Chalkbeat

Philadelphia to make digital hall pass and student tracking system available at all schools

2026-08-20T22:20:02+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

The Philadelphia school district is making a digital hall pass available at all schools for the upcoming year that allows administrators to closely track students’ whereabouts.

Under the Infinite Campus system, which schools already use for course materials, students ask to leave the classroom through their Chromebooks. Once a teacher approves the request, the student’s journey will be logged on a “hall monitor grid” accessible to the school’s administrators and climate staff.

The system allows school staff to digitally deny students access to areas of campus where there may be a safety risk or staffing issue. Administrators can also automate the system to ensure certain students are not simultaneously approved for hallway access.

The system, which the district isn’t requiring schools to use, is designed to help prevent physical violence between students. Fights are a major concern in the district: Between 2021 and 2025 there was an average of about 550 incidents each year where police responded to an assault on a public school campus, according to data provided by the city police department. But in New York City, students and others have criticized a similar digital hall pass concept due to concerns about over-surveillance. And some worry the new technology will be more distracting than helpful.

Jade McCray, an assistant principal at Abraham Lincoln High School who recently got trained on the new software, said the system will track which students are out of the classroom, where they should be, and what time they left and returned. She said it could also help keep apart students who are in conflict.

“If we know a situation is brewing … it’s probably not the best idea for them to be in the halls to possibly run into each other at the same time,” she said.

But the system could hinder the staff who focus on student safety, said Nicole Hunt, the president of Local 634, the union representing Philadelphia school climate staff.

“It takes a second to start a fight,” Hunt said. “How do we watch out for when a fight’s about to happen when we’re watching the tablet?”

Some individual Philadelphia-area campuses have tried similar technology before, but the 2026-27 school year will be the first that such a system will be available for all schools.

District officials said it will take some time to get teachers and students trained on the new tool.

In other school safety news, the district’s Youth Violence Reduction Initiative will expand to William L. Sayre High School this year.

The program provides a calm space and consistent mentorship to students at highest risk of engaging in violence. At John Bartram High School, which piloted the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative, student-on-student assaults are down 31% since the program launched in 2023.

The initiative will now be in place at three high schools; it launched at Olney High School last year.

The Handle With Care program, in which police officers alert school staff when a child has witnessed trauma in their neighborhood, is expanding districtwide after a pilot run in the 22nd Police District.

The Safe Path program, which places trained adults on school perimeters to deescalate fights, will return to 25 campuses.

In addition, this will mark the first school year that all school safety officers will wear ballistic vests.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘You’re not wanted’: Philly teens who feel unwelcome downtown call for more ‘third spaces’ during summer

2026-07-30T16:49:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Earlier this year, 17-year-old Riyaz Brown-Cheeseboro walked into Center City’s Fashion District mall to do some afternoon shopping. She was by herself and minding her own business, she said, but mall security still escorted her out.

“They asked me for an ID, they walked me away, and I didn’t really know why.”

In 2023, following at least one instance of police responding to hundreds of teens at the mall, the Fashion District began requiring anyone under 18 be accompanied by an adult age 23 or older after 2 p.m. Minors who are working in the mall are exempt.

Teens feel excluded from other places as well. They told Chalkbeat they’ve been asked to leave convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, university campuses, and Center City parks.

“The attitude that’s being shown to them is like ‘you’re not wanted in public spaces,’” said Kharma Hillian, 19.

That attitude may be heightened this summer due to a wave of teen takeovers, or pop-up events that spread on social media and involve large groups of young people. Law enforcement has responded to shootings and other crimes during these types of meetups in Chicago; Raleigh, North Carolina, and Newport Beach, California.

While teen takeovers do happen in Philadelphia, youth say it’s not fair to assume that any group of teens is going to cause trouble.

“I would say, like, 90% of the time, they’re not up to bad stuff,” said James Field, 16. “It’s just people like to talk to each other and be social.”

Investing in third spaces for teens

Field, Hillian, and other local students are producing a video segment for PSTV, the School District of Philadelphia’s television station, on the need for youth-centered third spaces. The term refers to places other than work or school where people can spend time. Many experts in adolescent behavior argue third spaces lower stress, improve confidence, and increase academic motivation.

Hillian said if officials invested more in third spaces, they wouldn’t have to worry about teen takeovers.

“If you give teens a proper sense of community and a proper place of belonging, then there will be no need for fighting, there will be no need for violence,” she said.

Students with the WHYY Media Labs program conduct interviews for a video project about third spaces at the School District of Philadelphia on Tuesday July 28, 2026.

Many of the city-sanctioned spaces for young people in Philly are in deep disrepair. The school district is closing 17 school buildings that it can’t afford to fix or renovate. Meanwhile, some of the city’s recreation centers are similarly dilapidated.

Hillian said this makes people her age feel like there’s nowhere to go.

“Why invest hundreds and thousands of dollars into more police enforcement to make sure teens aren’t in Center City, when all that money can be poured into redecorating existing recreational centers, and giving them art supplies and roofs and plumbing systems?” she asked.

The city’s current budget allocates 10 times more to police than to the Parks and Recreation Department.

In 2017, the city invested more than $500 million to refurbish 72 recreation centers, parks, and libraries in a massive undertaking known as the Rebuild project. Nearly a decade later, a little over half are complete, according to a 2026 progress report.

The city is responsible for maintaining public spaces where teens feel safe, including by offering more evening hours, said Inella Ray, an advocate at Children First PA.

She worries that without those spaces, Black youth will have encounters with police that could land them in the juvenile justice system. In June, she witnessed officers breaking up a crowd of boys who were sitting at a nearby table in Dilworth Park — a large, public plaza at the heart of the city that seems designed to draw young people with food stands, sprinklers, skating rinks, and other activities.

“They were cracking jokes at each other, looking at girls, and all of a sudden these swarms of cops came and told them to disperse,” Ray said. “This idea that the Philadelphia police are coming into contact with young people on the basis of existence, it’s just a disaster.”

Brown-Cheeseboro said it’s OK for police to be on standby, but they should only intervene if something goes awry.

“We should be allowed to be in places, and once we overstay our welcome or are doing what’s not allowed, we should be escorted out,” said Brown-Cheeseboro. “That’s how it should be. Instead of just immediately rejecting us.”

Safety concerns and city supervision

Police provide necessary safeguards for large groups of young people, said 22nd District Capt. Brian Sprowal.

“I’m all for a meeting up, I’m all for kids being kids and doing what it is they like to do and engaging,” he said. “However, sometimes history has shown us that without that supervision or without that guardianship, things happen.”

The number of young people charged with crimes in Philadelphia dropped roughly 20% between 2024 and 2025, from 1,977 charges to 1,550, according to data provided to Chalkbeat Philadelphia by the District Attorney’s Office. The only category to see a slight uptick was robbery.

Jaylen Gordon, a rising high school senior who is not part of the video team, acknowledges that large groups of teens meeting up can be dangerous.

“With big parties and big linkups, it can lead to a shooting especially late at night,” he said. “It can lead to a big fight when people meet up, knowing that somebody that they don’t like could be there.”

But he still doesn’t get why he and his friends were dispersed while hanging out casually downtown this summer.

“Nothing was actually happening, and I was just really confused.”

Cities experiencing teen takeovers have responded with a range of actions including curfews, social media monitoring, and ramped-up law enforcement. Detroit launched a late-night basketball program in a recreation center in an effort to curb unauthorized gatherings.

In Philly, city agencies do provide free programming for teens. The School District of Philadelphia offers a six-week summer camp at 30 schools and publishes a map of summer programs. The Parks and Recreation Department has a sortable directory of activities. The city also runs evening resource centers that are open from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., and receive children who are brought in under the city’s youth curfew. Dozens of neighborhood nonprofits also create safe spaces.

This summer, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department has been holding sanctioned teen takeovers where young people can hang out, eat, and dance. Their Summer Night Lights program with the police department has a similar goal.

Eric Westbrook, deputy director for community partnerships for the city’s Office of Public Safety, feels those initiatives have been helping young people stay safe.

“Let’s look at our summertimes, when gun violence numbers tend to increase, and let’s bring the resources to them,” he said. “Our engagement doesn’t have to be just strictly arrests. Our engagement should be connecting, making relationships.”

But students say they want less structured spaces where they don’t have to deal with many adults and can just relax.

Hillian’s video team is highlighting the Field Teen Center at the Parkway Central Library, where the activities are informed by a Teen Advisory Board. They also point to the Ginger Arts Center in Callowhill, which has a karaoke machine and a ping-pong table, as an example of an ideal space.

The student project is part of WHYY’s Media Labs program and will be screened at WHYY on Aug. 5 from 4 to 7 p.m. alongside other participant work. Register for free here.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Shootings often rise in Philly when school’s out. Violence prevention groups have plans to change that.

2026-06-02T20:25:33+00:00

Ian Dugan remembers James Easterling as “loud” with “a lot of smiles”. The young man used to be a regular in the Salvation Army Kroc Center computer lab where Dugan is an instructor.

“He liked to talk a lot,” Dugan said, pausing for just a moment while planting a flag bearing Easterling’s name on the center’s lawn.

Easterling was fatally shot in Germantown in September 2016 at age 22. His flag is one of roughly 700 the center has planted for gun violence victims since 2025.

“All of us who have been affected by people who’ve died over the years believe the more love we spread, the less flags there will be.”

Dugan was one of several dozen attendees at the center’s “Spread Love Not Bullets” event Monday that focused on preventing youth gun violence during the summer months. Shootings tend to rise in Philadelphia when the weather warms up. And even though gun violence has fallen recently in the city, children make up a growing share of shooting victims.

In response, gun violence prevention organizations are mounting programs to provide safe environments for Philadelphia’s young people in the summer.

“They’re going to have more freedom, they’re going to be exposed to violence more, because they’re not in school for half the day,” said Capt. Dana Bradley of the 39th Police District, who spoke on a panel at the Monday event. “It’s very important for our entire community to provide structured activities.”

This summer, 30 public schools will be part of the School District of Philadelphia’s “extended day, extended year” program, which includes a six-week summer camp. That’s up from 20 public schools last year.

“It gives our students an opportunity to be actively engaged and supervised by adults, and it keeps them out of the streets,” said Craig Johnson, the district’s deputy chief of school safety.

Philadelphia shootings are down about 40% since this time last year. Still, community leaders say young people are at high risk because of social media pressure to escalate violence, combined with the feeling that adults don’t care about or believe in them.

“It’s very important that we understand that kids want to do good,” said John Solomon, the 34-year-old founder of Endangered Kind, a violence prevention effort.

He said the “old school” mentality of approaching teens with a heavy hand doesn’t work with this generation.

“We have to come with a lot of respect,” he said. “If we don’t, then the trust is not built, and the connection is lost, and it makes it that much more difficult for us to begin to deter them or have conversations with them.”

Kyeme Hunter, 19, listened in on the panel and afterwards agreed that more summer activities could help teens avoid violence — but only if they feel safe attending in the first place.

“You got kids that want to do programs, but they’re in fear of the people they’re beefing with going to the same program,” Hunter said.

If adults know about young peoples’ needs, they can design spaces that incentivize them, Hunter said. For example, he said that for young people who are making rap music, programs can provide equipment to help them explore that. Being responsive in that way means “they’ll probably come here more often to relax themselves, just to get some space,” he said.

Michael “OG Law” Ta’Bon will be touring his “mobile community crisis event unit.” It’s a large truck equipped with a roof deck, a stage, a basketball hoop, a grill, and a movie projector. But the unit doesn’t just feature fun activities: Inside the trailer is a replica prison cell that Ta’Bon uses as an educational tool.

The truck has a sign that says: “Summer Onto September.”

“The key is making sure that as many young people make it from summer vacation to back-to-school in September safe, sound, alive and free,” Ta’Bon said.

Correction: June 2, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated the neighborhood where Playin’ it Safe in the 8th operates.

Sammy Caiola is Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s gun violence reporter, and this summer she’s focusing on education for justice-involved youth. If you have experience or ideas on that subtopic, reach her atscaiola@chalkbeat.org.

The soundtrack to Philly’s waning gun violence

2026-04-12T10:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

This story was published in collaboration with The New York Times.

Zayvion Hamiel, also known as ZayMoney, sits at a DJ booth surrounded by speakers nearly as big as he is. He queues up a remix of Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls),” as a line of teens prepare to walk a makeshift runway.

This is Zay’s House. From the street, it looks like a ‌‌nondescript building on a ‌narrow block in North Philadelphia, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the city’s gun violence crisis. But inside is a community space where modeling practice, graphic design, and DJ-ing happen regularly, and where Hamiel, 13, his siblings and other aspiring creators spend some of their after-school time.

Teenagers in Philadelphia say music is key to helping them process the anger, grief, and loneliness that come with growing up around gunfire. Drill music, an aggressive subgenre of rap that has been accused of glorifying and inflaming violence, rose to prominence in the 2010s and has a hold on many teens. But a growing number of artists like Hamiel and programs in the city aim to harness music to deter violence.

Zayvion Hamiel, 13, known musically as the rapper ZayMoney, livestreams outside his home, behind a family car with branding for his event space, Zay's House.

“I started seeing these kids in the streets, and they’re fighting, they’re shooting each other, and I wanted them to stop,” Hamiel said. “That was when I was 6.”

That year, his cousin was shot. Hamiel soon started writing verses with his mother, who is also his music producer and manager and runs an anti-violence nonprofit. Their goal is to inspire young people to make and listen to rap that envisions a better Philadelphia.

Young, dying young trying to prove a point / Being Black in the hood and staying out of the joint.
Zayvion Hamiel

Zayvion Hamiel, who's learning the craft from DJ-ing from his friend, Tamaj Garner, who also goes by DJ Maj, DJs at Zay's House.

Zayvion Hamiel holds a microphone for his brother RJ, 4, during a livestream.

