had been lying in wait near Roxborough High.

Police don’t believe Nicolas was the intended target. One of the shooters jumped out of the car and chased another, older boy down the street, firing at close range before his gun jammed.

Police have arrested four suspects in the killing and are still seeking a fifth person they believe was the main shooter.

This week, Nicolas’ mother, Meredith Elizalde, called on state lawmakers to enact gun reform. Nicolas was her only child, and he died in her arms.

“I want them to get on the front lines and fight for gun sense, because if you’re not, you’re just part of the problem,” Meredith Elizalde said.

Asked about the chances of gun reform, Williams-Smalley sounded weary.

“I’m tired to go to funerals. I’m tired of visiting my colleagues at their schools when something happens to be a support for them. We are all, my colleagues across the city, we are all tired of the violence that is pervasive.”

As the students dispersed after planting the crocuses, Saavedra called after them.

“We’ll water them later on,” he said.

A mural on one wall of Roxborough High in memory of Nicolas Elizalde features Nicolas’ football jersey number, 62.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Weapons screening, cameras, and drones: What Philadelphia is doing to make students safer

2023-08-30T21:13:59+00:00

In an effort to save students’ lives and restore parents’ trust, Philadelphia is expanding the district’s use of weapons screening equipment in middle schools, updating surveillance cameras, and piloting drones to watch over school grounds.

The district is also extending its Safe Path program to nine new schools. The program pays adults in neighborhoods to patrol areas where students walk to and from school.

“Despite all of the things that you’ve seen across the city, and we’ve had some tragedy, our schools are the safest places for our kids to be,” Kevin Bethel, the district’s chief of school safety, said in a Wednesday press conference. “It is our job as adults to make sure we make it as safe as possible for them.”

Though law enforcement officials have said shootings in the city have declined this year compared to the same period in the prior year, gun violence has become an inescapable reality for students and young people in Philadelphia.

Nearly 200 students were shot during the previous school year and 33 young people died, according to the district. Eighteen guns were recovered from students in the district last school year, Bethel said.

This year, Bethel, outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney, Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington, and Board of Education President Reginald Streater said they’ll do “everything we can” to ensure student safety. But Kenney said because guns are so easy to come by in Pennsylvania, safety challenges will likely persist this school year.

“Until we get our arms around this commonwealth’s issues relative to the availability of guns we’re still going to be running uphill,” Kenney said. “Everybody seems to have a gun.”

The city’s young people seem to share that sentiment. At a gun violence roundtable in early August, one student told Chalkbeat she felt like “no matter how hard you try to fix something that’s so constant, it’s never ending.”

The Philadelphia district’s school year begins Sept. 5. Here is what the district and city say they will do this year:

— Continue to hire crossing guards to patrol heavily trafficked school areas. So far, the city has assigned 650 crossing guards to schools across Philadelphia, and the city is still accepting applications, officials said.

— Update 150 analog cameras to digital cameras over the next three years and merge the cameras’ monitoring systems with those of the city government. Watlington has pledged this update as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan.

— Introduce new “minimally invasive gun detection systems” in 14 middle schools. Those systems will appear as two stanchions in school doorways that students must walk through, rather than a full standup metal detector or wand.

Students won’t have to take off their backpacks, or send their personal belongings through a conveyor belt like at the airport, to pass through these systems, Bethel said. In previous years, parents, students, and teachers have expressed concerns that metal detectors could make students feel like criminals. Bethel said these new “less intrusive” detectors were chosen because district officials were looking for technology “that did not add to the trauma of our young people.”

— Expand the Safe Path program from 13 schools to 22 schools in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. Those programs will come online incrementally, Bethel said, as community groups “get on board” with staffing, security clearances, and vetting through Penn. Though maintaining consistent staffing for these programs was challenging when they launched in 2022-23, Bethel said he hopes they will be fully staffed this school year.

— Launch district-owned drones, in some cases piloted by students. Bethel said the district is still in the early stages of planning for drones, but they are looking into expanding the use of drones to patrol violence-prone areas without the need for police on the ground. Bethel said he’s aware of concerns about increasing student and city resident surveillance, but said “the core purpose” of using them would be to “make sure that I’m keeping my children safe. There’s no ulterior motive to try to look for.”

Bethel said students would not monitor the drone footage, however, as the idea of students surveilling other students is highly controversial.

“We don’t want to put kids in a position where their … peers could construe it to be something negative,” Bethel said.

— Increase participation in the city’s many out-of-school-time programs. These include homework help, field trips to ice skating rinks and museums in and around Philadelphia, peer mentoring programs, and community-based prevention programs for youth who have been impacted by violence.

— Increase Philadelphia police presence in and around schools using a new $600,000 grant. At Wednesday’s press conference, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw did not give an estimate for how many officers this would pay for.

— Train all district employees in ALICE active shooter response training; ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. This comes after school staff expressed concern that their prior training was inadequate, and Watlington and the school board committed nearly $1 million to upgrade their approach.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia students discuss ‘never ending’ gun violence with school, state leaders

2023-08-04T18:49:50+00:00

Samaya McArthur is about to start her freshman year at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School in Northeast Philadelphia and she’s concerned about the gun violence plaguing her city. But she isn’t sure adults can fix it.

“Some things just can’t be solved,” McArthur said. “No matter how hard you try to fix something that’s so constant, it’s never ending.”

McArthur and 21 of her peers shared their thoughts and concerns about gun violence and youth mental health with the state Attorney General Michelle Henry, Superintendent Tony Watlington, and members of the school board at a roundtable event at the district offices on Friday.

“You just never know when somebody is going to pull [a gun] out,” McArthur said in an interview after the event.

Gun violence has become an inextricable and devastating part of Philadelphia students’ lives, even though law enforcement officials have said shootings in the city have declined this year compared to the same period last year. During the 2022-23 school year, 199 students were shot in Philadelphia and 33 of those shootings were fatal, district spokesperson Marissa Orbanek said.

Henry told reporters on Friday her office has “seen shootings throughout the state that involve very young individuals who shouldn’t have access to guns,” and that the number of young people with access to firearms is rising.

Destini McCode, a 12th grader at Philadelphia High School for Girls in North Philadelphia, said officials “can put things in place to try and prevent” shootings, “but at the end of the day, you have to worry about your safety.”

And amid the fear children have about gun violence in the city, she said carrying a gun as a young person may offer them some protection.

Even if you keep your distance from people who you know have access to firearms, McCode said, someone “can get mad at you and try and pull something on you.”

That can lead to a tragic cycle, McArthur said.

“The family member of someone who got shot might want to take revenge on that person,” McArthur said.

Both students said they’d like to see more gun safety laws and stricter ones. They also recommended putting more security staff or other caring adults around schools to ensure students’ safety.

According to Watlington’s five-year strategic plan for the district, “students, school staff, families, and community members shared that the District has insufficient staff to meet students’ mental health and social-emotional needs, particularly in the midst of Philadelphia’s gun violence epidemic.”

“Schools need more trauma-informed approaches, more counselors, and more caring adults to listen and understand students’ experiences,” the strategic plan also says.

Friday’s event was part of an ongoing series of roundtables Henry’s office is hosting to hear from young people across the state about their experiences with gun violence and how it has impacted their mental health.

Henry said her intention in convening the roundtables is to “hear firsthand from students and teens about how it’s impacting them” and to learn from them as well. She said her office intends to publish a report with policy recommendations based on what they hear at this event and the others to come.

Henry pointed to her office’s “very aggressive” enforcement of straw purchase laws and illegal ghost guns as evidence that they are taking the issue seriously. But more could be done, Henry said.

“I think we need stronger gun laws. And I also think we need to aggressively enforce the ones we have,” Henry said.

The Republican-controlled state Senate has declined to advance several gun safety bills in recent months, including one measure that would enact so-called “red flag” laws to allow law enforcement to seize firearms from individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others.

In late July, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney announced that the city filed a lawsuit against multiple gun vendors — including two in Northeast Philadelphia — alleging they “recklessly and repeatedly engaged in straw purchasing transactions, consequently fueling gun violence in Philadelphia.”

So-called “straw purchasing” occurs when someone buys firearms with the “intention of illegally transferring them to someone else or supplying the criminal gun market,” according to a statement from Kenney’s office about the lawsuit.

As officials try to come up with new policies and laws to prevent shootings, McCode said, lawmakers and those in power should do whatever they can to ensure this next school year is less deadly than the last.

“Adults are going to do what they want to do, but kids — you can protect them,” McCode said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Safe Place: How Philly schools are responding to the city’s gun violence crisis

2023-02-17T21:11:32+00:00

Gun violence in Philadelphia takes a toll on students and their ability to learn and succeed. WHYY News’ education, gun violence, and health reporters look at the intersection of schools and violence in their new six-part series, “Safe Place.”

Synceir Thorton wears a red and black sweatshirt that’s too big for his small frame. The 16-year-old keeps the hood up, brown eyes peering out from underneath the fabric.

“I usually stay cautious nearly 24/7. I don’t really feel safe anywhere,” he said. “People come to school having a bad day and they want to hurt someone. I don’t want to be that someone.”

Like all students at Dobbins Technical High School in North Philadelphia, Thornton’s day starts with a walk through a metal detector. Fights are common outside of the school, so he stays inside for as long as he can.

“I’m in a club nearly every day or I’m just really strictly on my way home by bus and train,” he said.

Dozens of students walked out of Dobbins in December to protest what they describe as unsafe conditions: senseless acts of violence from students and a lack of teachers and security guards.

Thornton said he intentionally stays out of the loop on conflicts between students because they too often lead to gun violence outside school.

“It’s better if I don’t find out.”

More than 60% of young Philadelphians worry about their friends or family becoming victims of shootings, according to a survey conducted by local teens.

Educators say they have no choice but to respond to Philly’s ongoing gun violence crisis.

“We can’t solve the problem because our core business is teaching and learning, but we can be a partner in solving the problem,” said School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington in an interview.

Gun violence, like poverty, is another challenge predominantly large urban school districts have to deal with. If students aren’t safe, how can they be expected to learn? And when students are injured or killed by gunfire, the trauma ripples across classrooms and instills a fear in young people that they could be next.

Against the backdrop of Philly’s gun violence epidemic, school district officials, teachers, coaches, and principals are making changes — in and outside of classrooms — they hope will better protect children from threats both within schools and in surrounding neighborhoods.

More Philly shootings involve kids

Synceir Thorton, a student at Dobbins Technical High School, loves to play the electric guitar.

Philadelphia had more shootings involving children last year than New York, a city with more than five times as many people.

Fewer than 100 shooting victims were under the age of 18 in 2017, compared to 217 in 2022, according to city data.

One possible explanation is the age of the shooters themselves. The number of young people arrested in shootings more than quadrupled during the same time period, from 21 to 117, according to data from the Philadelphia Police Department.

Julio Nuñez, the assistant principal at Gloria Casarez Elementary in Kensington, said schools bear some responsibility since they have the opportunity to help students stay on the right path.

“To think or assume that kids want to [become shooters] when they’re five years old is just naive,” he said.

Instead, he believes the more negative experiences a student has at school, the more likely they are to think the classroom isn’t a place for them. That underscores the importance of making sure schools are inclusive, well-resourced spaces where students can have positive experiences, Nuñez said.

Officials argue that people who drop out of high school are more likely to be involved in gun violence, putting pressure on schools to take a closer look at the experiences students are having in the classroom.

The district’s on-time graduation rate is roughly 70%, and the dropout rate for the 2020-21 school year was 14%, a district spokesperson said.

Watlington requested that the school board receive monthly attendance and dropout reports as part of his response to gun violence, an initiative that kicked off in December. Once the district has a better sense of which students have dropped out or are at risk, it can do more to ensure they remain engaged, he said.

“When young people … think they have a future ahead of them, I think they make good choices and less bad choices,” Watlington said.

Pride, bullying, and social media can lead to fights

The COVID-19 pandemic put unprecedented stress on families, including an increase in domestic violence, according to the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Caroline Watts, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said kids who are facing challenges at home are more likely to struggle at school and fight with other students. Cutting these students off from their support systems during the pandemic only made the situation worse, she said.

Poverty is also a factor, said Malik Smith, who works at the nonprofit Institute for the Development of African American Youth and helps monitor school campuses through the district’s new Safe Path program.

Smith said students feel insecure when they come to school hungry or without clean clothes.

“If they have any aggression in them, it’s going to come out when they feel embarrassed and humiliated like that,” he said.

Taahzje Ellis, a 17-year-old Dobbins student, said some students would rather skip lunch than get their meals from the cafeteria due to fear of judgment from other students.

“It’s embarrassing if you get the free lunch,” he said, adding that some students post photos of people eating the free food on social media. “It’s a whole Instagram page.”

Taahzje said most of the conflicts between students that he knows about started online.

“Then they get to school and they fight,” he said. “It’s just people fight over anything nowadays … You fight the wrong person and now they want to kill you because they lost or just because they fought.”

He said some teens don’t understand the potential consequences of their actions.

“If you’re killing someone, you’re taking their life away, something that you can never give back to someone,” he said. “I think people just need to understand that, because a lot of people are just wrapped up in a kind of fantasy that this is the ideal life.”

More violence near Philly schools

Overbrook High School students leave school on Jan. 31, 2023. A 15-year-old freshman was shot and wounded on his way to school that morning.

While shootings on district property are uncommon, recent violence near school buildings has shaken Philadelphia residents.

In September, 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde was killed and four other students were injured following a scrimmage near Roxborough High School, after multiple gunmen ambushed members of the school’s football team.

And the day before Thanksgiving, four Overbrook High School students were injured in a drive-by shooting outside a beauty salon a block away from the school.

Another Overbrook student was shot on his way to school in late January. That’s despite the fact that Overbrook has a designated safety zone around it. These areas are determined by the Philadelphia Police Department to be at high risk for crime and have additional officer presence during dismissal.

Watlington, who took over the school district from William Hite in June, said that along with academics, his top priority is the safety and well-being of students and staff.

Watlington took eight “action steps” during his first 100 days, including hiring Edwin Santana, a community and political organizer and former teacher, to serve as a community liaison with a focus on gun violence.

While district officials have expressed a willingness to respond to the impact of community gun violence on students, they face several obstacles.

The district, like many in Pennsylvania, is understaffed. That means fewer teachers to supervise students and provide them with the experiences, like electives and after-school activities, many see as a solution to student disengagement.

Another challenge is funding. Pennsylvania contributes a smaller share of funding to public education than most other states, leaving districts to rely more heavily on local property taxes.

That’s a problem in Philadelphia, the poorest large city in the country. Historically, the city’s schools have been underfunded due to systemic issues like residential segregation, district boundaries, and white flight to the suburbs.

Even though residents are relatively highly taxed, because overall wealth in the city is low, officials say there’s a gap between the revenue they can raise and the money they need. The district has many students who require special education services, or other supports that make education costs more expensive.

Additionally, the School District of Philadelphia is not a taxing authority and cannot raise tax revenue on its own, unlike other districts in the commonwealth.

Watlington said there are things the district would like to do to help students deal with gun violence — like hire more counselors — but financially, it can’t afford to.

Roxborough shooting shatters sense of after-school safety

The shooting outside Roxborough High School destroyed the idea that after-school activities, like sports, are guaranteed safe spaces.

“What happened at Roxborough should never have happened,” said Jimmy Lynch, the district’s executive director of athletics. “I think it’s important for us as a society, as a school district, to not normalize that.”

The district’s athletics team has increased its level of communication with police since the shooting, Lynch said, and now shares its master schedule with the department so they can assign officers to cover events, including scrimmages, as necessary.

In a written statement, district officials said they have “significantly increased the safety officers covering after school sporting events” since the shooting.

“What’s the alternative?” Lynch said. “That we’re not going to have sports? That’s a non-starter.”

Athletics have been shown to improve student attendance, behavior, and academics. Rather than scaling back, Lynch said he remains focussed on expanding programs so more students can participate and benefit.

After the shooting, Pennsylvania’s Department of Community Economic Development gave Roxborough $500,000 to increase its security, including new cameras and updated door locks.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education awarded Overbrook the same amount of money in December to improve “safety and communications technology,” according to a press release.

The district recently received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for a violence reduction program at another school, John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia. Christopher Braxton, a 17-year-old student, was shot and killed in January of 2022 shortly after he left the school.

In June, the city of Philadelphia said it would spend $1.8 million to install new security cameras near the 19 district schools most impacted by gun violence, including Bartram and Roxborough.

Philadelphia public schools have some cameras, but they’re outdated and don’t provide real-time information. The money is supposed to pay for 100 state-of-the-art security cameras spread amongst the schools.

Mayor Jim Kenney and City Council members also promised an additional $1 million in the city’s operating budget to hire analysts to review real-time footage.

The city completed school site surveys in November, but hasn’t purchased the cameras yet, according to a spokesperson from the Managing Director’s Office. The spokesperson also said Philadelphia is experiencing supply chain issues that have made the technology harder to acquire.

The district’s new plan

In December, the School District of Philadelphia announced its new plan to address gun violence in the form of an op-ed from Watlington.

The op-ed followed a column from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board that described “violence and disruption” as the norm at many schools and called on the district to take action.

Watlington’s plan includes five points:

Expanding the district’s Safe Path program, which pays adults to monitor dismissal, mediate conflicts, and ensure students get home safely. The program, which launched at six sites at the beginning of the academic year, will be expanded to 12 more schools over the next two years. The district will invest $250,000 on top of its roughly $500,000 initial investment.

Watlington said the district hasn’t evaluated the impact of its program so far, but that data from a similar program in Chicago, which served as the district’s model, has been encouraging.

One study found a double-digit drop in violent crime on streets where monitors were present even after they had gone home for the day.

But implementing Safe Path in Philadelphia hasn’t been easy. The district’s chief safety officer Kevin Bethel said at December’s school board meeting that recruiting enough adults to staff the program has been challenging.

And the program itself isn’t a cure-all. Roxborough is one of the eight schools where Safe Path is already in place. At the time of the deadly September 2022 shooting, monitors had already gone home for the day.

Increasing safety zones around school communities by hiring police officers. The district will hire Philadelphia Police Department officers to “address safety issues outside of the school building that warrant an increased police presence,” using a $600,000 grant.

When asked why the district needs to hire city police officers itself, rather than just coordinate with the department, Watlington framed the decision as necessary given the recent level of violence.

“I think these extreme and unacceptable incidents that we are experiencing require us to do something better and different and we need more police officers,” he said. “We’re gonna bite the bullet and pay for them.”

Philadelphia police officers are already present during school dismissal in 27 safety zones that cover 40 district and charter schools through a joint district and PPD program known as Safe Zones.

Watlington said officers were able to respond “more quickly” to the drive-by shooting near Overbrook High School last month because they were in the area as part of the program.

New online mental health services will be available for teachers and students in grades 6-12. Students will have access to licensed counselors, peer support, and “therapeutic” activities through a one-year pilot program paid for by the state. Kooth, a digital mental health platform that’s popular in the United Kingdom, will provide the services.

Watlington said he’s heard from many students that the ratio of counselors to students, which is 269-to-1, is insufficient. The American School Counselor Association’s recommended ratio is 250-to-1.

“The ratio is just too high for them to be able to talk with their counselors. Some of them don’t get a chance to see their counselor at all,” he said.

The district has a contract with Lyra Health to provide mental health benefits to employees, including therapy and coaching.

Evaluating attendance and dropout data to make sure students are going to school and not getting involved in gun violence. Watlington said once he knows which schools and learning zones are struggling the most, he can figure out what to do next. He’s promised to share this data publicly during monthly board of education meetings.

Attendance rates plummeted during the height of the pandemic and have been slow to rebound in school districts across the country. Enrollment is also down, leaving districts to wonder whether students have enrolled elsewhere or disappeared.

“We need to redouble our efforts to try and account for each and every student,” Watlington said.

Addressing specific school needs, including at Dobbins, where The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on safety concerns.

Watlington said the district hired a retired administrator to address safety and culture concerns at Dobbins. The school has since stationed staff throughout the building to make sure all areas of the building are monitored during arrival and dismissal, and when students are changing classes, a spokesperson said.

Dobbins student Taahzje said while he feels safe inside his school, fights happen frequently on the sidewalks right in front of or across from the building.

“If I was an adult, I would not drive through Dobbins after school because there’s a high chance there’s a fight or something and now you’re stuck in traffic,” he said. “You never know what’s going to be happening at the school.”

Dobbins is set to receive after-school monitors as part of the district’s expanded Safe Path program, but with hiring challenges in play, it’s unclear when more support will come.

Thornton said he’s tired of all of the fighting. “I don’t understand how actual fighters that fight in a ring can get along better than we can,” he said.

Philadelphia superintendent announces new safety measures after shootings near schools

2022-12-03T00:01:50+00:00

In the wake of shootings outside two high schools this year, Superintendent Tony Watlington has announced new measures by the district to improve student safety, which he called “priority one.”

Watlington announced Friday that the district will add 12 schools over the next two years to the “safe paths” program that provides “extra supervision for students traveling to and from school.” The program, which involves community members as well as local businesses, currently operates at six locations.

In addition, the district will use $600,000 from a grant from Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to pay for more city police around some school buildings “that warrant an increased police presence,” Watlington said.

And the district will increase mental health services for students and staff, working with the city to give students in the sixth through 12th grades access to mental health counseling through the online provider Kooth. That will be in addition to in-person services already available.

Speaking to reporters Friday Watlington said that parents, the community at large, and law enforcement need to come together “to get our arms around the violence problem. We can and must win this violence war.”

High-profile shootings near school grounds have traumatized students and others this year, and have underscored the gun violence plaguing the city and its young people. In September, five students were shot — one fatally — outside Roxborough High School after a football scrimmage. Police have arrested four teenagers and an adult in connection with the incident.

Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, four students were shot after an early dismissal a few blocks from Overbrook High School. There are no arrests yet in that case.

Watlington said he is still working out details with the police department about increasing law enforcement’s presence in the vicinity of schools.

“We know that we just have to have more police officers around some of our schools. So we’re working with the Philadelphia Police Department to identify where are the places we need to expand first,” he said.

The police department, like the district, is facing a staff shortage. But Watlington said that they are working together to deal with the “challenges” of vacancies and attrition among teachers and officers.

In general, when it comes to student safety, Watlington noted that he plans to collaborate closely with the district’s employee unions.

Watlington conceded that Kooth, the online mental health provider, “doesn’t replace what a traditional counselor does,” he said.

On his summer “listening and learning tour” and visits to more than 50 schools, he said students told him that the counselor-student ratio doesn’t afford them the opportunity to see guidance counselors when they need to. He also wants to expand peer counseling programs and zero in on the needs of individual schools.

The district’s student-to-counselor ratio is 357 to 1 this year, an improvement on last year’s ratio of 371 to 1.

Watlingon said he plans to study attendance and dropout data. When students attend school daily and don’t drop out, “they are less likely to be the victims or the perpetrators of violence,” he said.

Watlington said that on his visits to schools, most were operating smoothly, but that he also witnessed struggles with student attendance and behavior.

“The goal right now is to keep children safe,” he said.

Although his announcement Friday focused on safety, Watlington continues to work on his broader strategic plan for the district that’s due next year.

Watlington said that he is seeking 25 parents and guardians to form a council to advise him on what “what do we need to stop doing and to start doing” to make Philadelphia “the fastest improving large school district in America.”

Applications to be on the parent advisory council will be taken on the district website starting on Dec. 5 and running through Dec. 18. Once finalized, the group will start work in January.

Watlington said he plans to “defund things that don’t work,” while investing in things that do.

“We will not just be asking for a blank check,” he said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

‘Ball for Nick.’ Roxborough team holds first practice since shooting

2022-10-04T20:08:56+00:00

For the first time since their teammate was killed in a shooting near their school last week, members of the Roxborough High School varsity and junior varsity football teams returned to the practice field Monday, and the players and coaches dedicated their season to him.

In cold, rainy weather, Roxborough coaches and students at Monday’s practice adopted “Ball for Nick” as their slogan. Nicolas Elizalde was a freshman at Walter B. Saul High School, which doesn’t have a football team, so Elizalde was allowed to play on Roxborough’s JV team.

Elizalde was one of five district students shot Sept. 27 on Pechin Street, a short walk from the school and not long after a football scrimmage that involved students from Boys Latin Charter School and Northeast High School as well as Roxborough.

On Tuesday, Philadelphia police identified Dayron Burney-Thorn, as a person of interest in connection to the shooting. There’s a $45,000 reward for information leading to an arrest or conviction, police told Chalkbeat.

Between snaps, members of the varsity and junior varsity teams discussed how they are processing the trauma of what they witnessed last week while still handling classwork and practice. Some parents were unhappy that Roxborough did not cancel classes the day after the shooting.

Students said they were buoyed by returning to football and energized to play. But they also frankly discussed their disappointment about the amount of time it took the police to respond to the shooting, as well as how — after Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Nick Sirianni showed his support for the school by wearing a Roxborough shirt during a press conference — the school has attracted such public support only after a violent, high-profile tragedy.

In cold, rainy weather, members of Roxborough High School’s varsity and junior varsity football teams practice at Roxborough Stadium in Philadelphia on Monday.

Kazir Dyson, the captain of Roxborough’s JV team, said “returning to practice has given me a little bit more energy. My biggest thing is to make sure we win in his name.” But Dyson also criticized the lack of a nearby trauma hospital, the absence of security around last week’s scrimmage, and much of the reaction to the shooting and Elizalde’s death.

“Everybody wants to show love once someone passes away,” Dyson said. “My thing is to be there before the tragedy happens. What if this never happened? We would have never gotten this public attention.”

“You never know when it’s going to be your time,” JV team member and Roxborough freshman Kaseem Osbourne added. “You want to build your profile now, because in Philly we can lose our life at any given moment.”

Gun violence in Philadelphia has spiked since the start of the pandemic, and has had a particularly traumatic effect on the city’s students.

Roxborough briefly considered canceling the football season, said JV head coach Tyson Harrington, who graduated from the high school in 2020 and starred as a tight end for the school’s team. But instead, he said, he and others have done what they can to ensure safety.