Qidere Johnson, aka LGP Qua, rose to prominence as a young North Philadelphia artist pushing for a different kind of rap in the city.

Johnson, a father of two, filmed videos on porches and at community events‌, with lyrics touching on systemic inequities.

Then on Mother’s Day last year, he was shot in broad daylight in the city’s Kensington section. He was 30.

The community response to his death was swift and heartfelt. Government officials named a street corner after him. The Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill paid tribute on Instagram.

For many young rappers, like Honesty Dawkins, 16, Johnson modeled success in the face of intense social and industry pressure to make violent rap.

“For him to go against what everybody else is saying, being like, ‘Hey, yo, this isn’t cool — like, this is what we doing, and it’s not right,’ it was very brave of him,” she said.

A street sign at the corner of 9th and Clearfield streets memorializes Philadelphia rapper and anti-violence advocate Qidere Johnson, known as LGP Qua. Johnson was shot and killed during an attempted robbery in 2025.

Dawkins, who goes by the artist name Honimommi, lost a close friend to gun violence in January. While grief is part of her reality, her music focuses on confidence and success.

She started laying tracks in a closet-size recording studio at a ‌violence prevention space not far from Zay’s House called As I Plant This Seed, where she still spends many ‌evenings‌.

“I don’t talk about harming people and stuff like that,” she said of her lyrics. “I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking that Philly is just a bunch of gun violence and people who are rapping about gun violence.”

Resisting the lure of drill

A lot of commercial and social pressure pushes young artists to rap about gun violence. Drill rap, which originated in Chicago, is highly popular and notoriously heavy. Videos often feature rappers backed up by large groups of masked people holding guns.

“The drill scene really took off, especially in West Philadelphia, especially during the pandemic,” said the rapper Clinton Mills Jr., 25, who goes by CJ Da Prodigy. “If you a Philly rapper, people expect you to rap about killing and about selling drugs.”

The “virality of violence” on YouTube and other platforms makes producing music about it more alluring than addressing its root causes, said Christopher R. Rogers, a scholar of Black culture and an assistant professor at Haverford College near Philadelphia.

But drill music has caught the attention of prosecutors. “The district attorney has gotten involved,” said Vinte Clemons, who makes music as ARSIN and is one of the city’s first adult artists to explicitly push against violent rap. “A lot of people have got locked up. A lot of people have died over it.”

Bill Fritze, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, said his office’s investigations had diminished some groups, but he expected music celebrating bloodshed to continue as long as there was a profit motive.

Honesty Kearse, 19, said shifting music culture away from violence ‌feels urgent. She lost a sibling to gun violence, and worries about the influence drill has on her younger brother and the teenagers he hangs out with. She is taking a rap writing class as a way to process the grief, and to try to get a message across to her peers.

“I just want a world where I don’t have to worry about if my siblings is gunned down just because they’re wearing black,” she said.

Kearse’s after-school program is one of many that youth mentors say help young people channel an interest in music making in a different direction.

DJ Dommis guest lectures at a Spin Academy class hosted by FamFrequency, a nonprofit that helps young people learn skills for the music industry.

When Jonathan Edwards started FamFrequency Productions four years ago, drill music “was all that,” he said, even among his students who weren’t actively involved in street crime. Today, he encourages them to tap into their authentic experiences instead.

“Reflect on your week; put this in a lyric,” Edwards said. “Now half the city who is 15 years old, who just broke up with their girlfriend can relate to that lyric.”

Cassidy Brown, 20, credits FamFrequency for helping him find his own voice.

“My brand started with a sort of Batman persona,” said Brown, who performs under the name ‌c12. “It was dark. I was mad. I didn’t want anyone to know my face. I was kind of like a vigilante without the violence.”

Cassidy Brown, known musically as c12, mixes one of his songs.

After some time working with Edwards, he became more comfortable showing his face and rapping about subjects like race and gender identity.

“Tryna soften up a world that wants to see me as a brute. / Would my ancestors be proud to see how far I grew my roots?”
Cassidy Brown

“As I progressed with my music I was like, I want everybody to know,” he said. “It feels amazing. It feels freeing. Because it’s a coping mechanism for me, just to dump all of that out there and get it off my mind.”

To make it in the music industry, Brown is broadening his mix of relevant skills. In addition to writing music, he is studying mechanical engineering at Temple University and interning at a local recording studio.

Cassidy Brown mixes one of his songs.

Cassidy Brown sits for a portrait at MilkBoy the Studio, where he is currently an intern.

“Learning how to mix and match tracks and how to troubleshoot, learning how mics work,” he said‌. “‌That’s really where the money is at.”

Dancing to new beats

Close to 1,000 ‌teenagers crowded the edges of a carpeted rectangular dance floor on a recent Wednesday, cheering and shouting as a three-on-three dance battle heated up.

“Tanging,” the Philadelphia-grown dance style that competitors perform, is fast-paced, athletic, and at times combative. It’s set to bouncy and explosive beats‌, a far cry from the heavy tones‌ of drill rap.

A dance cypher at Level Up Philly, a West Philadelphia violence prevention initiative.

When someone threw down especially hard, teenagers stormed the floor. An emcee kept it moving, and a row of judges perched on lifeguard chairs determined the winners.

At Level Up Philly, a West Philadelphia violence prevention initiative, teens and organizers say the dance scene lets ‌young people burn energy while finding a sense of belonging they may otherwise seek from gangs.

Aaron Campbell, founder of Level Up Philly, walks with teens.

A participant dances in the middle of a dance cypher at Level Up Philly. The anti-violence group provides a safe space for kids to engage in activities outside of school.

“These are the ones who would just as easily be on the other side if we didn’t provide this,” said Aaron Campbell, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director.

On Campbell’s forearm, a tattooed line of seven stick figures marks every Level Up participant killed by a bullet from 2022 to 2025. Last summer, ‌a dance battle emcee was shot and killed.

And then there are the injured children. Citywide, there have been more than 1,000 nonfatal shooting victims under 18 since 2020. Shootings have declined significantly since 2023. Campbell keeps gauze in the kitchen for changing bandages.

Dance is one way for young people to block out the negative, said Tacori Aaria Mateen. She’s 15, a rapper, athlete, and “kid influencer” with close to 600,000 Instagram followers. She’s known as the Philly Princess and also performs under the name T-Cori.

One of her ‌most popular videos, “Hips,” features dozens of Philadelphia children goofing off with their friends, grooving in pajamas in their kitchens and dance-battling on their blocks.

“Dance like a butterfly, hips like a bee / Killin’ these moves like Muhammad Ali”
Tacori Aaria Mateen

“The whole point is giving kids something to do than being out in the streets,” Mateen said. “Instead, you could go make a dance to this, or you could start making your own songs.”

Mateen performs at school assemblies, skating rinks, and pizza parties, sometimes with other youth influencers, including ZayMoney.

Music artist, influencer, and entrepreneur Tacori Aaria Mateen, known both as T-Cori and Philly Princess, dances while her mother, Taliah Mateen, films her for a TikTok video.

Tacori Aaria Mateen stands for a portrait.

The violence prevention activist and music producer Tommy Blackwell said events where kids could express themselves were ‌critical to deterring gun violence.

But sustaining those spaces is a challenge. An open mic Blackwell used to organize with a stipend for nonviolent rap performances has been on hold since November because a state grant dried up.

The challenge gains urgency as ‌summer approaches‌, the prime season for block parties, music festivals and other opportunities for artists, and also when teenagers are out of school and shootings ‌typically spike.‌

“There are thousands of LGP Quas in the city of Philadelphia,” Blackwell said. “We have to provide those platforms if we want to save lives.”

Visuals by Kriston Jae Bethel.

This article was published as part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, focused on gun violence in Philadelphia. This reporting is supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with the Local Media Foundation serving as fiscal sponsor. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Shootings are falling in Philly, but kids make up a growing share of gun-violence victims

2026-04-09T10:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

The number of Philadelphia kids injured by gunfire is falling — but it’s not falling as fast as the total number of shooting victims.

In 2020, children who were injured by gunfire but not killed made up about 8% of Philly’s 2,245 shooting victims, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the city’s Office of the Controller. But they made up 11% of that category in the city last year, when 939 people were shot.

The toll of the last few years has left an excruciating mark on the city, even as the numbers have begun to fall. And community experts and physicians say the rising share of those victims who are kids stems from the problem that unlike adults, young people are more susceptible to peer and social-media pressure to wield guns.

All across the city, children are recovering from bullet wounds. There have been 852 nonfatal shootings of people ages 17 and under since 2021, according to city data.

“The kids are just infatuated with this gun violence,” said Tone Barr, director of victim services for the Anti-Violence Partnership of Philadelphia. “Until we get a hold on that you’re still going to see this turmoil, this trauma.”

Barr shared those comments at a press conference last Thursday, following the April 1 shooting of a 3-year-old boy in a South Philadelphia home. The child has a head wound and was in critical condition as of late last week. His 17-year-old uncle has been charged with a felony weapons offense.

A “ghost gun” — a type of firearm that’s hard to trace and easy to order online — was found under the teen’s bed, officials said. They noted a different weapon was used in the shooting.

“Please check bookbags, check rooms,” Barr pleaded. “This is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened. We can’t normalize reckless behavior.”

Activists like Ant Brown say the key to combatting the trend is reaching teens through different media.

“If the music is all death culture, is negative, how do we expect for these young kids to act?” he said, adding that many “bouls” — Philly slang for young boys or young men — “want to be street dudes.”

He and a few other organizers recently teamed up with the University of Pennsylvania to launch Creators for Community Safety, which trains social media influencers on anti-violence messaging. A similar project in Chicago taps into social media to emphasize that guns are dangerous, not cool.

“I feel like it’s up to content creators to get involved, in how they push out content to young people that can also ease their mind in a way,” Brown said. “When we talk about the arts, we got to figure out a way where we’re not just re-traumatizing young people.”

City faces grim reality: ‘Guns are plentiful’

Two children have been killed by gunfire in Philadelphia in 2026. A 13-year-old was fatally shot in the city’s West Oak Lane section Tuesday night. And in January, a 16-year-old Imhotep Institute Charter High School student, Khyon Smith-Tate, was fatally shot in North Philadelphia.

During the height of the gun-violence crisis after the pandemic, Philadelphia’s students were shot while walking to school, at bus stops, and at football games.

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, ICU physician Dr. Anireddy Reddy treats traumatic brain injuries, abdomen wounds, and other complex physical trauma caused by bullets.

It’s part of why she and her colleague’s in the hospital’s Center for Violence Prevention now counsel families about safe firearm storage and provide gun locks.

“We know that access to a firearm significantly increases a child or a teen’s risk of either accidental injury, death by suicide, or other injury within the home,” she said.

Victoria Wylie, who started working to prevent gun violence after her 20-year-old brother was killed in 2008, said easy access to guns is especially dangerous in Philadelphia’s lowest-income communities.

“Guns are plentiful, and we’re dealing with a more traumatized society,” said Wylie, who cofounded the Donte Wylie Foundation support group for adults with long-term gunshot injuries, like people who use wheelchairs. “There’s more PTSD, there’s more anger in communities. And problems result in violence because of it.”

Even though gun violence in Philadelphia has declined recently, each shooting sends a ripple of grief and fear through entire school communities, said Nora Gross, an assistant professor of education at Barnard College.

In 2020, Gross spent significant time at a Philadelphia high school and collaborated with several young men on a short film, “Our Philadelphia,” about losing classmates to gun violence.

She argues schools should give students more grace and space to process their feelings after a student is shot. That might mean easing up on discipline and providing extra counselors after such incidents.

When gun violence happens, teachers and other adults step up, often without getting formal training beforehand, Gross said.

“There’s a lot of adults in school buildings who are doing this hidden emotional labor,” she said. “People like the secretaries in the main office, the security guards, the janitors, the lunch people.”

The School District of Philadelphia contracts with multiple violence prevention nonprofits to provide grief and trauma services. However, pending budget cuts could mean fewer adults are available to help kids affected by gun violence.

This story is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat Philadelphia and The New York Times’s Headway Initiative, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) via the Local Media Foundation.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Fewer Philly children are being shot. Here’s how the city’s top cop wants to keep that trend going.

2026-03-24T17:51:16+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Kevin Bethel was in charge of Philadelphia school safety during what he called “a very difficult, dark time” for the city.

While serving as the School District of Philadelphia’s school safety chief from 2019 to 2023, Bethel watched the city’s fatal and nonfatal shooting tallies climb. About 200 children per year were injured or killed by firearms during that period, according to city data.

“I would see young people getting shot outside the schools — Roxborough, Lincoln, Bartram, just killed,” he said. “It was something I’d never seen in my lifetime.”

But now, the city is in “a far, far better place,” said Bethel, who became the city’s police commissioner in 2024. The number of shootings in the city has fallen dramatically: There were half as many fatal shootings last year as there were in 2022. The number of children who’ve been shot has also been steadily declining.

Bethel attributes the change to multiple collaborations between the police department and the city, including a violence reduction initiative at Bartram High School that he helped design and a Safe Path program that places trained adults on school perimeters.

Bethel continues to pitch in on school safety, alongside the Philadelphia Police Department’s Director of Gang Reduction and Youth Development David Irizarry. The two tout the success of in-school restorative justice programs and a trauma-focused initiative called Handle With Care.

But Bethel said he is especially proud of the school diversion program, which connects students who would otherwise be arrested for certain offenses to preventative programs instead. He also highlighted the city’s Town Watch Integrated Services team, which trains neighborhood groups on how to protect children walking to and from school.

However, there were multiple large-scale fights in the fall that worried neighbors and garnered social media attention.

Many community members fear even more conflicts will arise if the school district moves forward with its plan to close 18 facilities and merge or co-locate certain schools.