A police car was parked near the practice Monday, after some parents — like the players — criticized the lack of a security presence around the Sept. 27 scrimmage.

“All we can do right now is ensure safety, like make sure all our players are good and make sure the parents know they will be good from here on out,” Harrington said.

Harrington said after that scrimmage, the players were in “good spirits.” But then he heard the news about what happened shortly afterwards. “It was really tragic, sad,” he said. “We got players and people that didn’t deserve it.”

A makeshift memorial for Nicolas Elizalde, filled with flowers, candles, and pictures, sits on Pechin Street across from Roxborough Stadium.

The team practices every day after school for almost two hours inside Roxborough Stadium, across from Gorgas Park. On Monday, across the street from the stadium, there was a makeshift memorial with flowers, candles, pictures, and a jersey on Pechin Street, where Elizalde was shot.

“We just want to finish the season out. What happened was crazy. And it still hasn’t quite sunk in what happened,” said Lovett Davenport, an 11th grade student and a starting cornerback on Roxborough’s varsity team. “Now we’re out here doing it for him.”

Mark Skinner, assistant football coach for Roxborough’s varsity team, said a large part of his job in the current situation is to mentor his players.

“If you talk to the right child, you don’t even know how that ripple effect can save their life behind it,” Skinner said. “It’s a little bit of everything. It’s no one person’s fault or one thing to fix. We all have to do the collective thing to keep improving.”

Though a lot of students have quit the football team since last week, according to the players, the remaining players are committed to the season.

“I had the option to quit, but I said no. I had the option to transfer schools, but I said no. I’m going to ball for Nick and I’m going to do good for him,” Osbourne said. “I’m going to make sure he’s proud.”

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly identified Mark Skinner’s coaching position with the Roxborough High School football team. He is the varsity team’s assistant coach.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Parents shocked, angered after shooting near Philadelphia school leaves teen dead

2022-09-28T21:48:13+00:00

One day after five teenagers were shot, one fatally, near Philadelphia’s Roxborough High School, parents who dropped their children off at the school Wednesday morning expressed shock as well as frustration.

Several parents who spoke to Chalkbeat outside the school said school officials should have canceled classes the day after the incident. And one parent criticized the outreach, or lack thereof, she received from the district.

The teenagers were shot at roughly 4:40 p.m. on Pechin Street, a short walk from Roxborough High. The shooting took place shortly after a football scrimmage that involved Roxborough’s junior varsity team. Four of the five victims — all between the ages of 14 to 17 — were identified as members of the team, according to Philadelphia police.

One member of the football team was shot in the chest and died shortly afterwards at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Police identified him as Nicholas Elizalde, 14. Although Elizalde was a member of Roxborough’s football team, he attended Walter B. Saul High School, a magnet school focused on agriculture, according to district spokesperson Christina Clark.

The police did not offer updates about the condition of the other four teenagers.

Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said during a Wednesday press conference that surveillance video, which captured several people emerging from a Ford Explorer and shooting at the students, led police to believe that the attack was targeted. But he said police were still trying to determine who the target was.

More than 60 ammunition casings were found at the scene by police.

The tension outside the school Wednesday boiled over at one point, when Buddy Reignor, the parent of a freshman at Roxborough, confronted City Councilman Curtis Jones in front of the school about the lack of security in the school’s vicinity when the shooting occurred.

Reignor told Jones — who represents the area around Roxborough — that if there had been a police presence in the area, the shooting would not have occurred. He also said that Roxborough should not have held classes Wednesday.

“I’m a parent of a ninth grade student who is afraid to go to school today,” Reignor said.

An outcry from Roxborough High parents

Philadelphia’s problems with gun violence are longstanding. But in the last few years, its traumatic effects on the city’s students have intensified. The number of homicides in Philadelphia hit an all-time high last year, and gun violence is the leading cause of death for children over age 15 in the city.

From 2019 through August of this year, 176 teenagers died from gun violence in the city.

On Tuesday, the school district announced that it would send a crisis response team to Roxborough to support students and staff in the aftermath of the shooting.

After dropping off her daughter at Roxborough High Wednesday morning, Veda Brown said she thought there should have been “a day to deal with grief” at the school, and that district officials should meet to discuss how to support students’ mental health needs in the wake of the incident. Brown said Roxborough should have canceled classes Wednesday.

“My child has special needs, so her anxiety is at 10 today,” Brown said.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said the last 24 hours have been devastating to the school district.

“It is absolutely unimaginable that a group of students participating in a wholesome activity would be fired upon as they walked in the scope of high school,” he said.

Mayor Jim Kenney offered his condolences to the families of the students who were shot, as well as “the entire Philadelphia school community.” But not all the parents outside Roxborough on Wednesday were feeling magnanimous towards Kenney, whose approach to gun violence following a July shooting in the city has been under intense scrutiny.

“Our kids are not safe, and we do not have the direction of a mayor who cares about gun violence,” said Roxborough parent Angela Griffin, after dropping her daughter off across the street from the school. “It’s just beyond reprehensible.”

Griffin added that the school should have canceled classes Wednesday, and she criticized the district for not leaving a voicemail about the incident when it contacted her.

A district spokesperson, Marissa Orbanek, said Wednesday that parents at the school who are signed up with the district’s parent portal received multiple notifications from the district about the incident.

Not every Roxborough parent wanted classes shut down.

“We need to do as much as we can to help the teachers. Yes, they should have had school today. We are already behind,” Aaron Stephens said. “They should revolve the day around what had happened and touch the kids that can be reached right now.”

Parent Tasha Green said that the area around Roxborough High was “a good neighborhood” and that the shooting had scared everyone.

“No, I don’t believe they should have school today,” Green said. “You never know if the shooters are going to come back.”

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Five Philadelphia students shot, one fatally, near high school

2022-09-28T00:47:20+00:00

Five Philadelphia students were shot near a high school Tuesday, with one dead and at least one other in critical condition, according to the school district.

The shooting took place at around 4:30 p.m. near Gorgas Park, which is near Roxborough High School, following a junior varsity football scrimmage that included Roxborough, Northeast, and Boys Latin High Schools.

Christina Clark, a spokesperson for the school district, said the shooting did not take place inside the school, and all Roxborough parents have been notified about the incident.

Classes are expected to take place Wednesday at Roxborough, and the district’s crisis response team will be at the school to support students and staff.

Four of the students were taken to Einstein Medical Center after the shooting, while one was taken to Temple University Hospital.

Last year, Philadelphia recorded a record number of homicides, and gun violence in particular has had a traumatic effect on many students in the city. Gun violence is the leading cause of death among Philadelphia’s children over the age of 15.

On Monday, the city recorded its 400th homicide of 2022.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

‘Kahlief loved hard’: A Philadelphia student’s killing resonates as the new school year begins

2022-08-26T11:00:00+00:00

When Philadelphia teacher Jane Fitzgerald learned about the death of her student Kahlief Myrick eighteen months ago, she performed a ritual that has grown far too familiar.

Fitzgerald took out a pen and added his name to a list of South Philadelphia High School students killed by gun violence or stabbed to death. At the age of 16, Kahlief joined about 50 other names on the list covering Fitzgerald’s two decades at the school, an expanding memorial to the crisis in the city.

“I actually wrote all their names down one day, because I was like, oh my God, I think I’ll forget,” said Fitzgerald, a special education compliance monitor and history teacher. “But I haven’t.”

With classes set to start Aug. 29, many school communities are carrying the excruciating burden of losing students who have fallen victim to gun violence in the city and haven’t made it to the new school year, graduation ceremonies, and other milestones.

Kahlief, a junior at South Philadelphia High (also known as Southern) at the time of his death, was set to graduate this past spring. Those who knew him well say Kahlief’s kind disposition, gregarious personality, and infectious laugh gave his 5-foot-4-inch frame a larger than life presence.

“He was engaging and loved to be around people, even when he got to high school,” Brittany Brunson, his mother, said. “His death doesn’t make sense.”

Kahlief died a few hours before the start of the school day, several miles from Southern’s campus at Broad and Snyder.

Kahlief Myrick, who was 16 when he was shot and killed in Philadelphia, was known for his empathy, outgoing personality, and interest in art.

Concerns about Philadelphia’s gun violence long predate the pandemic. But since early 2020, children’s social isolation and their families’ economic struggles have merged with illegal gun sales to further destabilize public safety. Last year, there were a record number of homicides in Philadelphia. And what has emerged from the hundreds of shootings this year is a grim and heartbreaking statistic: Gun violence is currently the leading cause of death for children over the age of 15 in Philadelphia.

Like gun violence, the safety of children in school frequently generates headlines and divisive political debates. But Kahlief’s death underscores that whatever protocols, technology, and de-escalation tactics schools turn to, educators and parents are often powerless to shield children when they are going about their normal routines in their communities before and after school hours.

The violence leaves school communities reeling from shock and pain, over and over again. Each time a student like Kahlief dies, students and teachers are asked to recover with tools that don’t necessarily feel like enough. And COVID’s disruption of normal school routines has even warped the way in which people experience the shock and pain of losing students like Kahlief.

Fitzgerald was working virtually on the day another teacher told her about Kahlief’s death. “I was sitting at my computer and I just started crying like a baby. My husband came in and he’s like, what happened?” she recalled. “I told him another one of my students was killed.”

Those who knew Kahlief say he got good grades, never got into trouble at school, and had already started to turn his dream of being an entrepreneur into reality.

“Kahlief wasn’t into the street stuff,” Fitzgerald said. “When you picture him, you always picture him laughing and the people around him laughing. If another student was unhappy, or just going through something, he would communicate with them. That’s what we lost in Kahlief.”

A kid from South Philly with dreams

Roughly two years before Kahlief’s death, Grammy-award winning rapper Wyclef Jean joined VH1’s Save The Music Foundation to present Southern with a music technology grant in the school’s auditorium.

A guest host representing VH1 walked into the auditorium and started to get the students, who would get to see Jean perform, hyped up for the school’s grant. For some reason, the host singled Kahlief out of the crowd and brought the then-freshman onto the stage to perform for his classmates.

Kahlief proceeded to surprise and delight everyone with his rapping ability.

“He was clean, perfect, vibrant, and an absolute entertainer,” Fitzgerald said. “I filmed it with my phone, because it just captured him at his best. Just so engaged in the world and in life.”

Kahlief’s mother wasn’t surprised at all that he was picked out of the sea of students that way and wowed the crowd. Kahlief had a big personality and sense of humor that would draw people to him.

“He loved music and wanted to be a rapper. I mean, you may want to say he was a free spirit,” Brunson said. “Kahlief just wanted to learn about life, but he wanted to learn it through art.”

Brittany Brunson looks through photos on her phone of her son, Kahlief Myrick. Brunson bought Kahlief equipment to help him create designs for a clothing line.

He later became known by friends by his rap name Fat Lief, or Lief.

Kahlief wasn’t solely interested in seizing the spotlight spontaneously. In 2018, he had a vision of using his business sense and artistic eye to open his own clothing line. To support his idea, Brunson bought Kahlief a pressing machine and a printer to create designs at home.

Just one year later — working with his brother Kaheir and a cousin — Kahlief was selling the apparel to friends and reinvesting his revenue to purchase more supplies.

He then stepped up his work by beginning to operate out of a professional print shop, where he was allowed to print his own designs on apparel.

Kahlief named the clothing line Immortal Never Die “because he wanted it to always be around,” Brunson said.

Outside of his own pursuits, Kahlief was also a leader in his family. The oldest of four children, his younger brother Kaheir was Kahlief’s best friend. He also had two sisters, Kamorah and Khodi.

He loved his siblings and took on the role of big brother through his actions, not just his age. When his mother and stepfather weren’t home, Kahlief fed his siblings and made sure they completed their homework before bed.

His grandmother Crystal Boyce, who along with his grandfather Norman Boyce helped raise Kahlief and his siblings when they were young, recalled that Kahlief was “so particular” about being an important part of his family as he grew older.

For his entire life, Kahlief was, as his mother described him, “chunky.” While other children might be paralyzed by self-consciousness about being heavyset, Kahlief — who was also shorter than his three siblings — had a different mindset.

Joe Gaines, the clinical coordinator for the STEP program at Southern that provides counseling services and support for students with behavioral or mental health needs, recalled that while Kahlief was not in the program, “I worked closely with a few of his close friends. Kahlief was always in the room and was drawn to help other students.”

“Kahlief loved hard,” said Antonio Anderson, a school climate manager at Southern. “His big thing was he needed to feel how he made others feel. And that was a big disappointment for him, when he didn’t get the love back that he always gave out.”

He also didn’t let his physical stature deter him from playing basketball and other physical activities.

“Even with him being heavier, he didn’t let that stop him,” Brunson said. “He didn’t let that get in the way of what he wanted to do.”

‘You really got to be safe out there’

Although Kahlief generally had a positive and outgoing attitude, a series of tragic and troubling events began to weigh on him.

In 2017, when Kahlief was in the seventh grade, one of his favorite uncles, Kamal Myrick, was gunned down about a block from Kahlief’s house. Brunson said his uncle’s death didn’t just traumatize Kahlief, but started to change how Kahlief viewed his environment.