Chalkbeat asked Bethel to lay out some of what he feels is improving school safety, and what’s needed for the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of the ways that the school district and police department work together?

Our school diversion program, that is one of our marquee programs. We started in 2014 when the [police were] locking up 1,600 children a year [in schools] … kids as young as 10 years of age, for a whole series of things. I was here as a deputy commissioner running operations at that point. I was very frustrated with the number of young people being arrested.

I had been part of a national program asking law enforcement leaders across America, “how are you going to address the disparities?” Because many of the kids being locked up were African American or Latino. That would also open the doors to understanding trauma, adolescent development, brain science, all of that. And so we started that program in 2014 and today we’re at over a 90% reduction. Last year we had 72 kids arrested for a system that used to lock up 1,600.

We continue to support the school district as it relates to dismissal times, and we have around 60 officers assigned to the schools across the city to support the dismissals. Most of the high schools have specific coverage, and then we have rolling patrols for our lower grade schools to support that.

And then there’s certain corridors that we try to increase our activity. After the unfortunate homicide of the student at Imhotep Institute Charter High School, where he got killed on Ogontz Avenue, we started to increase some of our activity around our main corridors as well.

Just since this fall, there have been some pretty large-scale fights on high school campuses. What have you found to be effective for handling those?

There’s so much that can ignite young people to engage in that activity. If there’s intelligence or information [that police or a school] received prior that there’s going to be something, then the expectation is that folks are going to get into that and intercept that.

It’s very rare with our young people that we have to use high levels of force. Most times they’re not really trying to attack the police officers, they’re just fighting each other.

But our expectation is this is not just a policing issue. And in particular in our larger schools, we’re expecting the safety team at the school district, which is not just the school safety office, but everyone in that school, to bring it under control, and then we’re here. Our goal is coming to support that. Especially when it’s occurring inside the school, they know the students, they know the players, they know what the discipline should be like.

With school closures on the horizon, how will PPD be involved with children potentially having new walking routes to school?

These are not immediate changes. There’s going to be this transition that will happen as more things start to unfold. It’s not just me. It’s obviously the Safe Corridors program working out of Town Watch Integrated Services. It may require some of that activity to come into play.

But what we clearly should know, that we should understand, is what the pathway is. In the earlier closings, there were some adjustments of the school crossing guards. So that expectation will be something that will be a part of those plans, to make sure that those intersections that a child may have to walk are properly covered.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Students fear Philly school closures could spark bullying and violence. Here are possible solutions.

2026-03-13T16:15:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

Philadelphia students and community members want to know how schools will prevent fights, bullying, and other conflicts that could stem from the district’s proposal to close 18 schools.

Experts say there are ways to prevent such violence — if planning begins now.

People have brought up safety at many of the roughly 40 community meetings the school district has hosted at schools that would close beginning in 2027. Usually it’s parents and students at smaller, specialized schools who would be moved into bigger neighborhood high schools with violent reputations.

April Anderson voiced concern at a February community meeting about plans to close Parkway Northwest High School, which her child attends, and move those students to Martin Luther King High School, which is about a half-mile away and happens to be Anderson’s own alma mater.

“There are fights at King,” she said. “If you put kids from Parkway in King you don’t think that’s going to start issues?”

Several Parkway Northwest students who attended the meeting echoed that sentiment, including freshman Dane McFarland, who runs on MLK’s track and said he gets bullied there.

Dane McFarland, holding up a megaphone, was among the students who walked out Parkway Northwest High School on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026 to protest the Philadelphia school district's plan to close the school.

A rough reputation can stick with a school, even when data about student conflicts doesn’t tell a simple story. MLK High School does have a higher rate of group assaults than Parkway or Building 21, another school that would also merge into MLK under the district’s closure plan.

But Parkway has higher rates of fights between students, according to the district’s data on serious incidents from 2021 to 2025.

At a City Council hearing about the closures on Feb. 17, Council President Kenyatta Johnson asked district Superintendent Tony Watlington to ensure “that we have a game plan to make sure our young people are safe.”

Watlington answered by pointing to Safe Path, which stations trained adults around the perimeters of campuses to break up dismissal-time fighting and escort children home as needed. But that program was delayed at some schools this year, and moreover doesn’t directly address the climate inside buildings.

At a recent school board meeting, the president of the School Police Association of Philadelphia, Bernadette Ambrose-Smith, requested that the district do a safety analysis of the closure plan, due to concerns about students losing “safe havens.”

Officials said every school receiving new students would have a “transition team” but have not specified how those teams would help defuse tensions and prevent violence stemming from closures and displacement.

Asked about the issue, district spokesperson Monique Braxton contended that the district already has adequate resources in place, writing in an email: “We don’t anticipate violence between existing students and incoming students at receiving schools.”

But combining student groups and their social hierarchies means the first few months of mergers and co-locations would be an adjustment for kids, and that schools should “plan ahead for the social aspects of the transition,” said Tracy Waasdorp, director of research, school-based bullying, and social-emotional learning at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Violence Prevention.

Waasdorp said that before schools merge or co-locate, one initial step could include gathering school staff, parents, and community members to discuss existing dynamics and tensions.

She also recommends starting with adult-led and supervised summer activities that require kids from different schools to interact, a strategy that she calls a “no-brainer.”

And once the school year starts, administrations should point out to students which adults they can talk to if they are experiencing bullying, conflict, or other stressors, Waasdorp said.

“Some of these children already have been struggling, and they may continue to struggle once they get to this new setting,” she said. “Make sure that whoever that one person is is available and known to the kids, like, ‘I’m the social-emotional person. I’m here for you.’”

Prioritizing the role of trusted adults is also one of several strategies being used by Bartram High School, which until recently was a hot spot for violence, including an average of five students who were shot each school year from 2017 to 2022.

Since implementing a pilot of the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative about three years ago, shootings are down 80% and fights not involving guns are down 31%. It could serve as a strong model for schools confronting mergers under the closure plan to consider, in part because of its focus on gangs.

Students worry about crowded hallways making fights worse

The pilot at Bartram could have been seriously tested by the district’s initial school closure plan.

The district’s original plan, which it released in January, would have closed Motivation High School and relocated its students to Bartram. When he heard the news, Bartram ninth grader Hanaij Fulton was concerned that hallways would become hot spots. He doubted school safety officers would be able to control crowds if more students packed in.

“It’s like nothing they can really do when they fight, because the whole hallway is just full of people,” Fulton said. “They’d have to push past people. People wouldn’t be moving.”

After criticism about the plans for Motivation High, the district scrapped the proposal to merge students there into Bartram. It also nixed plans to close Paul Robeson High School and merge students there into William L. Sayre High School. But other schools will still have to deal with increased student traffic and related concerns if the Board of Education approves the closure plan.

Before the district backtracked, Tenneh Conteh had similar concerns about Sayre High School, where she is a senior.

She said school safety officers there already struggle to maintain order at the metal detectors, where kids try to sneak in vapes and sometimes guns.

“If they can barely handle the students who do come to school, they can’t handle new kids,” she said.

She feels funding related to the closures should be spent on extra security guards and additional training at the receiving schools.

But Waasdorp said neighborhood volunteers, not just extra security staff, can play a helpful role in and around buildings in such situations.

“It’ll be really important for schools to increase adult supervision in unstructured areas as the school year begins,” she said. “It’s showing all of your adults around you care about how you guys get along, and we intend to make sure everyone feels connected.”

How violence plummeted at a Philadelphia high school

The district believes the Youth Violence Reduction Initiative — or YVRI — contributed to an 80% decrease in firearm assaults by students at Bartram. In addition, there have been no shooting deaths and far fewer fights at the school since it began using the initiative in 2023. Shootings also went down citywide at that time.

“Most of the people that was really starting stuff with a lot of people, either they calmed down or they not here no more,” said Jamer Heard, a Bartram senior.

The initiative is designed for students who are part of, or are at risk of being part of, group-on-group violence. In addition to building relationships with trusted adults, it relies on a combination of conflict deescalation strategies and cross-agency collaboration.

Since the program started, there’s been a 67% drop in student-on-staff assaults, a 62% decrease in incidents involving police, and a 92% decrease in gang-involved group assaults at Bartram High.

A quote displayed in the office of Youth Violence Intervention Program Coordinator Kevin Rosa at Bartram High School on Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024 in Philadelphia.

Such declines were “much larger than we expected,” said Dr. Brandy Blasko, a senior research associate in the Office of School Safety. “We’re seeing that the model we chose is actually working.”

Caterina Roman, a criminologist at Temple University who helped design the initiative, said the program could “be perfect for” mitigating violence at high schools that are receiving new students after the closures.

“Because YVRI was designed on the principles of the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Model, prevention gets built right in,” she said in an e-mail.

The district recently expanded the program to Olney High School.

The Bartram program is currently funded by a $1 million grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention that will expire this year. When that funding is up, administrators plan to ask Pennsylvania for additional support.

“I think given the success of the program, we’ll figure it out,” Blasko said.

Carly Sitrin and Rebecca Redelmeier contributed reporting.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

These student podcasters are calling for resources to address gun violence in Philly

2026-03-09T15:13:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

In the hectic two minutes before the cameras started rolling, a producer told high schoolers Jayden Alston and David Torres to keep their sweatshirt hoods away from their eyes.

Next, she reminded Cyniah Goodwin to sit straight and hold the mic up to her mouth. Then, they were ready.

The trio of teen hosts recorded their first-ever episode of the Peacemakers Podcast last month. During a recording session last month, they dug into how Philadelphia students process anger, depression, insecurity, and other challenges that they feel contribute to gun violence across the city. They released a condensed version of that conversation on YouTube this week.

There were 450 to 500 fatal shootings in Philadelphia each year between 2020 and 2022, according to city data. The numbers have dropped significantly since then, with 206 fatal shootings last year, but thousands of kids are still grappling with firsthand loss or the ongoing risk of gun violence in their communities.

Goodwin, Torres, and Alston attend Vaux Big Picture High School in North Philadelphia. They’re producing the podcast as part of a school-based internship with gun violence prevention organization Frontline Dads.

The goal is to show other young people it’s okay to share your feelings with your friends, said Alston, who is 16 and lost a classmate to gun violence in middle school. He said it’s hard to find an adult to talk to at school.

“The adults, they’re not going to really hear us out,” he said. “But students talking to students, that’s real life conversation. … Nobody’s gonna admit that they really going through something. So by hearing other students admit it, they feel comfortable enough to where they can admit it, too.”

The first episode features the students interviewing a special guest from the Philadelphia Anti-Drug Anti-Violence Network. Their next episode will feature a roundtable discussion about the reasons for gun violence in Philadelphia.

“I think gun violence is more so where a person is mentally at,” Alston said during the recording session. “If everything’s not okay at home, your mom’s on drugs, your pops don’t care about you, that’s all gonna be taken out on the world.”

“What I think gun violence come from is not knowing yourself,” said Goodwin, who like Alston is 16. “It’s about love all around, loving yourself as a person, and not even wanting to put yourself in that predicament.”

“I feel like people want to be something, so they look up to the next person, like follow the next leader,” said David Torres, 17.

That missing sense of self-love, combined with pressure from peers or social media and trauma at home, can propel someone toward gun violence if they don’t have a place to process those feelings, the hosts explained.

It’s why they and other students in their internship program are also pushing for solutions on their school campus. They recently submitted a proposal to their administration for a “deescalation room” where students who are feeling overwhelmed can go to take a breather.

During the recording session the teens discussed their ideas for the space, which would be called the “Cougar’s Den” after their school mascot.

“A space where it’s calming, the aroma is right, the music is nice, you got all your necessities in there,” Goodwin said.

She encouraged her fellow students to visit the room when they feel angry “instead of just lashing out on the next person.”

Several Philadelphia elementary schools have deescalation rooms as part of a Temple University-supported program.

The students are planning future podcast episodes on violence and other topics. They record at PSTV, the educational channel for the School District of Philadelphia. The fully staffed, multi-room recording studio in the basement of district headquarters is available for free to all K-12 students in the city. The Vaux students received in-studio coaching from journalist P.O.C at Revive Radio.

Goodwin said it’s important to keep talking about gun violence because it’s become “normalized” in Philly.

“Everybody just goes on to the next day after somebody dies,” she said. “Like it’s just something we are all supposed to experience one day in our life.”

Even with shootings in Philadelphia on the decline, young people still need support as they grieve, as well as guidance on how to not get caught up in conflict, the Vaux students said. They hope both the podcast and the deescalation room can prevent future shootings.

“If everybody just decided what they wanted to do in life and took the time out to think about theirselves, then there wouldn’t be no violence, or maybe no going to jail, stuff like that,” said Alston.

“You have to get vulnerable with yourself to know yourself, so that you can find yourself and you won’t be in dumb situations because you want to be like the next person,” said Goodwin.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

‘The hallways are quiet’: Trauma-informed school model uses calm to prevent conflict in Philly

2026-02-11T12:00:00+00:00

Sign up forChalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletterto keep up with the city’s public school system.

On a regular day in the “reflection room” at North Philadelphia’s W.D. Kelley School, trauma specialist Meah Carruth might facilitate a mediation between students in conflict, a naptime for a group of tired teachers, or a lunch break round of musical chairs.

The dimly lit space contains sofas, interactive playmats, and other items intended to help calm students and staff. It’s part of the Philadelphia Healthy and Safe Schools program, a “trauma-informed schools” initiative facilitated and partially funded by Temple University on five School District of Philadelphia campuses.

The idea behind the program, known by the shorthand “PHASeS,” is to create places where all students and teachers can take a “brain break” when they feel overly stressed. Most classrooms in PHASeS schools have a “calming corner,” and each building has a PHASeS room where students can visit with an adult’s permission. Most of those rooms are staffed by a trauma specialist like Carruth, who is trained to help people understand and regulate their emotions.