In 2020, Kahlief’s stepfather Kahlif died of cancer. That same year, one of his friends was murdered.

Then there was a chance encounter on a train, one that highlighted the difficulties he had previously faced at school.

Brunson recalled her son telling her that one day, as he was riding the Broad Street line, Kahlief was approached on the train by two of his classmates from middle school. They confronted Kahlief and reminded him about the days when they used to bully him.

Normally, Kahlief did not back down in such situations. But this time, Kahlief stepped away and headed to the train’s exit when he reached his stop.

When Kahlief turned around to see where the two boys were, one of them pulled up his shirt to show Kahlief he had a gun. That image shook Kahlief.

Texts between Kahlief Myrick and his friend Deagejah Comer; Kahlief’s text is on the bottom.

Around the time of that meeting on the Broad Street line, Kahlief’s mother also noticed a change in his demeanor. He became more guarded and less jovial.

“He became a product of his environment by what he was experiencing,” Brunson said. “I believe he started channeling the possibility of death at 16 years old. I believe losing the number of people who were close to him hardened him and made him a bit cold.”

Two months before he was killed, Kahlief sent a text to one of his closest friends, Deagejah Comer, whom he had known since kindergarten. The text to Comer read:

“I don’t feel comfortable nw nm.”

The two abbreviations stood for “nowhere” and “no more.”

“I told him you really got to be safe out there, because if something happens to you I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Comer said.

“When you picture him, you always picture him laughing and the people around him laughing. If another student was unhappy, or just going through something, he would communicate with them. That’s what we lost in Kahlief.”

To her, what Kahlief experienced demonstrates that a focus on “beef or street beef” and coming out on top in those confrontations can lead some young people in the Black community to live ruthlessly through guns, while others live in fear.

But despite the hardships he faced, Kahlief did not abandon his desire to learn about the world.

In the last few months of his life, Kahlief became curious about religion. Though his family members are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kahlief had considered converting to Islam after talking to a friend.

“I let him engage, but the one thing I wanted him to do was to read and learn and not just devote himself to something without knowing what he was getting himself into,” Brunson said. “He never got the chance to do that.”

An early riser’s trip to the store ends in tragedy

When possible, Kahlief liked to nap during daylight hours, meaning that sometimes he woke up before dawn.

At 4 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2021, Kahlief walked into a 7-Eleven on 70th Street in Southwest Philadelphia. He and a cousin were in the neighborhood visiting a relative, according to his grandparents, Norman and Crystal Boyce.

While in the convenience store, Kahlief had a short encounter with a much older man, according to Kahlief’s cousin.

“What are you looking at?” the man reportedly asked Kahlief, who retorted by asking the man the same question.

Shortly afterwards, the man left the 7-Eleven, but waited outside for Kahlief to exit. When Kahlief left the store, the man shot him, a police report about the incident stated.

Kahlief lay on the ground in a pool of blood in freezing weather. Police arrived at the scene before an ambulance, and drove him in the back of a car to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in West Philadelphia.

Kahlief was pronounced dead an hour later — at the same hospital where his uncle Kamal Myrick died roughly five years earlier.

A warrant was issued for a man’s arrest in connection with Kahlief’s death, but he is not yet in custody, according to the most recent available information from law enforcement.

As of the week of Aug. 10, there have been 1,422 shootings in Philadelphia this year, a 3% increase from roughly the same time period in 2021. One hundred thirty-two children have been shot in the city in 2022, and 21 children, mostly Black or Latino, have been killed by gunfire.

Statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department also show that from 2019 to 2022, Black male teens in Philadelphia comprised the majority of deaths and suspects in shootings.

School district and city leaders’ proposed solutions to gun violence’s effects on young people cover different issues.

In November 2020, Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson sponsored a hearing on providing conflict resolution to all district students. In April 2021, two months after Kahlief’s death, Richardson’s office reconvened the hearing, and the district committed to providing conflict resolution programming in every school beginning last year.

“By offering conflict resolution training to all students, we will be taking a preventive approach to violence reduction,” Richardson said.

Meanwhile, last June, City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson joined other officials at John Bartram High School to pitch funding for security cameras in neighborhoods around schools where students have been most affected by gun violence. Christopher Braxton, a senior at Bartram, was shot and killed in January near the campus shortly after the end of the school day.

Those cameras will be installed as part of the district’s school safety plan for the 2022-23 school year. Kevin Bethel, the district’s top school safety officer, said the plan also includes an increased police presence around schools during arrival and dismissal times, and a “safe paths” program for areas around eight high schools.

Johnson said he’s concerned about any homicide that happens in his district, but that “it hits home” when a young person like Kahlief loses his life.

“My resolve is even stronger to strategize and figure out ways on how we keep our young people safe. I believe that starts with listening to our young people and making sure they have a seat at the table,” Johnson told Chalkbeat.

During a rally outside City Hall earlier this year, students from nine high schools presented findings from a gun violence survey of 1,300 students. That survey, part of a report commissioned by the Philadelphia City Council, revealed that 95% of students said they couldn’t name a neighborhood organization where they could go to talk about the impact of gun violence.

Students who provided feedback for the report said that the epidemic of gun violence is also a racial justice crisis, because shootings disproportionately impact Black communities that have high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The report also indicated that just like law enforcement and the court system, students’ perception of school suffers when they report heightened fear of criminal activity and violence.

“Youth who are exposed to neighborhood crime, poverty, racism, and educational disadvantage report reduced trust in institutions,” the report stated, citing research. “This distrust extends to schools and is a factor in school disengagement.”

Healing a grieving school family

When students like Kahlief die, the district has a process and resources available to help students and educators at each school. But they tell just part of the story of how school communities respond and come together.

School officials mobilize extra mental health professionals to a specific school, like Southern, that’s acutely affected by gun violence, and makes free outpatient counseling sessions available to staff. Typically, the district will send counselors to a particular school to help students talk through what they are feeling.

The district also has an around-the-clock helpline for grieving children that is answered by a clinician.

Schools like Southern have situations that need intensive interventions, because there are layers of trauma that should be addressed, said Abby Gray, the district’s deputy chief of the Office of School Climate and Culture.

“We’re adding new staff, we’re adding new programming, we’re adding new external partnerships,” Gray said. “We’re trying to keep up with the need. There’s a lot of need there.”

Jayme Banks, deputy chief of prevention, intervention, and trauma services for the district, said that while there’s more the district can do to support schools suffering from gun violence, leaders do try to be flexible and make sure help doesn’t stop unnecessarily at certain barriers.

“We have even opened up school buildings on the weekend for some events as well when more community response was needed,” Banks said.

“Kahlief loved hard. His big thing was he needed to feel how he made others feel. And that was a big disappointment for him, when he didn’t get the love back that he always gave out.”

When students die, administrators at their respective schools get “white papers’’ that make the news official. But Latoyia Bailey, who was the assistant principal at Southern for the 9th and 10th grades while Kahlief attended the school, indicated that this bureaucratic process wasn’t truly necessary.

“Because we have people working at the school who know him very well, because they grew up with his family, we knew about his death before the white papers even came,” said Bailey, who is now the principal of the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School in Northeast Philadelphia. “I remember trying to get myself together, not knowing what the day was going to be like.”

What happened next at the school took Joe Gaines, the school’s clinical coordinator for counseling services, by surprise.

The same day that students at Southern — who were learning virtually at the time — received word of Kahlief’s death, Gaines noticed a ripple effect of grief.

“It was the first time where I saw students sort of actively reach out to myself and to counselors and administrators and say: We need to talk about this as a student body, we need a space where we can talk about this,” he said.

This outpouring from the students prompted Southern’s leadership to strategize. Staff changed the day’s schedule and blocked off time for a virtual town hall. Typically, many students skip school-wide events. But the event to mark Kahlief’s death and allow students the space to express their feelings was different, Gaines recalled. The majority of students showed up in some form, and there was a lot of grief.

“It was really heart wrenching,” he said. “Not only have we just lost a student who had so much promise, but then you also really felt for these kids who just didn’t quite understand how this happened and seems to sort of keep happening and what’s going to happen next.”

And while usually, not many students take advantage of the counselors who visit schools who have lost a student in similar circumstances, that wasn’t the case at Kahlief’s death, Gaines said.

After the virtual town hall for students was over, staff at Southern also came together virtually later the same day to heal and discuss the situation.

One outcome of these events was the staff’s realization that students wanted an immediate recognition of Kahlief’s life. After learning about Kahlief’s death on a Friday, they held a memorial service the following Monday, and students submitted pictures of Kahlief for it. It allowed another chance for students to “pour out publicly how they felt,” Bailey said.

In addition, the actions and events overseen by staff and students at Southern laid the groundwork for how the school could respond to such tragedies in the future, even if it’s a response nobody wants to contemplate.

“I just wanted to make sure that even long after I left that was something that was put in place because of the hurt and the harm that Kahlief’s death had on the school community,” Bailey said.

But even those heartfelt and potentially long-lasting responses, of course, don’t protect everyone from intense feelings of loss and anger.

When a popular student like Kahlief dies, some of the fallout is relatively easy to see, like students who lose the ability to focus on their studies. But Fitzgerald, Kahlief’s one-time teacher, said that in the wake of such incidents, unexpected behavior and undiagnosed mental health conditions can be harder for adults to identify and get a handle on.

“If you lose a student in a school, of course, everybody knows it affects his friends,” Fitzgerald said. “But there are other kids that could just have an existential crisis. It could trigger their own feelings. So it can affect a lot of kids in a different way that you wouldn’t even be able to track back to.”

Deagejah Comer outside of Philadelphia’s Delaplaine McDaniel Middle School, which she attended with her friend, Kahlief Myrick.

After Kahlief died, Deagejah Comer, his close friend who warned him to be safe, ended up going to a therapist. But she ultimately didn’t see the point of explaining to the therapist why she was feeling what she felt.

In the wake of Kahlief’s death, when she went to school, Comer — who was once on the honor roll — couldn’t pay attention in class. She spent half a school year crying in a counselor’s office. Comer did graduate from Constitution High School this spring, but she said she is still depressed.

When she thinks about what needs to happen to prevent tragedies like Kahlief’s death, her mind turns to Philadelphia and its leaders.

“I feel like the city needs to take control,” Comer said. “They need to call some reinforcements or something, because it’s getting crazy and it’s only going to get worse.”

Comer can’t say how many people she’s gone to school with have died. If she starts to count them on her hands, she runs out of fingers.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia outlines school safety plan in response to escalating violence

2022-08-22T21:38:55+00:00

Philadelphia city and school officials Monday sought to reassure the public that children will be safe during the next school year by outlining new programs and policies designed to monitor and prevent threats in schools and neighborhoods.

Police presence around schools will increase at arrival and dismissal times, and there will be a “safe paths” program in which neighborhood residents patrol the areas around eight high schools. And the district’s “threat assessment” team will expand, as will the number of safety officers in schools.

District officials will also be able to monitor 100 security cameras that the city is installing near schools in high-crime neighborhoods.

The variety of efforts to make students safer come as gun violence has escalated in the city and fears about school safety persist in the wake of the school shooting earlier this year in Uvalde, Texas. Officials provided several details about what the new and ongoing security measures do and don’t mean for schools and communities, but also said broader factors involving shootings and the illegal possession of firearms around schools make the environment for students and staff more difficult.

Philadelphia experienced a record number of homicides in Philadelphia in 2021, and is nearly on pace to match that number so far in 2022. And between September 2021 and July 22 of this year, roughly equivalent to the previous school year, 119 young people under 22 were killed by gun violence and 304 were wounded, said Kevin Bethel, the district’s chief of school safety and a former Philadelphia deputy police commissioner.

Of the 119 killed, 47 were actively enrolled in district or charter schools; 36 of the 47 were 18 years old or younger.

The number of guns around schools and gun crime affecting schools have both increased, said Bethel, who added that the district previously thought gun crime as a safety concern would be less of an issue for schools post-COVID than behavioral problems.

“I do want to constantly emphasize that schools remain the safest place for our students and we are committed to providing a safe, secure and supportive learning environment for all of our students,” he said.

The first day of school is Aug. 29.

Seventeen guns were found in and around schools in the 2021-22 school year; before the pandemic, in a typical school year, just a couple were recovered annually. While metal detectors will remain in all city high schools, a program that started last school year to randomly check for weapons in schools with seventh and eighth grades will not be in place when the school year begins.

Bethel also said that this year, the district is hiring 26 more safety officers so that 52 schools that had part-time officers will now have full-time coverage. These officers work for the district and aren’t connected to the city police force.

The district’s school safety officers will continue not to carry weapons, but they will be supported by Philadelphia police as students arrive and leave schools.

“We firmly believe [we have] the best trained school safety officers in the country,” Bethel said.

The district is also adding two mental health professionals to its central “threat assessment” team. This team assists school-based personnel when students threaten others or say they will harm themselves. Last year, Bethel said, the team responded to 225 such incidents.

Outside of school buildings this year, 45 people from the Institute for the Development of African American Youth will be trained to patrol the areas around the following high schools: Northeast, Lincoln, Roxborough, Sayre, West Philadelphia, Motivation, Edison, and Bartram.

The program is modeled on one in Chicago that pays people and has had some success. Chicago Public Schools is spending $22 million on its Safe Passage program for the 2022-23 school year. Philadelphia, a significantly smaller city than Chicago, has so far allotted $250,000 a year to its own program for two years.

In addition to that, there will be enhanced and more visible police patrols during school arrivals and dismissals, said Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, who added that these will “not come at the expense of routine patrols.”

Meanwhile, the plan to install 100 new security cameras, which officials announced in June, “is one part of a critical effort to ensure the epidemic of gun violence does not impact children or interfere with their learning, development or well-being,” Mayor Jim Kenney said at Monday’s press conference.

Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley, who is in charge of the city’s Office of Children and Families, highlighted after-school offerings available to young people, and said these activities are also key to reducing violence.

She said there are 129 “out of school time” programs with 6,400 spaces and another 2,500 in activities run by Parks and Recreation. There are also programs available in many neighborhoods through Philadelphia public library branches, she said. Activities in these programs range from chess and coding to sports and dance.

“These are safe and enriching spaces for children to go after school,” she said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philly officials pitch funding for 100 new security cameras for student safety

2022-06-14T00:42:17+00:00

Christopher Braxton, a senior at John Bartram High School in Southwest Philadelphia, was gunned down near the school’s campus shortly after dismissal in January.

An 18-year-old student at Frankford High School was injured in a drive-by shooting that happened just blocks away from the school, also in January.

And Juan Carlos Robles-Corona Jr., an eighth grader at Tanner Duckrey School, died by gunfire near the school in North Philadelphia in April.

City, police, and school officials say those and other shootings near district campuses are the reason behind plans unveiled Monday to install 100 security cameras near schools impacted the most by gun violence.

Council President Darrell Clarke is expected to introduce legislation at a Tuesday council meeting that will include $1.8 million to install the cameras in 15 designated areas near 19 schools where students have been impacted by gun violence as they travel to and from school.

“As you hear people talk about Uvalde, we have Bartram, we have Dobbins,” Clarke said, referring to the school shooting in Texas last month. “We need to pay attention to the schools in the city of Philadelphia.”

As of June 9, 94 residents under the age of 18 have been shot in 2022 — an 8% increase from this time last year, according to city statistics.

In a few instances, a designated area covered by the cameras would include more than one individual school.

More schools could be added to the list of those covered by the new security cameras as the program is implemented, according to district officials.

Officials made it clear that the security cameras are an added security measure and will not replace the highly criticized metal detectors installed in some elementary and middle schools last month.

Mayor Jim Kenney, who faced heavy criticism for not declaring a state of emergency in response to last year’s historic gun homicide numbers, said support for the new cameras show that city leaders are united and recognize the situation’s urgency.

“I want to assure our residents and visitors that public safety remains our top priority. We will not stop working until we resolve the disturbing rise in violence in our city. This is an example of everybody being on the same page. And we’ve been accused of not being on the same page,” Kenney said.

At least one school official expressed regret that officials didn’t make the proposal to add security cameras sooner. Bartram Principal Brian Johnson said had the proposed security cameras been up and running months ago, officials by now probably would have identified who shot Braxton, the student at his school.

Kenney said the city’s police department has been working with principals to establish safe zones and corridors around schools, with the support and collaboration from communities.

Last month, the district announced periodic weapon screenings at middle schools. Every middle school would be subject to those screenings at least once before the end of the school year.

Officials at Monday’s announcement made a point of highlighting other ongoing efforts to safeguard students.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw was also on hand to promote the city’s Safe Corridors initiative, which has been around for years, in which community volunteers work to ensure students are getting to school and back home safely. Safe Corridors is spearheaded by the district and local businesses are also involved.

Volunteers often work in teams, sharing information and reporting any suspicious or unusual activities with school administrators.

“A child or parent should never ever have to worry about being deliberately harmed, in or on the way to and from our schools, period,” Outlaw said.

This school year also marked the start of the Philadelphia School Safe Zones, a joint effort led by the police department and the district. Law enforcement and school officials have identified 38 schools spread across 25 safety zones that would benefit from an increased police presence. These zones primarily focus on middle and high schools that were selected and using the latest crime data available.

“Officers assigned to these zones are on the lookout for suspicious activity, and mainly to create safe spaces for our students as they head to and from school,” Outlaw said.

The 19 schools that would be covered by the cameras include:

Edison and Clemente Schools
Mastbaum High School
Bartram High School
South Philadelphia High School
Fels High School
Lincoln High School, Austin Meehan Middle School, and Northeast Community Propel Academy
Dobbins High School
Ben Franklin High School
Duckrey High School
High School of the Future
Frankford High School
Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School
Northeast and Wilson Schools
Roxborough High School
Harding Middle School

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia will screen sixth through eighth graders for weapons

2022-05-06T23:46:37+00:00

Philadelphia’s sixth through eighth grade students will be subject to periodic weapons screenings starting on Monday, the school district announced Thursday in a letter to parents. The screenings will take place at six schools a day. They will be conducted at every middle school, as well as elementary schools with middle school grades, at least once before the end of the school year.

The district said it is implementing the new security measures due to an increase in gun violence and weapons found at elementary and middle schools. For example, Channel 6ABC reported that a gun was found inside a student’s backpack at Juniata Park Academy in North Philadelphia last month. Children in Philadelphia make up an increasing number of gun violence victims and perpetrators — a crisis city and school officials have struggled to address during the pandemic.

“What our kids are being exposed to, what our leadership is being exposed to, is not normal. We have allowed this to get normalized in our space. That is not acceptable,” said Kevin Bethel, chief of safety for Philadelphia schools, during a discussion of youth and gun violence hosted by Chalkbeat last month.

But some parents and teachers worry that using metal detectors and similar approaches at schools won’t make them safer, and could send the wrong message to students.

Screenings will be conducted by a team of school safety personnel, who will use hand wands or metal detectors to search for weapons. The screenings will take place in the morning, typically in a school’s entryway.

Students will be given the chance to discard any weapons prior to being screened without consequences. Those who choose not to participate in the screening will be referred to the school’s leadership. Any weapon found during the screening process will be confiscated and not returned.

The district defines the following as weapons: firearms, pellet or BB guns, knives, cutting tools, nunchaku, brass knuckles, electric shock devices, or mace or any other tool or object used to inflict serious bodily injury. Any student in possession of a firearm will be detained and referred to the Philadelphia Police Department.

“The district understands that the level of screening may feel intrusive and inconvenient. The Office of School Safety is committed to implementing this process with transparency and sensitivity towards the various and unique, social, developmental and societal factors. School safety personnel will treat every individual fairly and with dignity,” the letter to parents stated.

Two years ago, Philadelphia’s Board of Education voted to put metal detectors in all of the city’s high schools, despite a public outcry. The new policy will affect 71 schools. Bethel did not respond to a request for comment from Chalkbeat on Friday about the new security screenings.

Asked about the concern that security lines caused by the screenings might make students late for class, district spokesperson Monica Lewis said, “We encourage students to arrive at school in a timely manner that allows for them to be ready to start the school day.”

District parent Meredith Weber argued there is no evidence that physically searching children, and other similarly restrictive physical measures, improve school or community safety.

“There is however evidence that these types of measures negatively impact safety at school by eroding school climate and relationships between students and adults at school — two things which are vital for students to feel safe and thrive at school,” Weber said. “The sudden announcement that students will be searched by adults at unpredictable times goes against all principles of trauma-informed care for students. Searching children at school also has the potential to especially harm minoritized students, and contribute to the school to prison pipeline.”

Weber’s argument is supported by the National Association of School Psychologists. The group cautions against relying too much on security measures like metal detectors, since such strategies may undermine the learning environment while not necessarily safeguarding students.

The group suggested there is no clear evidence that the use of metal detectors in schools is effective in preventing school violence, and little is known about the potential for unintended consequences that may accompany their adoption.

Kaitlin McCann, who teaches seventh and eighth graders at General George A. McCall Elementary and Middle School, said that while she understands that the district’s intent is to keep students and staff safe at school, the new security screenings feel like a “reactionary” move by officials. She also said that the screenings will send the signal to students that they are the problem, instead of providing them additional support such as counseling.

“It’s going to be completely disruptive to our last month of school,” McCann said. “A lot of my students feel it’s a waste of time and resources.”

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

‘Students are petrified’ to go to school amid rising Philly gun violence

2022-04-21T19:08:20+00:00

Philadelphia schools can’t ignore rising gun violence if they want to reverse the trend, students said during a Wednesday panel discussion sponsored by Chalkbeat Philadelphia. That means creating safe spaces for students to express their fears and acknowledging that gun violence affects everyone.

“Once you experience gun violence in your family, in any group that you’re in, you go back to school, school should be a community,” said Erin Gill-Wilson, a junior at George Washington Carver Engineering and Science High School.

Instead of “jumping back into schoolwork,” students — and teachers— need support and time to talk about the experience, she said.

More than 100 people attended the virtual panel organized with Resolve Philly, where students, educators, and Philadelphia’s outgoing schools superintendent discussed the epidemic of violence in the city and its impact on student mental health.

The numbers are staggering. There have been 145 homicides so far this year, up 6% from the same time last year, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. Teenagers and children make up a growing number of gun violence victims and perpetrators, a problem city and school officials have been struggling to address. This year, 96 fatal and nonfatal shooting victims were between the ages 13-19 and 12 homicide victims were young people under 18.

“Gun violence isn’t just a school issue,” said Armando Ortez, a senior at Northeast High School and a student representative on the Philadelphia Board of Education. “It’s a community issue.”

“Students are petrified to go to school or come back to school” for fear of encountering gun violence, Ortez said.

“People don’t just carry guns around to look cool,” Gill-Wilson said. “It’s a level of protection. There are people who don’t even want to go to certain events or certain places if they can’t have a weapon. They don’t feel protected.”

Ignoring the problem is the wrong way to go, said Gill-Wilson. “I understand that as a teacher, faculty or staff, you may not want to open up or create some uncomfortable conversations,” but “uncomfortable conversations have to happen,” she said. “Gun violence and losing someone is uncomfortable.”

Resources for students dealing with trauma exist, but are often hard to come by, especially on short notice, said Lisa Christian, director of counseling services at the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia.

“There are very few resources I know of in this city that do not have a waitlist at this time,” she said. “That’s an issue.”

Mental health programs are “saturated” because of the gun violence epidemic, Christian said. She encourages people with health insurance to reach out to their insurer’s customer service department and “let them know you need trauma therapy, or you want to speak to a trauma therapist,” she said. “That will sometimes get you services a lot quicker.”

Christian’s organization provides counseling for a range of trauma-specific issues, but most are related to guns, she said, adding that “we need to have community-based intervention” through recreation centers and libraries.

School and city officials are trying to address the needs, said Kevin Bethel, chief of safety for Philadelphia schools.

“There’s a collective, all-hands approach,” he said. “This is not normal. What our kids are being exposed to, what our leadership is being exposed to, is not normal. We have allowed this to get normalized in our space. That is not acceptable.”

“We have to start teaching our young people how to deal with conflict,” he said, noting that a “plethora of programs” are aimed at supporting and mentoring young people.

“At the end of the day, we have to start working upstream” rather than just addressing incidents, he said.

Creating programs isn’t enough, said Gill-Wilson. “There also needs to be an explanation of why the programs are needed,” she said. “How will one of my peers know I need to be in this program?”

Students can benefit from having teachers and school officials who look like them and know what it’s like to grow up around gun violence, said Selina Carrera, who teaches and mentors at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center School.

“I’m one of two Latinos” on the faculty there, she said, adding: “I could name maybe, on one hand, the number of teachers of color or from the community.”

“You can’t fix a problem you don’t see,” Carrera said. “We need more support in humanizing these experiences. It’s so uncomfortable, teachers will just try to avoid it.”

It’s important to give students “space” to deal with trauma, as well as mentors they can call on if they want to talk, she said.

Carrera, who uses music and other creative arts to help students to tell their stories, suggested dedicating one day a week to mental health and how to deal with these conflicts.

“If we’re too busy policing our kids instead of listening to our kids, then they’re not going to be open to opening up,” she said, “and they’re not going to be willing to speak the truth.”

At Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter, a program called Rebound works with the most vulnerable students to give them access to mentors and therapy and offers after-school enrichment programs that feature trips to plays and excursions to places such as New York and Washington.

“So many students have not left their neighborhoods or their communities,” said Gratz Principal Le’Yondo Dunn. Rebound currently supports 50 students, and while the goal is to expand the program, that takes resources, he said.

“We can’t assign 50, 60, 100 young people to one adult,” he said.

There needs to be more acknowledgment of “how far-reaching the impacts of gun violence are,” said Dunn, the Gratz principal, who noted that his school “impacted disproportionally,” but the effects don’t stop there.

“My students have cousins and friends who attend other schools,” he said. “It’s impacting everyone who lives in the city, so we need to work together collaboratively.”

“Black and brown students are often viewed as a monolith, that they have the same experiences, the same aspirations,” Dunn said.

He said he sees young people growing up amid food insecurity, in historically overlooked communities, without knowing how to process the information they’re taking in. “I believe the system is incredibly overworked,” with calls to 911 going unanswered and no guidance on how to respond to incidents.