“Maybe you need to pick up a beanbag and throw it at a target and let out some steam, maybe you do need to scream,” Carruth said, rolling a blue rubber fidget toy in one hand. “Let’s assess what you need, and if we can offer it and provide it, and you’re safe, let’s do it.”

The PHASeS team from Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine also provides regular staff training. It helps teachers better understand the chronic trauma students see at home and in the neighborhood, often related to housing insecurity, gun violence, and domestic abuse.

“When you think about some of the things that they have experienced, you kind of handle them better,” said Sherese Knights, an English language arts educator at W.D. Kelley who has received the training. “We are more inclined now to focus on their most basic needs before providing learning.”

A soon-to-be-released evaluation by Temple’s College of Education and Human Development surveyed educators in PHASeS schools. More than three-quarters said the program improved classroom learning, and 85% said the training improved their own well-being.

The data also showed that PHASeS has reduced fights, harassment, and disorderly conduct on two of the three campuses where it was studied.

Kelley Principal Crystal Edwards said teaching kids to take a breath makes it less likely that they’ll act out. She also credits the program with the fact that 98% of the student body has never been suspended, a substantial improvement from a decade ago.

“Learning how to regulate and learning how to calm has a natural effect, to shut down anything that comes behind it,” she said. “So that’s why we don’t have those fights. That’s why we don’t have that verbal assault, and that’s why the hallways are quiet.”

The "reflection room" at W.D. Kelley School on Wednesday, February 4, 2026. It's a space where students or staff can come to take a break and speak with a trauma specialist.

‘The conversations weren’t happening’

A growing body of research supports programs like this as a way to improve academic achievement in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and violence. More than one-fifth of Philadelphia residents live below the federal poverty line, according to the latest Census data. While gun violence is down from a record-high number of shootings in 2022, the problem persists. There were 979 shootings citywide, 206 of them fatal, in 2025.

Tyrique Glasgow, director of an after-school mentorship program called the Young Chances Foundation in Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood, said the environment has a profound effect on how children behave at school.

“If at night you look out your window and there’s still the blur of police lights and sirens, are you having a good night’s sleep?” he said. “When they get into the school and someone says, ‘Sit down,’ or ‘Why you not paying attention?’, do you think the child could articulate, ‘Hey, you know, it was a shooting on my block last night?’

He noted a lot of kids he serves also get to school late and often skip breakfast because of stressors at home. The elementary schools in Glasgow’s neighborhood do not have the PHASeS program.

As a result of the PHASeS curriculum, Kelley staff extended breakfast service by about two hours, so students arriving late wouldn’t be hungry and irritable during their morning classes.

Knights, the English teacher, said after the training she started having lunch with students she suspected were struggling. It was during those breaks that heavy topics started to come up.

“The conversations weren’t happening,” she said. “It literally just changed everything. You went from not being able to connect to developing deep connections.”

Making trauma approaches sustainable

Exposure to trauma, and particularly violence, “has an impact on everything from memory to the ability of children to concentrate,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. “When it’s not addressed, it manifests itself as disruptive behavior.”

Noguera has been watching the movement for trauma-informed schools slowly gain momentum across the country in recent years. He’s also seen opposition from people who want more discipline and fewer wellness resources. And he’s noticed school districts spending funds on lockdown drills rather than counselors.

“We have schools that are preparing for school shootings, which can itself traumatize children,” he said. “We’re preparing ourselves for violence, rather than finding ways to reduce the likelihood of violence, which is kind of crazy.”

PHASeS is funded by Temple, the school district, the state, and the federal Department of Justice. Currently all five PHASeS schools have a trauma specialist or another PHASeS staffer on site regularly. There is also a mindfulness coach in two of the schools.

The level of staffing, and how often schools can order new furniture and fidget toys, fluctuates based on availability of district and state funds, program staff said.

“Funding is challenging right now,” said Mary Beth Hays, an assistant professor in Temple’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine and director of the program. “In some ways, what we’re doing is really getting to a place of health and strength within each of these buildings. But it really takes time. We’re in the middle of a conversation that shouldn’t be interrupted by resources or lack of funds.”

The School District of Philadelphia started providing trauma training to teachers in 2017. That same year they launched the STEP program in 21 schools, which connects students to therapists, case managers, and family peer specialists. And some public schools have built “calming rooms” over the years.

But a comprehensive program like PHASeS can change the culture of an entire building, said Hays.

“We’re hoping to create a relational safety that then begets classroom safety, hallway safety, playground safety, cafeteria safety,” she said. “And so when I think about the ways that we are interfacing with gun violence, it is in both prevention and in response”

Edwards, the principal, says it comes down to a simple idea — students having someone to talk to.

“There’s an expectation that someone is listening to how they feel,” she said. “There’s an expectation that they are cared for and concerned for in this building. And that we, all together, have learned and continuously learn about how to work through trauma.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Checkmate Violence tournament aims to prevent Philadelphia gun violence through school chess

2026-01-27T19:42:23+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

“Say good luck and shake hands at the beginning of the game, and say good game at the end.”

The tournament director gave this parting advice to 150 student chess players on a recent Saturday morning at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

The participants, all in grades K-12, were silent and attentive as they prepared to compete.

That level of concentration is what organizers of the 19th annual PECO-ASAP Checkmate Violence tournament aim to instill in Philadelphia youth. The idea driving the event, which is hosted by the After School Activities Partnerships, or ASAP, is to protect kids from gun violence by keeping them busy, and teaching them critical thinking.

“Think before you do something, think before you act,” said Gil Motley, the event’s founder.

It’s what he used to tell the kids he coached in 2008, when he launched the chess tournament in response to concerns about shootings. He says it’s just as needed today.

Gil Motley, founder of Philadelphia's Checkmate Violence chess tournament, receives an honor from After School Activities Partnerships executive director Beth Tomlinson on Jan. 24.

There were 206 fatal shootings in Philadelphia last year, and about 10% of victims were 18 or younger according to data from the City of Philadelphia.

Arguments are the motive behind half of all shootings in Philadelphia, according to a 2022 multi-agency report.

Montgomery Brown, an 11th grader at the George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science in North Philly, said gun violence happens “because there’s just a lot of kids on the street who don’t really have anywhere to go.”

Montgomery Brown poses at the annual Checkmate Violence chess tournament on Jan. 24. He competes with his team from George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science.

He’s been able to avoid dangerous situations by keeping his head down, and spending time in the ASAP chess club at Carver.

“The thing about chess is it’s honestly the perfect way to just get kids to sit inside, sit down, and think about what they’re doing,” he said.

About 1,000 students across the city play chess with ASAP. The nonprofit supports chess, drama, Scrabble, and debate clubs at K-12 schools as well as libraries and recreation centers.

Most clubs meet twice a week after school, though some meet every day. Students learn from a club leader, who may be a teacher or other school staffer, and trained volunteers. ASAP provides supplies, curriculum, and support from a site director. Individual clubs may put on their own tournaments throughout the year.

Checkmate Violence is ASAP’s free annual citywide chess tournament, which draws about 200 to 250 players every year, organizers said.

Chess has been used to reduce violence between incarcerated people, and substantial research supports the use of after-school programs more broadly as violence prevention. Chess has been shown to improve math skills and “overall cognitive ability” in middle school students, though it has not been studied explicitly as a violence intervention for youth.

After-school hours are an especially dangerous time for children: The risk of child firearm injuries around New York City public schools was 45% higher between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on school days, according to researchers at Boston University.

In Philadelphia, where many young people have lost friends to shootings or live in places that feel unsafe, chess clubs serve as a haven.

At Northeast High School, teacher and chess coach Saul Machles said his club was a space for students to heal after several of their classmates were shot at a SEPTA bus stop near Northeast High School in 2024.

One of their fellow chess team members was injured, and eventually came back to the team.

Other students in the club “were definitely traumatized,” he said. “It was something we had to really struggle with.”

Trophies for the annual Checkmate Violence chess tournament on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026 in Philadelphia.

Lemuel Rosa, a site director with ASAP, helps run the chess club at Esperanza Academy Charter School in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood hit hard by the opioid crisis. He said his chess club offers a break for students who grapple with stress both at home and in their communities.

“We’re just a club, but it kind of becomes an extended family,” he said. “I really enjoy that they have that escape. Because people find negative escapes, but this is a positive.”

This story has been updated to include the full name of the chess tournament.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Tips about violent threats to schools are up in Philly. Experts say that might be a good thing.

2026-01-27T16:01:58+00:00

The number of threats to Philadelphia schools reported via a state-run anonymous tip line has more than doubled in the past two years, according to data from the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General.

The office launched the Safe2Say Something tip line in 2018 to comply with a statewide mandate that all schools establish a phone, texting, or app system for kids to report bullying, suicide, drug use, and other issues.

The number of tips about “Threats Against Schools” increased 82% across Pennsylvania and 164% in Philadelphia from the 2023-24 to the 2024-25 school years. That’s a larger jump than any other category during that period.

And that might be a good thing, according to experts, because it means students are using the tool as soon as they become aware of a potential threat. Both the state attorney general’s office and the School District of Philadelphia say staff have been spreading the word about the program, and school communities are becoming more familiar with it.

“It’s kind of what we expected, and kind of what we want to see,” said Dr. Jack Rozel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.

There’s been a rise in tips about threats to schools across the nation, according to Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization that developed the model that PA’s program is based on.

Prior studies on school shootings have found that there’s often “leakage” that happens ahead of time — for example, a student telling a friend they have a plan to bring a gun to school.

“We’re just starting to talk about this now, in the broader field of threat management,” said Rozel, who co-directs the threat assessment team at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “We need to sort of build out this network of credible receivers and tip lines like Safe2Say.”

In Pennsylvania, all tips go through the state attorney general’s crisis center. Their team conducts an anonymous dialogue with tipsters to weed out illegitimate tips, and categorize each tip as life-threatening or not. Analysts deliver the information to the impacted school and, when needed, local law enforcement. Schools then conduct their own investigations and report back to the state.

There’s a risk that students abuse the system, said multiple experts, due to internet trends such as swatting and the potential to submit tips as a form of retaliation during an interpersonal conflict.

Statewide, 3% of all submissions last year and 4% the year before were prank tips or abuses of the system, according to the annual Safe2Say Something report produced by the office.

After the state identifies some tips as immediately false, the school district investigates whether the remaining tips pose a viable danger to the school. The Philadelphia district said the number of verified “serious threat incidents” went down 16% between the 2022-2023 school year and the 2024-2025 school year.

For verified threats, the school district notifies the Threat Assessment Team, which includes the principal, a counselor, a safety officer, a school safety investigator, and the police department when necessary. Others including school nurses and special education staff may also be called in, according to the district.

Tips about violent threats do tend to spike after a nationally publicized school shooting, experts said. This happened in September 2024 when a student at Apalachee High School in Georgia killed two schoolmates and two teachers and injured nine others.

And a similar spike occurred after the 2022 Oxford High School shooting in Michigan.

Children are hyper-aware of these events, even though mass shootings made up just 1% of all gun violence in the U.S. in 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

“Here we are in 2026, every kid in a K-12 school setting was born post- Columbine, was raised on active shooter drills,” Rozel said, referring to the 1999 school shooting in Colorado. “It’s Generation Lockdown.”

Without further study it’s impossible to know all of the drivers behind the spikes, said Elyse Thulin, a research assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention.

“Is it just that students are using the tip lines more, or is it that these behaviors are actually changing?” she said. “There’s almost no research on anonymous reporting systems. We’re still trying to dig into it.”

In Philadelphia, “Threats Against Schools” was the second-most common tip at the end of last school year, and the ninth-most-common the year prior. Bullying has consistently been the most frequently submitted tip since 2018, with the exception of 2020 when suicide surpassed it for that year only.

Tip lines play a vital role in preventing multiple kinds of gun violence, Thulin said. Her team looked at four years of data from an anonymous tip line in North Carolina schools, and found that 10% of tips involved firearm threats.

Of those, 40% of tips were about a potential school shooting. The rest alerted schools to a weapon on or near campus, a bullying situation or argument, or a suicide attempt involving a gun.

A total of 151 guns have been confiscated throughout Pennsylvania as a result of the tip line since 2018, according to the attorney general’s office.

Programs like Safe2Say Something are “shifting the narrative from inevitable to preventable,” said Sandy Hook Promise spokesperson Aimee Thunberg.

“There are proven things we can put in place, and we can intervene earlier,” she said. “So they feel comfortable telling someone when they see something. Because they’re the eyes and ears of their school.”

In a 2025 report, the Pennsylvania Budget and Finance Committee said it was unable to review “the timeliness and specificity by which school entities resolved tips” due to confidentiality laws.

The report recommended periodic performance audits to ensure compliance, more advanced training for call-takers, and a requirement that school entities report back to the Attorney General’s Office within 48 hours for a life-threatening Safe2Say report and within 30 days for all other tips.

Last year a bipartisan group of legislators passed a bill that makes those changes.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

This holiday season, Philadelphia’s children grieving people lost to gun violence are getting help

2025-12-19T19:06:15+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

“Do you ever feel stuck? Like you can’t find the words? Or a heaviness that doesn’t go away? We do. And we’re trying to understand it and name it.”

The dialogue played from Craig Terry Jr.’s computer a few days ago, as he edited a video about grief during the holiday season.

He and a cohort of young adults who are part of the Wealth + Work Futures Lab fellowship at Drexel University created the video. They showed the finished piece to students at YESPhilly Accelerated High School in North Philadelphia on Thursday. Their goal was to spark dialogue among young people who are grieving loved ones lost to fatal shootings and other causes.

The issue is personal for Terry Jr., who lost his cousin to gun violence in 2020.

“It is cold, we are with family, and there’s going to be a lot that will come up,” said Terry Jr., 26. “We need to build a space where people go into the holidays feeling prepared and aware of what’s impacting them.”