“If I could wave a magic wand, I would delete Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,” Dunn said. “There’s so much conflict bubbling up in those spaces, and those spaces are unmonitored.”

But social media can be a way of reaching at-risk youth, argued Christian.

“We demonize social media, but we know the majority of your youth are on social media,” she said. “Social media’s not going anywhere. Let’s use it to our advantage.”

While the Rebound program is “amazing,” it’s not everywhere, said Gill-Wilson. She started her own nonprofit, Mentally E.A.T., to advocate for mental health, and called it “a shame” that she didn’t find any existing resources.

“We all need to know about different colleges, different ways of living,” Gill-Wilson said. “There’s more to life than just Philadelphia.”

It’s heartbreaking to her that most of her peers don’t know where certain colleges are or what opportunities are available to them.

“We need to be told this,” she said. “We’re losing our friends, we’re losing our families, and we’re going back to school acting like it’s normal.”

William Hite, the outgoing schools superintendent, said at the event that more needs to be done.

“We need to be willing to learn how to have difficult conversations around what young people are experiencing and showing they are heard and showing we are responsive, that we’re humanizing these issues,” he said. “We want to expand what we’re doing around mentoring,” but “these things take resources.”

Mental health resources for students, educators, and parents

Professional counseling: The Anti-Violence Partnership offers free, professional counseling to adult and child co-victims of homicide and those who have been traumatized by other forms of violence. These services are provided at their offices in the Art Museum area and in West Philadelphia. Fill out this form to learn more or call 215-567-6776.

Gun violence resource guide: Dozens of organizations across Philadelphia are dedicated to helping those affected by gun violence. Up the Block has a searchable guide, in Spanish and English, available online. This project was created and is maintained by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence. Read more about the project here.

Mentorship programs: Philadelphia has dozens of programs seeking to provide supportive mentorship environments for youth. Learn more about the programs and how to get in touch with organizers from the Fun Times.

For emergencies: Contact the Philadelphia Mobile Emergency Team at 215-685-6440, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or for all other emergencies, call 911.

This article is part of The Toll: The Roots and Costs of Gun Violence in Philadelphia, a solutions-focused series from the collaborative reporting project Broke in Philly. Find other stories here and follow on Twitter at @BrokeInPhilly.

Reading list: How Philadelphia schools are grappling with gun violence

2022-04-20T14:50:07+00:00

Amid rising gun violence in Philadelphia, educators and students are calling for greater support, including more funding for trauma-responsive programming, grief counseling, recreational support, and summer programming.

Violence in Philadelphia has reached historic levels, with the city surpassing 500 homicides last year, the highest number since 1990. Teenagers and children have been swept up in this surge. This reality is taking a toll on schools, which are already reeling from the disruption of the pandemic and now struggle to meet the mental health needs of students who have been shot, lost loved ones, or fear for their own safety.

As Philadelphia officials outline steps to stem violence in and around schools, Chalkbeat wants to hear directly from students, educators, and school leaders on how schools can better support students experiencing community trauma. How can schools best spend precious resources? What do students feel has made a difference in their own lives? What resources can help equip educators? (Have you been affected by gun violence in Philadelphia? We want to hear from you here.)

During an April 20 discussion hosted by Chalkbeat Philadelphia and Resolve Philly, students, experts, and educators spoke about their suggestions for the Philadelphia school district. Read on for Chalkbeat’s reading list for event attendees and anyone who wants to better understand how these issues are playing out in Philadelphia schools and beyond.

Mental health resources for students, educators, and parents

For emergencies: Contact the Philadelphia Mobile Emergency Team at 215-685-6440, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or for all other emergencies, call 911.

We hope you find these compiled stories and list of resources helpful. Do you have any remaining questions? Or story ideas for us? Reach out at philly.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Behind bars: School inside Philly’s juvenile center feels brunt of city’s gun violence

A student at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Center School Program shares their thoughts on the city’s gun violence during an interview.

The spike in Philadelphia youth involved in gun violence has staff at the school district’s Juvenile Justice Services Center School calling for help.

The goal of the center’s school is to keep students on track with their education and help them transition back to a traditional school after their arrest. But Principal Deana Ramsey said the rise in gun violence has not been met with an increase in staffing or mental health supports, leading her and others to worry the center isn’t fulfilling its mission to students.

The city’s gun violence crisis, coming amid the coronavirus pandemic, has put pressure on the West Philadelphia center, whose students accounted for 12.7% of all shooting victims enrolled in city schools through April of last school year, according to school district data.

Read the full story.

Some kids ‘don’t come back’: One Philly school grapples with gun violence

Principal Keisha Wilkins walks through the auditorium of Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia as the school’s cheerleading squad practices on the stage.

In more than six years as principal of Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia, Keisha Wilkins has developed a ritual of sending students off in the afternoon with the same parting words: “I love you, be safe, see you tomorrow.”

But twice in the past year at the 551-student school in Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood, students haven’t returned. A junior was found shot to death while attending a vigil for another shooting victim last October. And a junior was found shot in the head on Mother’s Day, sitting in a car around the corner from his grandmother’s house.

“There are some kids that don’t come back the next day,” she said, “and it’s not because they don’t want to come back, but it’s because their life is taken prematurely because they had to make adult decisions as children. It’s very hard for us as a school.”

School leaders find themselves balancing these students’ academic and personal needs. For Wilkins, this means developing a relationship with local police officers, offering weekly grief counseling, and searching for programming to keep students on the right track. But she knows she is facing an uphill battle — she estimates 30 teens and young adults with ties to the school have been murdered during her tenure.

“You can’t normalize violence, can’t normalize grief, but you can at least give some outlet,” she said.

Read the full story.

‘Our schools are a safe place’: Philadelphia officials outline steps to stem violence in and around schools

Student art lines a hallway as staff enter a room at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Center School Program.

Amid a troubling wave of gun violence impacting the lives of Philadelphia students, the district’s director of school safety declared that city leaders are mobilizing resources and cementing collaborations to keep children out of harm’s way.

“Our schools are a safe place,” said Kevin Bethel, a former deputy police commissioner who spent 30 years with the department before joining the district two years ago. “They’ve always been a safe place. They continue to be one of the safest places in the city of Philadelphia regardless of the incidents we’ve had recently. Our schools are safe.”

Bethel’s declaration came during a press conference where he and Superintendent William Hite announced that, as part of their strategy to keep students safe, the district plans to pay community members to help patrol areas around school buildings during arrival and dismissal.

Read the full story.

Caroline Bauman connects Chalkbeat journalists with our readers as the community engagement manager and previously reported at Chalkbeat Tennessee. Connect with Caroline at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

Event: Philadelphia’s gun violence epidemic and mental health

2022-04-06T19:19:48+00:00

Philadelphia is experiencing historic levels of gun violence — and the city’s students are among those directly impacted by this community trauma. This reality is taking a toll on schools, which are already reeling from the disruption of the pandemic and now struggling to meet the mental health needs of students who have been shot, involved in a shooting, or fear for their own safety.

A Chalkbeat series chronicling Philadelphia’s schools most affected by gun violence revealed desperation from school leaders for more group counseling sessions and support staff to assist student needs, echoing nationwide concerns about student mental health.

As Philadelphia officials outline steps to stem violence in and around schools, we want to hear directly from students, educators, and school leaders on how schools can better support students experiencing community trauma. How can schools best spend precious resources? What do students feel has made a difference in their own lives? What resources can help equip educators?

Join Chalkbeat Philadelphia and Resolve Philly for a panel discussion with students and teachers. Please RSVP for this event so we’re able to provide the webinar information and can hear your ideas for questions. This event is free to attend, but any optional donations will go to support Chalkbeat’s nonprofit journalism and events like these.

Special thanks to our sponsor, Penn GSE Office of School & Community Engagement.

This event is the third in a four-part national Chalkbeat series titled COVID and Mental Health, which seeks to amplify efforts to better support the wellness of students and school staff during this challenging comeback year. This event is also part of The Toll: The Roots and Costs of Gun Violence in Philadelphia, a solutions-focused series from the collaborative reporting project Broke in Philly.

Behind bars: School inside Philly’s juvenile center feels brunt of city’s gun violence

2021-12-16T11:00:00+00:00

The spike in Philadelphia youth involved in gun violence has staff at the school district’s Juvenile Justice Services Center School calling for help.

There were 753 public school students shot last school year through April 2021. Students at the juvenile center accounted for 96 of those victims, the largest amount of any school. The second highest was 26 at Martin Luther King High School.

“I’m seeking professional assistance from every agency to help us out,” Ramsey said. “I think we do a great job when young people come to us, getting them to jump start again in a positive direction, and supporting them to go back into the community and not become involved in a negative situation, often ending up losing their life.”

Echoing nationwide concerns about student mental health, Ramsey believes the school needs more group counseling sessions and support staff to assist students. “I also need more case managers to follow the young people whether they’re here for one day, or if they’re there for 365 days.”

The rise in gun violence has taken a toll on the the West Philadelphia school, whose goal is to help transition students back to traditional school and keep their academics on track.

Violence in Philadelphia has reached historic levels, with the city surpassing 500 homicides this year, the highest number since 1990. Teenagers and children have been swept up in this surge. Police statistics show that through mid-November, 31 fatal shooting victims were under the age of 18 — more than in all of 2020 and triple the number in 2015. And 30 people under the age of 18 have been arrested for gun homicides this year — six times more than 2019, according to police data.

Kevin Bethel, who serves as the chief of school safety for the district, thinks increased access to guns on the streets is trickling down to the youth.

“It just becomes a part of the natural process of the street, when you’re seeing a lot more violence, a lot more gang activity, a lot more of everything, and then you’re going to get young people say, ‘I’m going to get a gun too,’” Bethel said.

Student enrollment at the juvenile center is lower this year with 1,472 students compared to 1,866 in 2020. Though lower, 49% of the students are staying longer than 30 days at the center, which means they face more serious criminal charges. This percentage is the highest over the last four years.

Many of the students arrive at the center with learning disabilities and emotional issues compounded by the strain of facing criminal charges. Students have faced bullying, suffered from domestic violence, been shot, or shot others, Ramsey said.

Principal Deana Ramsey is seeking help to address the mental health needs of her students, who have needs that are magnified by their arrests. “We need to allow the students to have a voice,” she said.

Even before the rise in gun violence, Ramsey had arguably one of the toughest jobs in Philadelphia education. Still she has embraced the task of helping students facing criminal charges work toward graduation, earning accolades for her stewardship of the school, including the prestigious Lindback Award for Distinguished Principal Leadership in 2018.

Ramsey, a native of the Nicetown area of North Philadelphia and graduate of Roxborough High School, arrived at the center eight years ago, after stints at other district schools, including as assistant principal of Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School. It was at the juvenile center where Ramsey finally felt she could make a difference in students.

“Business as usual from the past years is not working. Systems and communication are the two things our students need us to do better. We need to allow the students to have a voice.” Ramsey said.

While Ramsey’s concerns mirror those of educators nationwide who feel ill equipped to tackle mental health issues from the pandemic, those problems are intensified for her student body, which fluctuates daily but has hovered around 130 students in recent weeks.

“Right now, mental health is a big key piece to all of this,” she said. “If you’re in trauma and you have lost your best friend and no one is talking to you and giving you the skills to be able to cope with the death, you just become angrier.”

Inside the juvenile center’s school

The juvenile justice center, run by the city’s Department of Human Services, or DHS, is an expansive, modern building with steel beams, large windows, and manicured lawns. At the entrance, there’s a sign-in area, metal detector, and waiting space like a traditional prison. But through a pair of double doors sits the education area that resembles a typical school, with beige-walled classrooms trimmed with poems, classwork, and artwork by students.

In some ways, the center is like other high schools. Algebra, biology, chemistry, physical science, art, and music are traditional courses that are taught by the center’s teachers, many of whom are dual certified to teach different courses. But the curriculum also focuses on accountability and understanding the trauma of the arrested students who arrive there.

While the center has traditional courses for their students, the curriculum also focuses on helping them understand their trauma and experiences.

Ramsey said the center’s school is essentially “where the rubber meets the road” in an attempt to help troubled students from becoming career criminals.

Within 24 hours of being taken into custody and arriving at the juvenile center, students are processed by admissions, allowed to call loved ones, and assigned a housing unit. They receive a medical assessment, meet with an attorney, and see a judge all within the first day.

Then they report to school.

Students receive a reading and math assessment, and staff determine where they last went to school and how many credits they have. From there the learning begins, with at least four classes a day. When Ramsey arrived at the center in 2013, she had nine teachers and five support staff. Today she has a total of 42 workers — 21 teachers, six special ed instructors, and the rest support staff.

Ramsey has been able to increase staff numbers over the years through an annual needs assessment, part of a school improvement plan where gaps are identified. She checks data, student enrollment and crime trends over time to determine what she needs to help the students earn the credits needed in order to graduate. But that assessment hasn’t taken into account the recent surge in gun violence.

Selina Carrera, an award-winning teacher at the center, believes in creating a place dedicated to social-emotional learning to prepare students to return to traditional school or a career.