The alarming levels of homicide that plagued certain Philadelphia neighborhoods in recent years has left thousands of children grieving. While schools and nonprofit organizations offer support groups and art therapy, teens and those who serve them say children need more encouragement to find safe spaces to share their feelings.

Terry Jr. knows how hard it can be for kids to open up about grief, because he struggled to do so after his cousin’s death.

“I didn’t know how to engage with other people. It was just like, ‘this happens, and it’s been happening since I was a kid,’” he said. “So it wasn’t something that I found to be strange or something that I thought was going to impact me.”

That kind of desensitization is common among Philly kids impacted by gun violence, said Michelle Kerr-Spry with Mothers in Charge. It’s a violence prevention nonprofit created by Philly moms who’ve lost children to homicide.

“They accept this as just life,” she said. “They don’t realize this is not normal. It’s abnormal in the cruelest way possible.”

Kerr-Spry calls these children “the forgotten mourners.”

“They don’t always get the attention they need,” she said.

Grief support available in Philadelphia schools

In the School District of Philadelphia, grief support is provided by multiple outside organizations including the Uplift Center for Grieving Children, which runs groups in close to 100 schools, according to the organization’s spokesperson. Those groups can be tailored specifically to homicide depending on students’ needs.

In about eight other schools, similar services are offered by E.M.I.R. Healing Center, which has also provided crisis response in close to 20 schools in the immediate aftermath of a shooting, said the center’s clinical director Deshawnda Williams.

Around holiday time, they make a point of distributing flyers in person and posting resources and events on social media.

“The young people need to know how to navigate the system,” Williams said. “If you feel like you’re depressed, here’s some resources you can reach out to. You’re never alone. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

A few years ago, as Kameenah Bronzell was hearing about fatal shootings in Philadelphia, she decided to start an Instagram account memorializing those lost to gun violence and other deaths. It now has close to 48,000 followers.

“I feel like memories are really important,” she said. “And that’s all I do, is capture memories.”

Then in 2023, her own brother was shot and killed. She says she didn’t want to talk to anyone in the aftermath and felt “nothing but anger.”

Now 19, Bronzell said people in her life offered help after her brother’s death, but she didn’t accept it. Now she wants to help other school-age kids find support. Earlier this month, she spoke on a panel of people who’ve lost a sibling to gun violence.

“I feel like we have a lot of grief support and nonprofits that do stuff like that, It’s really just the kids that don’t want the help,” she said.

Parents also play a role in helping children in the wake of loss, said Williams.

“How do you show up when you lost one but you still have three? How do you show up as a parent?” she said. “We have services … that can support that adult so they can continue to be a first responder for a child that’s still here.”

Mothers in Charge, a Philadelphia nonprofit organization that serves families impacted by gun violence, hosts a holiday toy giveaway on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025.

In the fall of 2024, Mothers in Charge set up shop in a Dobbins High School classroom, where students could come during the school day to have a conversation with a trusted adult or fill out a workbook about their emotions.

“Young men who’ve been socialized their whole lives not to show emotion, they’re harder to reach,” Kerr-Spry said. “Then when they’re given the space … many do have a lot to say.”

The Philadelphia Board of Education approved new funding for the Dobbins program earlier this month.

How support can stop the cycle of violence

Grief services double as violence prevention, said youth mentor Kyron Ryals, whether or not they occur in schools. He helps oversee the Wealth + Work Futures Lab that Terry Jr. participates in.

“I’ve run into young people and it shows up as anger or destruction,” he said. “Sometimes they need time, and tools. When you ignore it, it’s still gonna show up.”

Terry Jr. said joining the fellowship helped him understand how losing his cousin was affecting him. He was withdrawn, anxious, and always looking over his shoulder, he said.

He eventually realized that suppressing his grief “has ripple effects on my overall emotional well being.’”

He and his cohort spent the beginning of this year interviewing 30 people in their age group about grief. They shared their findings at community events and published them in a zine.

Now they’re focused on getting the word out during the holidays through efforts like the video they showed to North Philadelphia high schoolers.

Terry Jr. wants to give children “a place where you’re not hurting other people, you’re not hurting yourself, but you have the safe space to grieve,” he said. “To be angry, to be happy, to be sad, to be able to wallow, to go through all the range of emotions and not feel like a burden.”

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia’s program to shield students from violence was clicking. Then it hit a snag.

2025-11-26T16:16:45+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

The noise outside Marc Rentas’s Kensington home was typical for 2:30 p.m.

It always gets loud during dismissal time at nearby Jules E. Mastbaum High School, Rentas said. But one afternoon this fall, the energy was different.

“There was a group of kids on the sidewalk, they were throwing trash,” he said. “A huge fight broke out. … People were scared.”

He said one student threw a flower pot at another student, and a different student bumped Rentas’s elderly father. That’s when he called the school district. Meanwhile, nearby neighbors called the police. It took 30 minutes for officers to break up the fight, Rentas said.

Prior to the start of this school year, Mastbaum High was one of 24 campuses that had the Safe Path program. Safe Path aims to both quell schoolyard fights and protect children from shootings by hiring attentive adults from the community, known as “monitors.” These adults — recognizable by their blue vests — patrol campus perimeters and stand watch on school property, regularly greeting students and sometimes walking them home or to a transit stop.

But this fall, the school district ended a partnership with the largest provider of Safe Path services. The district hired new contractors, but those organizations haven’t gotten underway at the majority of schools that used to have the program. And a few other schools didn’t see Safe Path return — or saw it return late — due to dwindling funds and holdups with training and recruitment.

That means for the last three months, the cadre of watchful neighborhood monitors has been missing from some of the schoolyards and street corners that need the most protection.

The week of the big fight at Mastbaum, Principal David Lon said the Safe Path monitors haven’t come back so far this year. He said he appreciated the service when it was in place.

Since piloting the program in 2022 and expanding it in 2023, the district has touted Safe Path as crucial to its wider gun violence prevention plan. Data from the program’s first year suggests it successfully reduced incidents of violence in the schools where it operated. And studies indicate similar programs in other U.S. cities have improved student safety.

“It’s unfortunate there was this gap in safety for our youth because the city took so long to make decisions,” said Jackie Bonner of the Institute for the Development of African American Youth, Inc., or IDAAY, a former contractor for Safe Path.

IDAAY got an email from the district at the end of September — roughly a month after the first day of school — notifying the group its contract wouldn’t be renewed.

Two other nonprofit organizations, Eddie’s House and Educators 4 Education, will provide Safe Path services for the district. But the school district has not said when Safe Path will return to the 17 schools where IDAAY used to provide monitors.

“There’s still a lot of stuff being worked out,” said Marion Campbell, executive director of Eddie’s House, in late November. “I know everyone is trying to get it done as soon as possible.”

Educators 4 Education recently put up a job posting for Safe Path monitors. President Anthony Singleton said his organization has already received 400 applications, including from monitors formerly employed by IDAAY, and are working to onboard those people.

“Of course we would have liked to start at the beginning of the school year, but it’s not always a perfect fit,” Singleton said. “We are hoping to get everyone up and running.”

Safe Path works with schools on student safety

Not all Safe Path schools were missing their monitors this fall. At Dr. Tanner G. Duckrey Public School in North Philly, the adults in blue vests are hired by Eddie’s House, which has provided the service there since 2023.

At the end of each school day, Safe Path monitor Saleem Gilliard takes his place near the schoolyard. He stands between the back doors of the K-8 school and the corner of 16th Street and Susquehanna Avenue and waits for the students to pour out.

“I’m looking for crowds or groups of kids,” he said. “When it’s rowdy, we break it up and send them home.”

Saleem Gilliard stands at the light with a student and a crossing guard as they help kids cross during dismissal on Nov. 20, 2025.

Gilliard is 74. He applied because he wanted a part-time job that would allow him to steer children toward brighter futures, he said. The program employs and trains adults, with an emphasis on hiring from the nearby community.

Like many young people in major cities, Philadelphia students risk getting involved in fights on campus and on nearby streets, and being shot on their commutes to school.

The likelihood of a child being injured by firearms increases 45% between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., according to a new Boston University study comparing shooting data in New York City to public school calendars. The study notes that most of these shootings are committed by adults in the surrounding community, and that Safe Path programs are a key solution.

Dismissal time is also a prime window for large fights — such as one in early November at Frankford High School that went viral on social media and prompted a school assembly. Frankford has never had the Safe Path program.

And back-to-school season is an especially chaotic time because some kids haven’t seen each other all summer, according to Reuben Jones with the violence prevention group Frontline Dads, also a former Safe Path contractor.

“If there’s no presence there, it sets the tone for the rest of the year,” he said. It leads students to believe that “‘Nobody’s around to hold me accountable.’ It becomes a free for all. It’s dangerous actually.”

Until this fall, Frontline Dads provided Safe Path services through the Penn Injury Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In a partnership with the district that began in 2023, the center began overseeing Safe Path in nine schools, including two of the 17 schools where IDAAY was operating.

But Bernadette Hohl, a senior research investigator at the Penn center, said they ended their partnership with both IDAAY and Frontline Dads due to funding changes and only brought the program back to seven schools.

Not all of the Penn-contracted monitors started on the first day of school due to recruitment and training, but they are all staffed now, according to Hohl.

The lapse in Safe Path coverage could undermine a program that was working, school district data indicates. In the year before Safe Path launched, the district recorded 166 “serious incidents” at the selected schools between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., according to school board documents.

In the first year of Safe Path implementation there were 125, reflecting a 26% decrease.

The decline occurred while Philadelphia on the whole experienced a significant drop in fatal and nonfatal shootings.

Philly’s program replicates a more-established model in Chicago, which reduced violent crime around selected schools by 14%, according to a study of 15 years of data across 140 schools. That study did not look specifically at fights as a metric. The Safe Passage program in Pittsburgh that began in 2021 achieved similar results.

Safe Path monitors can pick up on patterns of bullying, or hear about conflicts between students, and report those to school administrators so they can take preventive action, Bonner said.

And in rare cases, they can respond to serious threats.

When an adult showed up with a gun during a dismissal hour fight near Overbrook High School this May, Safe Path monitors kept students away while officers confronted the gunman, Bonner said.

And last June, when a group of students from one high school said they were taking guns over to a middle school, Safe Path monitors overheard and told Bonner. She contacted the police and warned the middle school principal.

“We’re the eyes and ears outside,” Bonner said. “So to not have that layer in place, it can have some very negative consequences.”

A contract change for Safe Path worries observers

The school district confirmed it is no longer partnering with IDAAY, and said the delay in restarting the program was due to changes in its “procurement process.” The district paid IDAAY about $2.1 million for Safe Path services last year, the group said.

The district declined to provide more details about the months-long lag at many schools, but said the program “is currently ramping back up to full capacity.”

Bonner said she’s more frustrated about the district’s lack of communication at the start of the school year than she is about its choice to use another vendor: “I don’t like how quiet it is.”

Jones, of Frontline Dads, echoed Bonner’s concerns.

“It speaks to the lack of 100% commitment to preserving the safety of those students,” he said. “If that were the goal, you’d make sure those things were in place before school started.”

Saleem Gilliard in the blue vest worn by Safe Path monitors in North Philadelphia on Nov. 20, 2025.

And by next summer, there could be more changes to Safe Path because a grant the Penn Injury Science Center used to support the program is ending.

Hohl, of the center, said staff there will continue to look for funding.

“Students want to feel like they can go home and get there safely,” Hohl said. “Most of those kids aren’t looking for trouble. And when trouble happens, they want to know where the adult will be.”

Bonner said in addition to keeping schools and surrounding communities calm, the Safe Path program also improved economic stability in neighborhoods by hiring residents. Safe Path is also designed to provide assurance to businesses around a school.

Once the kids have left the Tanner Duckrey school, Gilliard patrols the neighborhood and touches base with electronics stores, Chinese take-out restaurants, bookshops, and other businesses. If everything has been peaceful, they give him a thumbs-up.

If there was any ruckus involving Duckrey kids, Gilliard reports it to the school.

And the next day, he has a talk with the kids, the same way a parent would, said Gilliard, who is a great-grandfather himself.

“Not a bad parent, a parent that’s concerned about their welfare and their well being. I don’t get hostile or nothing,” Gilliard said. “At the end of the day, you just try to give them another direction.”

This story was also produced in collaboration with Kensington Voice.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia kids are still dying from gun violence. I’m still hunting for solutions.

2025-11-06T20:49:50+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

There were 873 pieces of paper in the box.

Eight hundred seventy-three death records for 873 children who had died in Sacramento County, California, between 2010 and 2015.

I spent several weeks reading every paper in that box during the summer of 2016.

I entered each name and cause of death into a spreadsheet. I was 23 years old and working on my first front page story at my first real newsroom job.

Black children made up a quarter of the box’s records, even though Black kids represented just 11% of the county’s under-18 population at the time.

Roughly a fifth of those children died in their sleep, and more than a third right before or after birth, according to our newsroom’s analysis. A little under 10% died by homicide, most of them shootings.

I spent a lot of that summer telling the stories of those children. I spoke to their parents, mostly mothers, and the church ladies and basketball coaches and neighbors who were trying to make sure no more children ended up in a coffin.

But I focused more on the sleep-related and perinatal deaths than I did on the fatal shootings. Maybe because the kids who were shot were a smaller part of the pool. Maybe because I was a health reporter, not a crime reporter. Or maybe because I found it too overwhelming to think about why children in my city were so often in the line of gunfire.

Sammy Caiola interviews a teen "play captain" in Kensington in August 2022. These teens are hired to help supervise children during summer activities.

Still, questions about that box stayed with me for the next 10 years, across multiple jobs in multiple cities. Why these children? Why these neighborhoods? Why does it keep happening?