Teacher Selina Carrera, who won a Lindback Award last year, said what’s most important for the students is creating a social-emotional space for them to process their circumstances and also believe that they can be successful going back to school or have a career on the outside. Counseling theory is included in her class where she discusses life skills and allows students to express themselves creatively.

Some escape their pain by writing and recording rap songs. One student rapped about missing the birth of his child: Now I’m at the Youth and about to go to placement / My son about to be born and I’m mad that I can’t make it / Had to put the guns down and stay up off that gang isht.

Carrera said the goal is to “turn hurt into resiliency.”

Staff at the center aim to address needs beyond the students’ education. DHS said the office examines youth admitted to the juvenile center for behavioral health needs, too. “The team screens for challenges like depression, PTSD, suicide, and anxiety. And they provide evidence-based counseling and therapy based on the screening results,” the office told Chalkbeat.

There is one child psychiatrist and two clinical therapists on site, and DHS said it is collaborating with district teachers on mental health promotion groups. Its team is being trained in cognitive behavioral interventions for trauma in schools, with a new racial trauma component to be rolled out in the coming months. Therapeutic groups in general plan to resume after being suspended due to COVID-19 safety concerns.

Creative expression is an important tool to help address the mental health of the center’s students.

Chalkbeat spoke to one student who has been in and out of the center over the past several years. The 18-year-old, who was involved in gun crimes and spoke on condition of anonymity, has been at the center since January.

He credits the center with helping him transition to adulthood, enabling him to earn his high school diploma at age 16. The student, a father of three, hopes when he leaves the center it will be for the last time. “My goal is to never come back to this center,” he said. “I want to be home with my kids and be a father to them. I’ve been here too long and it’s time for me to be home with them.”

His message to students involved with guns is to look at the bigger picture and consider the outcome. “Who is it done for or is it just for show? Is it so your friends can say ‘My homie got a gun,’” he said.

Now he sees clearly that the violence he has taken part in is “not worth it.” He thinks young people are missing parental involvement at home and not learning conflict resolution. Beefs can start on social media and spiral, with teens worrying too much about making a name, about their pride.

“I should have appreciated things more,” the student said. “Time is better than money.”

Transition liasons work with students and families to see if there are any barriers to their continued learning.

Getting students the help they need

Students can stay in the center anywhere from five days to 10 months, until there is a disposition in their criminal cases. For some, the next stop is a long-term correctional center. Others are set free, and a transition liaison from DHS is assigned to ensure the teen re-enrolls in school.

Those who have been there less than 30 days return to their previous school. Those who have stayed longer are assigned a new school placement.

A transition liaison from the center follows up with students and their families in regular intervals, checking to see if there are any barriers to them continuing their education. “It could be housing. It could be mental health. We are just trying to connect services with the young person so that they are successful and never return,” Ramsey adds.

The center is in the process of providing a digital version of its resource guide, with listings of agencies for parents and older students, said Thaddeus Desmond, STEP clinical coordinator at the center. “Being 18, 19 some may not want to go back to traditional school. So there are different programs for accelerated GED, credit recovery, ready-to-work programs, how to get insurance or different dental clinics. So anything that one may need this resource guide has,” he said.

DHS says that after students are discharged, they receive reintegration case management services for six months. Their family may enroll in community-based programs that offer support, and certain students who received psychiatric treatment at the center may qualify for a new, pilot in-home mental health service that provides therapy and medication management.

The department said its staff at the center is being trained in trauma intervention and plans to roll out trauma support groups for students in the coming months. Therapeutic groups that were suspended during COVID have restarted.

Still, Ramsey believes there is room for more to be done to assist students once they leave — and ensure they don’t return.

Staff at the center are concerned about potential population increases caused by juvenile justice reforms, and DHS is working to increase staffing to ensure the school’s students are adequately served.

Ramsey admits feeling frustration that she can’t check on the students herself and questions whether more support during this period would cut down on recidivism. To date, 599 students have returned to the center this year, the highest in recent memory.

“Once they walk out that door from being discharged, that is it. That’s why you have all these repeaters. All the young people that keep coming back because nobody is really tapping in and making sure that they’re okay,” she said.

The staff at the juvenile center are also worried about a population increase caused by juvenile justice reforms, allowing youth once arrested for adult crimes and sent to Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the Northeast to now go to the juvenile center in West Philadelphia. DHS said it’s prepared for this transition.

“We are in the implementation stages of carving out space for the residents,” a DHS spokesperson said. “We are increasing staff hiring, working with district officials to ensure there is no lapse in education for the residents, and ensuring that programming is more appropriate for incoming residents.”

Ramsey remains worried.

“We are educators, we’re not law enforcement officers. We did not go to school to be social workers. We went to school to teach a child how to read and write. School administrators are really struggling and we don’t know what to do,” Ramsey said.

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‘It’s going to take all of us’: Philly district attorney joins effort to keep students safe

2021-11-02T00:31:02+00:00

Editor’s note: This article was updated to correctly attribute quotes to public officials.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner joined local officials Monday in a show of solidarity against the recent rise in gun violence happening near the city's schools.

He appeared with Superintendent William Hite, Mayor Jim Kenney, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, and educators and students at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary in North Philadelphia to call for a stop to the violence affecting students.

They noted that district students had become victims of gun violence in recent weeks.

"This is a special moment in the history of the city — it is special that we remember that we have to protect our schools, we have to protect our students, we have to protect our teachers," Krasner said.

Since school started on Aug. 31, around 30 people under age 18 have been victims of gunfire, and several of the incidents occurred near school buildings. Of the 458 Philadelphia homicides since Jan. 1, 135 of the victims have been under 18, according to the city data.

Kayla Waddington, a 10th grader at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, called for the violence to stop.

Krasner said the officials were united Monday on five points: holding shooters accountable, especially for shootings that occur near schools; prosecuting gun possession cases, particularly those carrying in and on school property; prosecuting drug cases, especially those that are happening on or near school property; protecting teachers from harm; and committing to providing support to victims of homicides and non-fatal shootings and other crimes, including those in or near schools.
Krasner is running for a second term as district attorney. He’s facing a challenge from criminal defense attorney Chuck Peruto. The election is Tuesday.

Peruto, who was not at Monday’s press conference, said, “We have absolute lawlessness out there and the police can’t possibly keep up.”
Peruto said he believes that 10% of young people are causing the problems. If elected, he said he wouldn’t prosecute all juveniles as adults, and he would consider each individual case and whether it was a “particularly heinous crime.”
“The question is, what do we do with our 13, 14 and 15 year olds and early 16 year olds,” he said.
Hite said the public is now seeing “more brazen behavior in and around schools.”
“So much so that our young people begin to get worried and traumatized about whether or not it's safe to travel to and from school," he said. "It's going to take all of us, not just one agency that's standing up here today or one office. It will take all of our collective efforts to ensure that our young people remain safe, both to and from and while they're in schools."

Hite said district students have recently become victims of some of the "most unsettling acts of gun violence."

He said a 13-year-old was shot on the way to school, a 17-year-old was shot a few steps away from the school after dismissal, and a 16-year-old was ambushed outside of his home. The superintendent did not release the names of the students nor the schools they attend.

Kenney, who has been criticized for not declaring a state of emergency, called the rise of gun violence in the city amid the pandemic "sickening."

He said the city's Office of Violence and Prevention and the City Council has distributed $4.8 million to community organizations through anti-violence community grants and is working with the Carson Valley Children's Aid, which provides case management support to students at risk of becoming truant.

"But we know that one strategy is not enough to resolve the crisis. So we will continue to do everything possible to protect our communities and to work with city leaders and law enforcement to promote public safety," he said.

Outlaw said since this summer, the Philadelphia Police Department and city leaders have discussed how best to use the safe corridors program in which volunteers provide extra supervision for students walking to and from school, similar to a neighborhood watch.

"Volunteers can opt to patrol routes around schools at the start and end of the school day or to keep watch from their home, for instance. Volunteers can work in teams sharing information and reporting any suspicious or unusual activities," Outlaw said.

Philadelphia schools’ safe zones program between the police department and the district started Monday, Outlaw said. In 25 zones encompassing 38 schools deemed among the most unsafe in the city, there will be an increased police presence.

Chief of School Safety Kevin Bethel said the police presence is critical because of the violence seen outside of the schools.

The Board of Education also recently voted to accept a $225,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to establish a "safe path" program at four high schools — Motivation, Sayre, Lincoln, and Roxborough. The district is in the process of preparing "requests for proposals" from community groups, and Bethel said he hoped that program would be well established by the end of the school year.

Aliyah Catanch-Bradley, principal of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, said school leaders are charged with the safety of their students inside the building.

Bethune Principal Aliyah Catanch-Bradley said school leaders are charged with the safety of their students inside the building. "But often they come to school very concerned about how they have to travel in some very unsafe conditions to get here."

Veronica Joyner, chief academic officer and founder of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, said the impact of gun violence on her school has been devastating. "I have lost students that were shopping and getting off of a SEPTA bus. I lost another student that heard gunshots and ushered with family members into the home and got shot in the back. I had still another coming in from working at Burger King to help support his family — they were shot and killed. My concern is that this has to stop."

An emotional Joyner said they have had to teach students how to take cover when they hear gunshots. "Why should I have to teach children to do that?" Joyner asked.

Herman Andino, an eighth grader at Bethune, said even though he feels safe at school, that's not the case when he leaves.

"I get anxiety because just around the corner eight murders have happened to students my age, and it's not right," he said.

Kayla Waddington, a 10th grader at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, called for the violence to stop. She said: "We need to destigmatize conversations about mental health and start programs that combat the source of the problem."

District Attorney Larry Krasner took time to praise the mock trial team at Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, which is ranked fourth in the world. The students will soon head to Chicago for an international competition.

‘Our schools are a safe place’: Philadelphia officials outline steps to stem violence in and around schools

2021-10-28T20:42:09+00:00

Amid a troubling wave of gun violence impacting the lives of Philadelphia students, the district’s director of school safety declared Thursday that city leaders are mobilizing resources and cementing collaborations to keep children out of harm’s way.

The Board of Education voted unanimously in favor Thursday evening to accept a $225,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to establish a “safe path” program at four high schools — Motivation, Sayre, Lincoln and Roxborough. The district is in the process of preparing “request for proposals” from community groups, and Bethel said he hoped that program would be well established by the end of the school year.

The new program was introduced after a series of shooting incidents in and around Philadelphia schools, including a student who shot himself in the leg inside a building Friday. The week before, a 13-year-old was killed a few blocks from his North Philadelphia school at 9 a.m. and a student was critically wounded and a passing motorist killed by a stray bullet during a gunfight outside Lincoln High School.

The violence comes amid an increase in shootings citywide, with Philadelphia on pace to exceed the all-time record for gun deaths in one year. The city surpassed 400 gun deaths at the end of September. The record for one year is 499.

In this latest plan to keep children safe, Bethel said members of the community groups would be “paid a small stipend” to aid police. These are the people “who know the communities, who know the kids, and can support us in this work,” he said. Among the groups that will be involved is the Philadelphia Anti-Drug, Anti-Violence Network.

The approach is based on a program in Chicago, he said, although that city, with a district nearly three times the size of Philadelphia’s, has devoted $30 million to the effort.

Bethel said that he had also secured other grants totalling $750,000 to support similar collaborations beyond the four schools. “It is unrealistic to expect to replicate Chicago’s 1,500 ambassadors,” he said. “We have to be very strategic, data driven, with the flexibility” to move people around based on need.

The board also was scheduled to vote to accept grants and allocate $1 million to create “safe paths” near some non-public schools.

The “safe paths” program is in addition to a police department initiative announced last week that would increase police presence in and around schools in 25 zones, encompassing 38 schools, that are deemed among the most unsafe in the city.

Hite said that he, Bethel, and Board of Education president Joyce Wilkerson met Wednesday with the District Attorney Larry Krasner and people in his office, along with other city and police officials. The meeting was “to ensure that we acknowledge that schools are sacred places for our young people and we will not tolerate any behavior that is creating the types of things that our young people have been experiencing over the past several months,” Hite said.

“We now have our children going to school and our parents and our school leaders [are] scared. That’s just not acceptable,” Bethel said.

Last week, a group of principals, brought together by their union, called on the district to put more resources in schools and help them combat the trauma and violence their students are experiencing.

Bethel’s comments addressed the seriousness of the moment. At the height of the pandemic, he said, “There was a push and a cry to get our kids back in school so they’d be safe. And so the reality is we all, our elected leaders, our school leaders, our community leaders, our parents, all of us, have the duty and responsibility to make our schools safe.

“I love these kids, I love this city. I took this job because I wanted to protect my kids. I never thought I’d be protecting them from gunfire.”

Bethel has long been interested in reforming how police and the legal system deal with juvenile offenders. Before joining the district, as a deputy police commissioner he spearheaded a program that rewrote the rules for when officers were called into schools and reduced the number of student arrests from more than 1,500 a year to less than 300.

Bethel said Thursday that school safety officers are now trained in de-escalation tactics and to serve as mentors. He reiterated his support for keeping school police unarmed; now, they carry only handcuffs. Most high schools have metal detectors, but students sometimes are able to bring weapons into school buildings through other means. “Some of our schools have 70 doors,” he said.