Those pieces of paper came to mind every time I covered a teen football player shot in broad daylight, an exchange of gunfire at a recreation center, or a child gunned down while riding his bike. The grief of the parents I talked to back in 2016 echoed in the interviews I conducted while covering gun violence prevention at WHYY in Philly, and in my ongoing coverage of young, unarmed Black men killed by police.

Nearly 10 years after opening that box, I’m starting my second full-time job as a gun violence reporter. It’s a position that remains heartbreakingly relevant in Philadelphia and other cities as the economic, racial, and health disparities driving the firearms crisis in America remain largely uncovered and unaddressed.

My goal is to remind people of something we lose track of in the deluge of numbers and newsclips about gun violence: that it’s a problem with a solution.

Lots of solutions, actually. Shootings are down dramatically since the height of Philadelphia’s gun homicide crisis in 2021.

That might be because of some things I witnessed when I started covering gun violence in 2022. An influx of city funding to grassroots nonprofits that provide safe spaces for kids after school. A group of teens learning to resolve conflict among their peers. A team of neighbors building a community garden after a 3-year-old was shot and killed while getting her hair braided on the block.

People are coming together to keep their children safe.

Still, 14% of fatal and nonfatal shooting victims in the past year were under 18, according to data from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office. That percentage has remained fairly consistent since 2021, even as the number of overall shooting victims declines.

Kids are not supposed to get shot.

Kids are supposed to be able to walk to the library, or the rec center, or their school without being afraid for their lives. Kids are supposed to be able to learn, and dream, and plan for the future without passing through metal detectors or practicing active shooter drills.

So that’s why I’m staying on this beat, and looking specifically at our city’s youngest residents in a space where they spend a great deal of their lives — school.

What are schools doing to keep kids safe on their way to and from campus? How are school administrators keeping weapons out of school buildings? What are the tools and processes for identifying risks, and are they working?

Beyond that, how are schools helping students’ families address trauma, poverty, and other factors that lead to violent behavior and victimization outside the home?

And as firearm homicides decline in Philadelphia, how can children heal from the losses that have rippled through their communities over the last five years?

Reporter Sammy Caiola.

These are questions I hope to spend the next year exploring at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. I want to do it as I always have — by listening to the people directly affected by the gun violence crisis, including the children who grapple with it before, during, and after the school day.

I want to envision a Philadelphia where children never become part of the city’s death count.

Schools play a role in keeping kids safe, and so does each and everyone one of us. Stay part of the conversation, and learn what solutions are underway where you live.

Sammy Caiola covers solutions to gun violence in and around Philadelphia schools. Have ideas for her? Get in touch at scaiola@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat Philadelphia launches gun violence reporting project

2025-10-29T10:00:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city’s public school system.

Gun violence is on the decline in Philadelphia, but for students, educators, families, and neighbors who’ve been affected by shootings in the city, every incident is life-altering.

That’s why Chalkbeat Philadelphia is launching a new project to report on gun violence through the prism of schools and education. Over the next year, we’ll cover the impact of gun violence on Philly’s students and efforts to find solutions to the public health crisis.

We’re excited to announce West Philadelphia resident Sammy Caiola will spearhead this coverage. Sammy is an award-winning text and audio journalist with a decade of experience telling stories about trauma.

She previously served as the first gun-violence prevention reporter at WHYY, where she undertook a two-month community listening tour that informed her reporting in Philly. She has also been a special projects reporter and an interim editor for Kensington Voice, a hyperlocal news site focused on covering the Kensington neighborhood, which has experienced a disproportionate number of shootings in recent years.

Sammy is also the co-director of the Association of Gun Violence Reporters, a new networking organization designed to support journalists who cover firearms and their impact. She’s held multiple fellowships at the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma and the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, and is currently a mentor with the Association of Health Care Journalists’ firearms reporting fellowship.

Sammy’s coverage will focus on several key questions: How do schools support students who are the victims or perpetrators of gun violence? How should schools address the risk of suicide? How do educators work to teach students trying to live amid the threat of shootings? How does this environment impact attendance, teaching, and learning? What is working to prevent violence or support young people? What could schools and officials be doing better?

This yearlong project was developed with The New York Times’s Headway initiative, which covers progress on societal challenges.

We’re still shaping this beat and we can’t do it without you, our readers and fellow Philadelphians. You can follow our work by signing up for our newsletter and please reach out to our tips email philly.tips@chalkbeat.org if you have story ideas. You can also send a secure message via the Signal app to our tipline: (908) 827-1448.

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

Philly schools traumatized by opioid crisis use settlement money to remind kids ‘they’re special’

2024-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

This story was reported in partnership with Kensington Voice and made possible by the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative.

Kensington’s Willard Elementary School is getting its first playground. It’s also getting something less whimsical: a bullet-resistant fence.

Both have an unusual funding source: drug companies that fueled the opioid crisis in the school’s backyard.

Willard Principal Diana Garcia said that every child across Philadelphia should get 30 minutes of play time outside. But students in Kensington miss out. The neighborhood lacks safe, green spaces. Instead, face-to-face with the city’s opioid crisis in one of its most impoverished neighborhoods, students are surrounded by gun violence, drug use, trash, and used needles.

Garcia has a blunt way of putting the situation: Kids in Kensington “don’t have basic human rights.” But the play space will help “students feel safe, reminding them that they are kids, that they’re special,” she said.

The crisis that schools in the neighborhood are enduring and trying to redress is traumatizing students. As drugs have ravaged the community, many families have chosen to send their kids to schools outside the neighborhood.

Enrollment in the district as a whole has dropped by about 16% since 2013. But the fall has been even more steep in Kensington schools: Enrollment at Russell Conwell Middle School, for example, fell by 80% from 2014 to 2023. Willard’s enrollment has dropped by half.

Staff and students leave Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

Six schools in Kensington are purchasing a variety of improvements using money from multiple lawsuits filed by state and local governments against drug manufacturers and distributors for their role in generating the opioid crisis. They’re using the money to pay for safety fencing, a new fitness center, playground updates, a bilingual climate specialist, and more. The school leaders hope these changes will provide more secure and beautiful environments for students who have had to endure so much. They also hope the money will help students succeed in school and beyond.

These Kensington schools are receiving about $333,000 each out of the $20 million that Philadelphia received in 2023. In addition to Willard and Conwell, the schools receiving this funding are Gloria Casarez Elementary School, Lewis Elkin Elementary School, Jules E. Mastbaum High School, and John H. Webster Elementary School.

All six schools enroll mostly Black and Latino students, and 100% of students at these schools are economically disadvantaged.

An initial vote this summer by a state trust overseeing how local governments use opioid settlement dollars said the plan for money earmarked for Kensington schools didn’t comply with national guidelines.

Philadelphia officials defended the plan during an October hearing. Keli McLoyd, director of Philadelphia’s Overdose Response Unit, argued that Kensington children are particularly vulnerable to the risk of opioid use and overdose.

State Sen. Greg Rothman, a Republican who is on the state trust, voted against the Kensington school spending in the summer. But after touring the neighborhood, he said he felt differently.

“If you had asked me this morning how many kids live in Kensington, I would’ve said, ‘There are no kids in Kensington,’” he said. “I just saw [a school] a half a block from where we were walking.”

Ultimately, the state officials reversed course and agreed to the spending on schools. Still, school principals in Kensington say the funding is a drop in the bucket for what students need.

“The kids in this neighborhood deserve every penny that comes their way to make anything better for their lives,” Garcia said. “I don’t know if the folks who make decisions understand what our five to nine year olds have to endure just to make it to school.”

Schools want families to be safer in Kensington

After gathering input from parents, students, and educators, and feasibility studies by the school district, each school devised individual spending plans.

Awilda Balbuena, the principal of Gloria Casarez Elementary, said because the opioid settlement money represented one-time aid, they had to spend on items that don’t require ongoing funding.

Garcia said her number one priority was increasing safety.

In addition to a new playground, Willard is using a large chunk of the settlement money on a new fencing made from material resistant to bullets and high enough to deter trespassing and encampments.

The new fencing, Garcia said, will help make families feel safer “and that’ll help relieve some burdens and some trauma, that will allow them to learn better.”

Casarez Elementary is expanding its playground, replacing cement with AstroTurf, and planting trees in its school yard. It’s also getting a cover over its play structure to protect kids from the rain. The trees and seating underneath will offer respite in a school yard with no shade, said Balbuena.

Balbuena said her families say they don’t go to the nearest park, McVeigh Recreation Center, out of safety concerns. And whenever she asks for feedback from her families, they say, “‘We need a bigger schoolyard. Our kids need a place to play,’” Balbuena said.

Witnessing the schoolyard expand, Balbuena said, “They can feel that their voices were heard. That’s empowering.”

Casarez is also building a sensory wellness room — a space designed to calm kids who are exposed to trauma and chronic stress and students with sensory needs like those with ADHD and autism.

While Balbuena expressed gratitude for the funding, she said it’s not enough.

“I hope no one thinks for one minute that the $2 million that was awarded to the six schools is going to, for one minute, erase what our kids have seen during this opioid epidemic,” Balbuena said. “This is a band aid to an open chest wound.”

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, left, and Principal Sherri Arabia in the office at John H. Webster School.

At Webster Elementary, Principal Sherri Arabia has myriad plans for the settlement money.

Most of the school’s opioid settlement funds is paying for a bilingual climate specialist for the next two years. The role was filled by a climate support staff member, Vivian Virola-Romero, who already has relationships with several parents.

The climate specialist’s overarching goal is to get more parents involved at the school. That includes pulling in more parent volunteers to be in the school building and to act as crossing guards, increasing use of the family resource room, and increasing the 20% attendance rate for back to school night, according to Arabia.

In addition, Virola-Romero will organize so-called “walking buses” — parents that escort groups of students to school and back.

The settlement dollars will turn into gift cards for parents to serve as stipends for helping out. That strategy worked before the pandemic, according to Arabia.

“We’ve been trying to get volunteers, and we have nothing to offer them to volunteer at our school,” she said.

It’s hard to get parents in the building, Arabia said, because “they’re working. A lot of children get picked up by babysitters, grandparents.”

Students head home from Frances E. Willard Elementary School after dismissal.

But Arabia has high hopes for Virola-Romero, who will greet parents as they walk in the building and show them what the school has to offer.

Webster is also using the opioid funds for a Saturday school program. Like the other principals, Arabia said the intent is to give students safe spaces, help them learn a bit more, and “making sure our students are safe and loved,” Arabia said.

Arabia said her plan is to keep the climate specialist position beyond the two years that will be paid for using the opioid settlement money. But it depends on the school’s budget.

Vivian Virola-Romero, the new climate specialist, poses in her office at John H. Webster School.

Money will help students discover careers, healthy habits

Mastbaum High School used to enroll more kids from other parts of the city. No longer.

“We just kind of slipped out of mind with a lot of the community,” Said David Lon, Mastbaum principal.

Mastbaum is funding a new drum line for students. It’s also building a new fitness center in its old locker room. The previous fitness center is full of broken gym equipment. Lon said students need more spaces where they can practice healthy habits.

Mastbaum has also hired three staff members for three years through the Kensington nonprofit 12PLUS. They will help students get jobs, apply to college and financial aid, and provide mentorship for two years after they graduate.

Principal David Lon discusses plans for opioid settlement funding at Jules E. Mastbaum High School's current locker room, which will be transformed into a new fitness center.

The 12PLUS staff will provide the logistical support that many families need, Lon said.

It’s difficult just to get students to graduate, and then Mastbaum mostly loses touch with them once they do, Lon said. So hiring the new staff members is like an “investment in their future.”

“To be able to place a student upon graduation into the Navy shipyard, and right off the bat, they’re making $30 an hour, on a pathway to ... a six-figure salary,” Lon said. “This will be an intensive layer of support to ensure that they are getting critical scaffolds to reach those dreams that they have.”

Overall Lon said his plan for the opioid dollars was aligned with “the spirit of recovery.”

“That’s the spirit of providing beautiful utility to students that walk through a community where many aspects of beauty have been stripped out of it,” Lon said. “And is it all of the money that we would maybe deserve in an ideal universe? Probably not, but it’s a start, and we’re thankful for that start.”

This story has been updated to clarify that the funding was the result of multiple lawsuits by state and local governments.

Growing up, I often heard gunfire. Why didn’t we talk about it?

2024-10-10T12:00:00+00:00

It was a blazing hot summer day, and I was playing freeze tag with my cousins in front of my house. I was 13. My mom was sitting on a stoop nearby, talking to a neighbor, but still maintaining a watchful eye on us.

Everything was fine until I heard three loud bangs. Instantly, my mother’s demeanor changed and she screamed, “Get inside, now!”

I was confused and annoyed that my game of freeze tag was cut short. But my mother’s authority made me hurry toward the house. As I stepped inside, I asked her what was the matter, but all she responded was, “Don’t worry about it, they’re just fireworks. How about we continue playing inside?”

Ethan Rodriguez

Looking back on it now, I know those weren’t fireworks. In our North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington, it was rarely just fireworks.

That day was the beginning of my realization there was something bigger going on, but I didn’t fully understand it. Gun violence wasn’t something the adults explained. I think the adults in my life wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. I want to believe they did what they thought was best.

But as I got older, I began to lose classmates to gun violence in my community. Often, they were either going to or coming from school when they were shot. It made me think twice. At a certain point, the world started to teach me things the adults couldn’t. Sometimes I would take a completely different route in an effort to avoid certain situations. A bus stop is just a bus stop until a classmate dies while standing there.

My neighborhood is nicknamed the “badlands” because of the prevalence of gun violence, drug-related violence, and other forms of violence. Still, I could tell you everything I love about Kensington: the food, the culture, the diversity, the hardworking people who live there and raise their families. I can’t imagine being born anywhere else.

A bus stop is just a bus stop until a classmate dies while standing there.