On Friday, a student in Philadelphia Learning Academy South accidentally shot himself in a school auditorium. The police and district are still investigating how the student was able to get the gun into the building, which houses three alternative programs for students who are in danger of not graduating, some of whom are returning from juvenile detention.

Last year, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and other incidents, student groups and others mobilized to demand that school police be disbanded and replaced with mental and behavioral health counselors.

At the press conference, Bethel made an impassioned plea that it is time to do something about the easy availability of guns.

“I took this job because I wanted to protect my kids. I never thought I’d be protecting them from gunfire,” he said. “At some point we have to reach a decision, how much more will we take before we make some demonstrative steps to stop these guns going through our community and getting into the hands of our children.”

Student accidentally shot himself in the leg inside Philadelphia school

2021-10-22T22:00:15+00:00

An 18-year-old student accidentally shot himself in the leg inside a West Philadelphia alternative school Friday afternoon, police believe.

The incident, which occurred around 1 p.m. in the gymnasium, is the latest in a series of gun crimes involving students that have occurred in or near schools over the past weeks.

Philadelphia Learning Academy South, located at 4300 Westminster Ave. in West Philadelphia, is for students who have had discipline issues, have dropped out and seek to return, or are coming back from incarceration. The building houses two other similar alternative programs.

A district spokesperson said the building uses metal detectors for students entering the building, and police and the district are investigating how the gun got inside.

Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators Teamsters Local 502, or CASA, which represents principals and other school personnel, said that part of the problem is understaffing.

“It’s just somebody opening up a door,” she said. Cooper said that to stem the tide of violence the district needs to fill vacancies in schools for such positions as teachers, climate managers and aides. Now, she said, principals are overworked.

“If we’re properly staffed, we can combat this violence,” she said.

The principals held a rally on Wednesday outside CASA’s headquarters to draw attention to the situation and demand that the school district and the wider community take action.

On Monday, a 16-year-old boy was critically injured and a 66-year-old man was killed by a stray bullet when gunfire erupted outside Lincoln High School in the Mayfair section of the city. Police arrested 21-year-old Aaron K. Scott in the shooting. They said Scott’s younger brother had been a student at Lincoln and had been in conflict with the students targeted in the shooting.

On Oct. 8, a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot while sitting in a car near Rhodes Elementary School in North Philadelphia, where he was a student.

The district also needs to focus more on students’ mental health needs, Cooper said. Students were out of in-person school for nearly two years, dealing with the consequences of the pandemic on them and their families in addition to the isolation. Beefs and conflicts festered on social media during that time, she said.

When school reopened, they “were focused on reading and math from day one and not on the mental health of the children we teach,” she said. “We need a plan to address the mental trauma our kids have gone through.”

According to media reports, the wounded student was taken to the hospital and is in stable condition.

‘There is a war going on in these streets’: Philly principals call for help addressing the effect of gun violence on schools

2021-10-21T00:56:59+00:00

A group of Philadelphia public school principals rallied at their union headquarters Wednesday, saying they need more support to address gun violence and its effect on their schools.

About 10 principals, joined by Councilmember Helen Gym and religious and community leaders, said they need additional staff members assigned to schools for safety and mental health support. They noted that existing vacancies, including teachers, are crippling their ability to operate orderly buildings.

“There is a war going on in these streets,” said Shavonne McMillan, principal of Vaux Big Picture High School in North Philadelphia. “I’m speaking for the educators who are experiencing what no educator should have to experience,” she said, calling increasing incidents of gun violence “a citywide pandemic,” adding, “I want to keep all of my staff and students safe and return home safely.”

She called on shooters “to honor a code” and keep schools as “safe havens.”

Since school started on Aug. 31, 29 people under 18 have been victims of gunfire, and four of the incidents occurred near school buildings. Of the 429 Philadelphia homicides since Jan. 1, 135 of the victims have been under 18, according to the city data.

Some schools affected by the violence, such as Martin Luther King High School, have searched for ways to help students, including through weekly grief counseling. King principal Keisha Wilkins was among those who spoke, telling attendees that 30 students have been killed or injured in gun violence in her seven years at the school.

“Our schools are not doing well,” said Robin Cooper, president of the Commonwealth Association of School Administrators, Teamsters Local 502, or CASA, which represents school principals and other school officials, including climate managers. “We cannot get to the teaching and learning until we are sure that every last student feels safe, not only in school but coming and going through that safe corridor.”

Cooper noted that 15 years ago, the death of a 10-year-old named Faheem Thomas, who was caught in the crossfire of a gun battle on his way to school, sparked community outrage. Today, she said, the city has become accustomed to such incidents. “We have to get back to the same uproar,” she said.

Gym said the situation today represents a crisis beyond anything the city has seen before.

“We are here demanding a coordinated strategy for our schools and for our young people in addressing violence that has been impacting so many of our families,” Gym said.

Gym and others said the strategy needs to go beyond policing to include more robust community services, including mental health and trauma counseling, and meaningful activities for young people to participate in outside of school.

Principals plan to speak out every single week “until schools get what they need,” Cooper said.

They also called on parents to keep a closer eye on their children and pleaded for help for young people who feel they must resort to violence to settle their disputes.

At an earlier city press briefing on gun violence, Deputy Police Commissioner Joel Dales, who is in charge of patrol operations, said that the police department has had 25 safe corridors that encompass 35 schools in place since the beginning of the school year.

These corridors generally rely not just on policing but also on community volunteers to walk the areas around schools during arrival and dismissal times. This year, he said, the department has had trouble finding volunteers.

Dales said he would meet with school district officials Thursday and that a larger police presence would be put in place on Monday. “We’ll have more information next week with where we are going with the program,” Dales said.

Gym said that there needs to be more coordination among the city, school district, and community organizations for safe corridors and other initiatives. The city should pay trusted community members to walk the streets at school arrival and dismissal times, rather than relying on volunteers, she said.

Gym said that the city should concentrate its efforts around the 25 schools that have seen the most student deaths due to gun violence in the past several years and the 57 blocks and 10 ZIP codes with the most gun violence. The city has concentrated efforts in several “pinpoint” zones that roughly correlate to these locations, but Gym said adequate coordination is lacking.

After the press conference, the school district issued a statement saying it “continues to be outraged by the increasing gun violence in our city and its very real impact on our students and communities.”

The statement said that district officials have been “working very closely” with the police department and the city managing director’s office and earlier this month “started conversations about the implementation of School Safety Zones which will allow for enhanced police deployment during dismissal near selected school communities to monitor for illegal, harmful or violent activity.”

Principals said they felt they had to act after a shooting Monday outside Lincoln High School in which a stray bullet killed a man who was driving by and a 16-year-old boy was critically wounded. Two nearby plainclothes officers arrested a suspect, Aaron K. Scott, who is now in custody. Police said Scott has a younger brother who is or had been a Lincoln student who had an ongoing dispute with students involved in the after-school confrontation.

Two other schools, Austin Meehan Middle School and Propel Academy, a K-8 school that opened this year, were briefly put on lockdown during the shooting.

On Oct. 8, a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot while sitting in a car in the 3100 block of Judson Street, near Rhodes Elementary School, where he was a student.

The principals are asking the city for better communication around its violence prevention strategies and police deployment, as well as for more resources from Community Behavioral Health in and around schools, including mobile crisis units.

From the state, they want more resources for career and college readiness and after-school programs. The district was recently awarded a $225,000 state grant for this purpose, but the money has not yet been received.

In August, CASA asked for five additional positions per school to deal with trauma issues brought on by the pandemic. Those positions included a climate manager, more school safety officers, and a special education liaison.

Instead, the district allotted one additional position to most schools, with a few bigger and needier schools getting two. And all schools were told that principals could use their discretionary funds to pay for additional positions they felt were vital, a position some said forced them to choose among competing needs.

Some kids ‘don’t come back’: One Philly school grapples with gun violence

2021-10-06T12:14:59+00:00

Philadelphia is experiencing historic levels of gun violence. The city hit a grim record of 499 homicides in 2020, and 2021 could prove deadlier — there were 420 homicides as of Tuesday, an 18% increase over the same period the year before.

Last year, Martin Luther King High School lost two students: Hyneef Poles, left, and Khalil Burgess. Both murders remain unsolved.

The number of teenagers killed has been on the rise. So far this year, 52 homicides have been recorded among people under the age of 18 — the same number as all of 2020. That’s up from 28 in 2019, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.

This reality is taking a toll on schools, which are already reeling from the disruption of the pandemic and now struggle to meet the mental health needs of students who have been shot, lost loved ones, or fear for their own safety.

“You can’t normalize violence, can’t normalize grief, but you can at least give some outlet,” she said.

A sign of hope inside Martin Luther King High School in West Oak Lane

It’s become a familiar routine at MLK high school. The police alert the school that a student is impacted by a shooting, either injured themselves or the relative of a victim, and officers pass along a white paper with details of what happened. That’s when Wilkins and her staff decide how to proceed. They reach out to the family to see what’s needed, perhaps a visit or, in the worst cases, money for burial or a funeral.

And when a student has died, the staff have to consider how to tell his peers. April Lancit, the school’s clinical coordinator, said that involves going to the classrooms and “we just opened up the floor for students and faculty to be able to express how they were feeling about what was going on.”

Twice last school year, staff received word of a student’s murder.

Hyneef Poles was just 17, the same age as Wilkins’ own son. She remembers him as a silly, likeable kid, and a respectful student. He was shot and killed while attending the vigil for another shooting victim. His dad, an MLK alumnus, was himself murdered in 2005, when Hyneef was a boy. “It’s unfortunate that Hyneef died the same way as his Dad,” Wilkins said.

Khalil Burgess, 18, transferred to MLK from a military academy and was in Junior ROTC. He and his twin sister had an unstable home life, staying with relatives, but he was working hard to prepare for graduation. He had gone to his grandmother’s house to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day, Wilkins said, then got in a car with a friend. He and two others in the car were shot to death around the corner.

Both Hyneef and Khalil’s murders remain unsolved.

Lancit, who oversees the school’s STEP program, a districtwide mental health effort, has been holding grief counseling sessions for students affected by gun violence every Thursday. The sessions were held over Zoom and Google Meet last year due to the pandemic but have started up again in person, and Lancit hopes participation will grow from there.

Principal Keisha Wilkins attempts to create joy in activities for her students at Martin Luther King High School.

Wilkins said the fact that a grief group is even necessary in high school is “challenging,” but she sees the value for students. “Just a free space for them to actually come in and say, ‘This is what’s going on,’” she said. “’This is how I feel, this is what’s happening in my community and this is the support that I need.’”

Lancit worries about the “toxic stress” her students experience, coming from poor neighborhoods, dealing with violence, facing racism and trauma. “We could go down the list of all types of trauma that they could be experiencing and then they come in and they’re trying to, you know, study and get their academics,” she said. “But they’re also dealing with depression, anxiety, healing from things that they either witnessed or experienced or have been a part of on top of trying to get their education.”

Experts echo Lancit’s concerns about students with post-traumatic stress disorder from experiencing violent events outside school being expected to perform in class. Howard Stevenson, an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, said students could suffer from an inability to focus and remember or they could be hypervigilant in class.

“Thousands of students across Philadelphia are showing up to class traumatized and expected to perform academically,” Stevenson said.

Despite all the school and district are trying to provide, Wilkins and Lancit see areas where the larger community could help these teens. Wilkins believes students need more summer programming geared toward job readiness and occupational skills, plus a place for teens who have outgrown local recreation centers.

“I wake up in the morning, I’m 17 years old, I’m not working, I’m too old to go to the rec center, so what am I going to do?” Wilkins said. “We need more people that look like our students talking to our students having those conversations.”

Lancit would like to see more funding put toward the work the STEP program and others like it are doing. And both she and Wilkins would like more adults to come into schools and speak about the paths they have taken. “I think it’s good for them to be able to see that there’s plenty of Black and brown people that have come from where they come from that grow up and do amazing things,” Lancit said.

Youth experts suggest schools consider alternative resources for students like recreation sports, where they have a combination of physical activity and teammates, friends and coaches who are genuinely interested in their well-being. Coaches can also mentor students who may not have anyone to talk to at home.

Malik Jones, head football coach at MLK, serves as mentor, big brother, and uncle for many of the school’s students struggling with life outside the classroom.

MLK’s head football coach Malik Jones attended school with Hyneef’s father in the late 1990s and instantly developed a bond with the teen. “As soon as I knew that he was Bruce’s son, I had to just embrace him,” Jones said of Hyneef. “I showed him his dad in the yearbook. I mean literally every time I would see Hanif, he was a very affectionate kid and gave me a big hug.”

That strategy worked for Tyrell Mims, who was a star player for MLK’s football team under Jones. Mims, now a sophomore at Villanova University, credits the relationship with his coach for keeping him focused on the field and the classroom.

“A lot of kids that come to Martin Luther King come just for the four years just to be a student. The school brings in kids either from being in prison or coming from just a lot of rough backgrounds,” Mims said. “I never had my father in my life, but having Malik around was like the next best thing, like a good father figure in my life, somebody I could always talk to about things that’s not even related to football.”

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