I moved to suburban Glenside, Pennsylvania, in 2021 to attend Arcadia University, where I’m studying media and communications. The campus is less than 10 miles from Kensington, but there’s a lot less poverty and violence. Despite the change of scenery, I just can’t forget where I grew up and the violence that punctuated my life there.

There are so many things happening in Philly that need to change: an opioid epidemic, high poverty rates, and community violence. No kid deserves to feel unsafe — not on their block, not in their school, and not in their neighborhood — but many kids are unsafe. Last year alone, gunfire killed 24 Philadelphia children and impacted many more.

If it weren’t for the things I experienced as a kid, I wouldn’t have my drive and my passion for change. Recently, I’ve become involved in gun violence prevention efforts.

This past year I worked as a student journalist and producer on a PBS News Student Reporting Labs documentary about the impacts of gun violence. I went out and documented my hometown, and I got to sit down and talk about real things I’ve seen growing up in Philadelphia. It has given me space to reflect on my experiences — experiences I know are common.

I’m extremely proud to share one story of an average city kid affected by gun violence. I hope other kids who experience these sorts of things know they have a voice. If I were to go back in time and tell my younger self that his voice mattered, it would’ve blown his mind.

As a student producer for this documentary, which premieres this week, I also interviewed Dr. Jessica Beard, a trauma surgeon at Temple University and the director of research at the The Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting. Dr. Beard told me that universal background checks and permitting help prevent gun homicides and that child access prevention laws and extreme risk protection orders can help curb unintentional firearm injury and suicides.

“I think one concern that people feel is that this is political,” she said. “But the truth is that we have evidence that these things can save lives.”

After the interview, I felt seen and heard. It was amazing talking to a researcher who studies a topic that’s so close to home for me. She reiterated how much gun violence is preventable and that we “don’t have to live like this.” I left feeling more hopeful than before.

Working on this student-produced documentary about how gun violence affects young people has allowed me to talk about a serious issue that affects communities like mine. Conversations about gun violence and how to reduce it aren’t something everyone wants to hear, but we can’t change anything about it if we ignore the problem. These conversations are important because people’s lives are important.

Ethan Rodriguez attends Arcadia University and is a student producer of ”Run, Hide, Fight: Growing up under the gun,” a PBS News Student Reporting Labs documentary that premieres Oct. 9 on the PBS News YouTube channel, PBS app, and PBS.org.

In Philadelphia, a new school year brings questions about who’s accountable for protecting students

2024-09-19T17:03:51+00:00

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

As Philadelphia’s students settle into a new academic year, school administrators are tasked, once again, with addressing a persistent problem: gun violence in neighborhoods surrounding schools that threatens to steal or alter the lives of their students.

Though significantly fewer young people have been shot this year, three of the city’s most recent victims – a 17-year-old boy and 13-year-old girl who died, and a 15-year-old boy who was in critical condition — were teens.

The shootings were a stark reminder of the challenge faced by school officials in Philadelphia and across the country: how to protect students from a crisis they did not cause and cannot solve on their own. The volume of gun violence coming from outside school walls raises questions about what schools are responsible for doing to keep the young people in their care safe.

In Philadelphia, officials are trying to figure this out against the backdrop of a lawsuit that claims they haven’t done it right. Just before classes resumed, the mother of Nicolas Elizalde, 14, a student who was fatally shot after a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School in 2022, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that the School District of Philadelphia is responsible for the boy’s death.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Meredith Elizalde, alleges that the district ignored the serious threat of violence, and that there were no security, law enforcement, or school district personnel in the area where the shooting occurred, in violation of district policies. The district declined to comment on the case.

Schools legally assume the role of parents during school hours and after-school activities, making them accountable for students’ safety, said Amanda Klinger, a lawyer and director of operations for the nonprofit Educator’s School Safety Network. “It’s a tricky situation. On one hand, the responsibility of the school must end, right? A school cannot be responsible for the safety of a child 24 hours in a day,” Klinger said. “However, if a school is hosting a school-sponsored activity, whether it’s happening at the school or physically across the street, they are acting in loco parentis, in the place of the parent.”

She asked: “In any of this litigation the question is, what is reasonable to ask a school to do, and where does it end?”

‘It is not reasonable … to not be prepared’

In September 2022, as Nicolas Elizalde and four other members of the school’s junior varsity football team walked across the street from the Northwest Philadelphia school, five gunmen opened fire. They killed Elizalde and wounded the four other students, who have since recovered.

After fundraising for the Roxborough football team in her son’s honor, Meredith Elizalde, a former Philly teacher, moved to Montana. Her lawyer maintains that the school district failed Nicolas. The district, said Elizalde’s attorney Tom Kline, knows that after-school hours and sport events “are a magnet” for gun violence. “When a public school district places a 14-year-old student in the shooters’ crosshairs without security or protection,” he said, “it is not just a tragedy. It is a violation of his civil rights.”

Meredith Elizalde is also suing the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA), which organizes and governs high school sports competitions. The PIAA did not respond to The Trace’s request for comment.

There have been 40 shootings at high school football-related events nationwide over the last five years, with eight taking place in Pennsylvania at PIAA-sponsored events, Kline’s office said. Three occurred at Philadelphia School District events.

“In 2024, it is not reasonable, under the circumstances, to not be prepared for the potential of violence or gun-based violence in our schools,” said Klinger.

A Philadelphia School District spokesperson said multiple layers of staff, operations, and programs ensure that schools are “safe, secure, and supportive learning environments.”

High schools and middle schools scan for weapons at their entrances, according to school district policy. At every scanning station, there’s an “amnesty box” where anyone can “dispose of any contraband” without fear of facing school discipline or law enforcement.

During the 2021-22 school year, the district implemented a Behavioral Threat Assessment Response Protocol to evaluate risks posed by students whose behavior may indicate a threat to themselves or others.

The district also has 27 trained mediators serving all schools who are called in to address the root causes of conflicts. The Philadelphia Police Department deploys officers to dedicated safety zones near the schools with the highest need.

A New Set of People Held to Account

The Philadelphia lawsuits come as school shootings receive more scrutiny around the question of who should be held responsible for the bloodshed.

In school shootings and related gun crimes across the country, prosecutors have gone beyond charging shooters to also arresting law enforcement officers, educators, and parents: On Sept. 5, Colin Gray, 54, was charged with multiple counts of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. He is accused of allowing his 14-year-old son to have the gun that the boy allegedly used to kill two classmates and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, the day before. Also on Sept. 5, a mother in Memphis, Tennessee, was arrested and charged with child abuse, neglect and endangerment after school officials discovered that her 6-year-old son had brought a loaded handgun to school.

In April, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents in U.S. history charged and convicted for a mass school shooting. They were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in state prison for supplying their teenage son, Ethan, with a handgun that he used to kill four classmates at an Oxford, Michigan, high school in 2021.

And former Uvalde, Texas, school police Officer Adrian Gonzales and former Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo have been criminally charged with abandoning and failing to protect children during the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary that killed 19 children and two teachers.

Getting Ahead of the Problem

Some welcome the shift to hold such people accountable, but others say it does not address the root causes that lead shooters to target schools. Law enforcement and school officials, they say, must focus more on preventing shootings.

“We have no national guidance and no common playbook for how a school official is supposed to react to the threat of a school shooting,” said David Riedman, founder of the K-12 Shooting Database, which tracks every school shooting. “It’s on people to essentially make it up when they’re in these circumstances.”

Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a Pennsylvania gun-violence prevention organization, said prosecuting parents who knowingly give their troubled children guns does not save lives. “Ultimately, the problem or challenge with those solutions is that they require that there already be injured or dead people,” he said, adding that he’d rather “get ahead of the problem” through safe storage requirements and extreme risk protection orders.

While school districts cannot violence-proof schools completely, they can step up their prevention efforts, Klinger said. For example, she said, schools could create Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management teams to identify, investigate, and help students at risk of committing violence.

“It’s one of the few things that is supported by data and research,” said Klinger, the director of the school safety organization.

In Philadelphia, the School District has established a threat assessment hotline for schools to report threats, a spokesperson said. It has also purchased and developed software that allows the safety team to document threats, investigations, and safety plans.

Some, though, think that the casualty count means that these safety measures aren’t enough. “Ultimately, we think the blame for gun violence, in many ways, lies with the Legislature that enables the violence to continue,” Garber said. “We live in a world now in Philadelphia and elsewhere where violence is ever-present, and we don’t have proven policies to keep people like Nick safe.”

From rodents to a ribbon-cutting: How a Philadelphia community united to build a school

2024-08-20T15:53:44+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

When Philadelphia student Chelsea Mungo wrote to her state senators pleading for renovations for her rodent-infested, century-old elementary school, she never imagined she would one day receive thunderous applause while cutting the ribbon on a $62 million building.

“I’m just so happy right now,” Mungo said at last week’s official opening of the new Lewis C. Cassidy Academics Plus School in West Philadelphia’s Overbook neighborhood.

The old Lewis C. Cassidy building — the one Mungo told her elected officials in 2017 felt like “prison” — was crumbling. The new version, ready for students to start on Aug. 26, would fit in on Google’s campus. The walls are almost blindingly white. The classroom seating is modular and adjustable for even the wiggliest students. There’s a new playground, a sensory room for pre-kindergartners, a “maker’s space,” and an innovation lab.

“Success Starts Here” is emblazoned in the front entryway, in a font bigger than many of the school’s youngest students.

Chelsea Mungo (right), wrote a letter to her state Senator Vince Hughes (left) in 2017 about the old Cassidy building which she said felt like "prison." Mungo, now 17, appeared at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new building in Aug.

Cassidy is the second new building the Philadelphia district opened this calendar year, and officials said they hope there will be many more to come. Philadelphia schools are 73 years old on average, with some buildings constructed as far back as 1878. Crumbling infrastructure, damaged asbestos, and lack of air conditioning has closed some schools recently.

As Mungo told senators, aging and unsafe school buildings make it tough for students to learn or envision themselves working in modern office buildings and workspaces. Mungo, now 17 and a Central High School student, has her eyes set on New York University and a biomedical engineering degree. Imagining that future was challenging when she had been learning math in a school with leaky pipes and a mouse infestation.

Despite that dire situation, seven years and a pandemic passed between Mungo’s letter and the opening of the new Cassidy building. Facing a nearly $8 billion estimated price tag to make all of the necessary improvements to the city’s schools, district officials, and state lawmakers say Philadelphia needs more money to build more schools like the new Cassidy.

The district’s capital improvement plan allocates $3.3 billion for fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2030. Of that, $766.9 million is set aside for new construction, $544 million for major renovations, and the rest is split between projects like HVAC updates and electrical work. The plan is funded mostly with proceeds from the district’s bond sales and some limited reimbursement funds from the state.

Philadelphia students “absolutely deserve this,” Superintendent Tony Watlington said, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“There are so many communities that are suffering as a result of the years of disinvestment,” said Democratic state Rep. Morgan Cephas at the event. “We have to ensure that Cassidy is not the last school that we are rebuilding.”

At the ribbon cutting ceremony, students dressed in suits and ties posed for photos with their family members — many of whom had a hand in designing the school itself.

Yaszmeen Muhammad, an autistic support teacher at Cassidy since 2009, said she and other teachers and community members were very involved with the architectural process, which was led by the Black-owned construction company Perryman Shoemaker. (District officials said Cassidy is the first school in the history of the district to be developed by a Black-owned construction company.)

Muhammad said she, other educators, and Overbrook residents wanted to make sure the front vestibule could accommodate students running in from the rain, and advocated for enough space to have class outside on warm spring days.

“We really take pride in the new building and I’m so glad that we were a part of this,” Muhammad said.

She said she cried when she entered the building for the first time.

“I can’t believe it finally got done,” said Tamara Young, a grandparent from the neighborhood who also helped guide the design process.

The building will accommodate over 600 pre-K-8 students this year in 26 classrooms, with a new playground and basketball court.

Joshua Harris, 9, is about to start fourth grade at Cassidy next week. His favorite part of the new building? The gym. His simple verdict: “I like it.” He said he’s also looking forward to incorporating his love of art and painting into his classwork this year.

Joshua Harris, 9, poses for a picture at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Harris will start fourth grade at the new Cassidy school next week.

Outside, there’s a bench dedicated to Marcus Yates, a 5-year-old who was shot and killed before his first day of kindergarten at Cassidy in 1988. His mother, Rochelle Yates-Whittington, had attended school in the old Cassidy building as did her siblings and her other children. She spoke passionately about what Cassidy has meant to her family at the ribbon cutting ceremony.

She’s also donating a copy of her book — “Can You Fix My Heart” — to the school’s new library.

Yates-Whittington said she hopes her family’s story will help other families and young people who’ve been impacted by ongoing gun violence in the city.

“I love Cassidy because you loved on us,” Yates-Whittington said to the current and former Cassidy teachers and school leaders at the event. “You nurtured my kids back to health. You protected them … no matter what was going on in their life, you were here for them.”

Now, she hopes the new school building will do the same for future generations.

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

In Philadelphia, community violence comes to school

2024-06-18T19:22:47+00:00

This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

Russell Conwell Middle School is housed in a 98-year-old building in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. The school’s brick walls and locked metal front doors serve as a fortress for its 176 fifth- through eighth-grade students, who are being educated in one of the city’s most dangerous areas.

On a recent day, a few minutes before Conwell’s 2:30 p.m. dismissal time, a handful of Philadelphia Police Department cars swarmed Jasper Street, which borders the school. Officers walked up and down the street peering into the windows of parked cars as students started leaving the school yard. The officers refused to say what they were investigating, but confirmed that it did not involve the school.

Community violence, including gunfire, is often so close that it can be heard from classrooms, said Katoura Jones, 12, a Conwell sixth grader. “When I hear gunshots my anxieties start,” she said, standing outside the school building at dismissal.

On a daily basis, such crime and confusion play out on the streets that border Conwell, a magnet school that draws students from across the city. In May, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker ordered the city to remove encampments erected there by unhoused people and those with addictions. While Parker declared the initial cleanup a success, many who were displaced moved to nearby sidewalks, including those adjacent to the school.

The urban dysfunction swirling around Conwell has resulted in its having a national distinction: the school with the most shootings near its building during the last ten years — 386. Using the Gun Violence Archive, The Trace analyzed shootings within 500 yards of schools nationwide from 2014 through 2023 and found that five of the top 10 schools were in the School District of Philadelphia.

The five Philadelphia schools among the nation’s 10 nearest to the most gunfire are all in Kensington, home to one of the nation’s largest open-air drug markets and homeless populations. They are the extremes, and even schools significantly further down the list are located near regular bursts of gunfire.

“I’ve often said that Kensington is extremely violent, and is probably one of the most violent pockets in America,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said, referring to the area as the “opioid corridor,” during an interview with The Trace.

A week later, on June 10, Bethel announced that 75 officers recently graduated from the Police Academy would soon be deployed to Kensington as part of Parker’s recent public safety plan.

Russell Conwell Middle School has a national distinction: It's the school with the most shootings near its building during the last ten years.

“I’ve watched what has happened to our children down there. Our kids cannot play in that area,” Bethel said during the news conference at police headquarters. “Our kids cannot walk to school down there.”

Then, he commented on this story. “There was a report by The Trace ... that Conwell Middle School and Willard (Elementary School) … are No. 1 and No. 3 in the nation with having the highest level of shootings around their schools,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s absolutely unacceptable.”

The violence takes a toll on these schools in ways both sudden and gradual. Bethel, who oversaw school district security from 2019 until he became police commissioner, noted that Conwell’s once 800-plus student body has dwindled to a quarter of its size, while at Frances E. Willard Elementary School, just two blocks away from Conwell, the city had to put “bulletproof blankets” across the windows to keep kids safe.

Despite the danger level in these school communities, the vast majority of the gun violence does not take place directly on school property. Still, the gunfire is too close for comfort, said Katoura, the Conwell sixth grader, during an interview alongside her mother, Mary Speight.

“Sometimes, when I’m in my tutoring class I hear gunshots going off, and I’m the closest one to the window because that’s where I sit,” Katoura said. “They tell us to get down, but that’s when all we hear is screaming and yelling. That happens pretty often.”

Speight shook her head. “They don’t send nothing home,” she said. “That’s why me and my son walk her to school, and we make sure we come and get her,” she added, as Conwell Climate Manager James Washington approached and attempted to stop the interview. Principal Erica Green then showed up, asking that the interview be conducted across the street.

Green said she was too busy to speak to a reporter at dismissal time, but said she would do so later by phone. Attempts to reach her were not successful.

“They’re very overprotective of the kids,” Speight said, after observing the interaction. “I do want them to keep my child safe and the other children safe.”

The entrance to Russell Conwell Middle School.

Ann Santiago was parked in front of Conwell waiting to pick up her son, Adrian, 12. While she said she was aware that the neighborhood was troubled, she did not know that Conwell held the national distinction of being the school closest to the most gunfire since 2014.

“Scary,” she said, softly. “It’s not the school’s fault, basically it’s the neighborhood itself. I used to live around here many, many years ago, and it wasn’t like this. Kensington was very popular with a lot of stores and you would never see zombies,” she said, referring to the drug users nodding off between injections.

Santiago said that, despite the surrounding environment, she’s pleased with the education her son, who has autism, is receiving and the security measures that are in place. “I first thought that the security program was overwhelming and too much — you have to wait outside until they bring your kid out!” she said. “But now I actually do like that.”

Ricardo Ruiz, whose son Justin is a Conwell sixth grader, said he was satisfied with the school and its security measures. “It’s a good school. They take care of the kids, they do what they got to do,” he said, noting that the doors are locked. “But I wish they had more police officers around, that would work.”

In May and June of 2023, Conwell was chosen to host two hearings of the Philadelphia City Council’s Public Safety Committee because the school “is in the heart of Kensington and the opioid crisis,” Principal Green said in a message posted on the school’s website.

Sneakers hang on an electric line near Russell Conwell Middle School.

At those hearings, Councilmember Quetzy Lozada, whose 7th District includes Kensington, discussed her proposal to create a Marshall Stabilization and Recovery Plan to combat blight, crime, and drug abuse in Kensington and the surrounding area, named after the U.S. plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. Her resolution noted that in 2022, 22 percent of all city homicides and 25 percent of all shootings took place in Kensington.

This February, Lozada joined three other Kensington councilmembers to form the Kensington Caucus to work on solving systemic problems. And in April, Mayor Parker signed a bill sponsored by Lozada that imposes a curfew on Kensington businesses without liquor licenses.

Meanwhile, Bethel said the city’s infusion of additional officers to the high-crime area last year has helped reduce shootings and homicides by double digits. With the arrival of 75 additional officers, that positive trend should continue, he said, noting that restoring law and order in Kensington will take time. “I do not believe that overnight we’re going to take care of an issue that has been there for decades,” he said.

After viewing The Trace’s school shooting data, Lozada said she’s visited all five schools in the top 10 and maintains “an open line of communication with each principal.” She added that her initiative created a “24-hour cleaning pilot around each school” to remove needles and waste from students’ paths. “No child should have to grow up in these conditions.”

Philadelphia Mayor Parker’s ‘enhanced’ safety plan for schools relies heavily on police

2024-04-11T20:55:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker marked her first 100 days in office by unveiling a public safety plan that includes increasing police presence in and around schools and social media surveillance.

Speaking at Russell Conwell Middle School in Kensington on Thursday, Parker released her 53-page plan which focuses on strategies to reduce gun violence citywide. Those strategies include hiring more police officers, expanding and deepening community partnerships between police and residents, and modernizing police technology.

She said her plan is an effort to “make good on the promise” that she made to Philadelphians during her campaign: to “deliver a government that they can see, touch, and feel in the neighborhoods where they live where they can see their tax dollars at work.”

Parker’s focus on addressing gun violence comes in the wake of two shootings last month that killed one Philadelphia student and injured ten others near their schools. Two groups of young people were also responsible for a shooting in a West Philly park this week.

“It is our mission to stop gun violence in Philadelphia once and for all,” said Adam Geer, Parker’s chief public safety director. “I will not rest until that work is done.”

Here’s what’s in Parker’s so-called “enhanced school safety plan”:

It adds more police in and around schools. The plan says these officers will be “additional specialized unit personnel” that will be paired with existing officers assigned to schools to “enhance deployment and visibility” during dismissal times at “high priority schools across the city in 13 police districts.” Those schools were not named in the plan.
Those 13 police districts are expected to get “upwards of two to three officers and supervisors” from specialized units at each school from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily through June 2024.
Noting that “gun violence in our schools …. often begins online,” Parker’s plan says the Philadelphia Police Department will be increasing its social media monitoring efforts to “possibly preempt shootings before they occur.”

Parker also reiterated her calls for “year-round school,” which she and her Chief Education Officer Debora Carerra said has the potential to reduce crime. Young people are less likely to get in trouble if they are engaged in positive activities in school, Carerra said.

Though gun violence in Philadelphia declined last year overall, shootings involving young people have been rising steadily since 2015, according to police data released Thursday. The percentage of people arrested who are 18 or younger has risen from 7% in 2015 to 11% so far this year.

Every year since 2020, 80% of young shooting victims in the city have been students, according to a gun violence data analysis by the school district included in Parker’s plan.

That analysis also shows students are more likely to be shot during weekdays between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. And the majority of student gunshot victims were shot in five of Philadelphia’s 48 ZIP codes — all in North and West Philadelphia. The district also found students are more likely to be shot closer to school than to their homes.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who was formerly chief of school safety at the school district, said at Thursday’s event that part of his expanded community policing initiative will include closer partnerships with schools to divert young people from ever entering the juvenile justice system.

Dale Mezzacappa contributed to this report.

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

Philly police will notify schools about students found at traumatic events under pilot program

2024-03-25T21:06:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

One day earlier this school year, a fifth grader came to school and was acting a little off. His motivation was down, his attention elsewhere, and his behavior unsettling.

It turned out he was traumatized because he had seen his father murdered the day before, said Brandy Blasko in the district’s office of school safety.

Unfortunately, this kind of scenario is not that uncommon in Philadelphia schools. In response, the city school district and police department have unveiled a $1 million program to help students deal with such trauma.

The program, announced by officials at a Monday press conference at the Philadelphia Military Academy, is called Handle With Care. It will train 300 police officers and 100 educators to sharpen their awareness of students’ exposure to violence and help them cope with trauma. It will be piloted in 15 schools starting next school year that are in the 22nd Police District, which covers parts of North Philadelphia.

While the program has been long in the works, it’s taken on new urgency in the wake of two shootings involving students leaving schools earlier this month in which one was killed and another 10 injured.

Handle With Care is a child-protection program first piloted in West Virginia and now used there statewide, as well as in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and elsewhere. The program starts with police who respond to a call and arrive at the scene of a traumatic event, from the execution of a search warrant to violence or sudden death. If a child is present at the scene, the police collect the child’s name and where they go to school, then notify the relevant school officials.

This system allows teachers and others to offer support, postpone tests or other academic work, and refer the child to nurses or counselors, among other responses. The program will also provide training to police and school personnel about the impact of trauma on children and how to respond to it in school, and officials will follow up with families.

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, who used to be the school district’s police chief, said it had been “a dream of mine for a long time” to bring such a program like Handle With Care to Philadelphia.

He noted that violence can impact schoolchildren even if they are not directly involved. In 2021 in the 22nd district’s 4.3 square miles, 300 people were shot and 70 killed.

“We’re starting here, in one of our most challenged communities,” Bethel said, adding that he eventually wants to use the program in the entire city.

But Bethel also said that children are exposed to all kinds of trauma-inducing events, from witnessing car accidents to being in a household with domestic violence. Such circumstances, if not addressed, can lead to discipline problems, dropping out, and criminal activity, he said.

“When we do something different, we can change that trajectory,” he said.

Children who have witnessed violence “have to sit in class carrying this burden on their shoulders,” said Jayme Banks, the school district’s deputy chief of prevention, trauma and intervention.

“Their level of stress interferes with their ability to succeed, to form positive relationships, to make friends,” Banks said.

Bethel said the communication between police and school officials would be year-round, even when school is not in session.

At Monday’s press conference, two students from the Philadelphia Military Academy attested to the need for the program.

Nadia Porter, who is the school’s command sergeant major, said that the programs will be “very useful” because “a lot of kids are not seen as trauma victims, but as problem starters.”

Kaheem Bailey-Taylor, the brigade commander who mentioned the two recent shootings in which one student died and 11 were injured, received an honor from his ROTC program for going to the aid of a student who had been shot at a birthday party.

“This program will bring some hope to the youth,” he said.

Referring to the student who witnessed his father’s death, Blasko said that at first, “No one knew why he was acting that way,” she said. “Now they will.”

The grant funding for Handle With Care in Philadelphia is from the U.S. Department of Justice. The 15 schools that will participate in the Handle With Care pilot program are:

Richard R. Wright.
Robert Morris.
Paul L. Dunbar.
James G. Blaine.
William Dick.
Ethel Allen.
Tanner G. Duckrey.
Edward Gideon.
William D. Kelley.
General George G. Meade
High School of Engineering and Science.
Philadelphia Military Academy
Vaux Big Picture High School.
Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical High School.
Strawberry Mansion High School.

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.

Philadelphia principal says his school won’t be defined by violence after 8 students shot

2024-03-20T18:33:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Northeast High School Principal Omar Crowder said Wednesday his school community is on a “steady return to a semblance of normalcy” after eight of his students were wounded by gunfire earlier this month.

“Our community suffered a tragedy on a scale that we have not seen in the history of the school district of Philadelphia,” Crowder said.

Speaking outside of the school’s entrance while students gathered near windows in the staircase above, Crowder said student attendance is rebounding and the community is healing, but “this is going to be an ongoing, long-term recovery effort.”

Eight Northeast High students, all between the ages of 15 and 17, were shot on March 6 at the intersection of Rising Sun and Cottman avenues at a SEPTA bus stop down the street from their school. Two of the eight students are still in the hospital, Crowder said, and face a “long road to recovery.”

While Crowder said he does not know what caused the shooting, he stated that “we are not going to be defined by senseless street violence … and what feels like persistent lawlessness in our city.”

Gun violence in Philadelphia declined last year, according to an analysis of city data by The Trace, but violence on SEPTA has persisted. Of the 3,300 students at Northeast High, about 1,500 students rely on SEPTA to get to school every day, Crowder said.

According to Monique Braxton, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia school district, 199 public school students were shot during the last school year, and 33 died. So far this school year, 70 students have been victims of gun violence and seven have died.

Crowder said Wednesday the school is doing what it can to ease the mental and emotional pain his students, staff, and parents are facing.

For two days following the shooting, the school went remote and staggered the return to in-person learning. Crowder and the district made mental health services available on an ongoing basis and police patrols have increased around the school.

Later on Wednesday, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson and other council members plan to hold a “peace, not guns” town hall at the school to discuss the violence and efforts to heal.

“We have to address those who are seeing their loved ones murdered and work on treating the whole child,” Johnson said in an interview Wednesday morning.

Johnson said he wants to increase the number of “credible messengers” inside schools whose “lived experience” — including one-time involvement in illegal or violent activities — make them more able to relate to young people.

Crowder said “despite the hurt and fear, our school community has continued to show up for one another and that will not change.”

“I’ve made it very clear to our students and staff this narrative belongs to us, not to the streets,” he said.

Dale Mezzacappa contributed to this report

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

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

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

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.

If you are having trouble viewing this survey, go here.

‘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.”

If you are having trouble viewing this form on mobile, go here.