Seattle Schools' High School Youth To Rise Up This AM Against Gun Violence
At last week's Board meeting, 90% of what was discussed was the shooting at Ingraham High School that took the life of one student. The most moving points were made by the two youth board members, Luna Crone-Baron and Nassira Hassan.
Student leaders announced on Twitter that they are encouraging all high school students to walk out of class today at 9:50 am to rally at their schools. Some students will be marching to City Hall for a rally there at 11:30 am, hoping to move the Mayor and City Council to action.
This was a tweet on 11/13 from the Seattle Student Union (@SeaStudentUnion):
We demand the Seattle City Council allocate $9 million to fund mental health counselors in every Seattle high school.
One student also noted that Nathan Hale High School in Lake City was sheltering in place for two days in a row after receiving threats. This was one day after the Ingraham High incident.
The Student Union also said this the day of the shooting on Twitter(partial):
It's hard to come up with the right words to describe this tragedy as many of us have become so desensitized to these events. Students are tired, scared and angry. We are old enough to get shot but too young to vote for the laws that would stop our deaths.
It is long past time that lawmakers pass meaningful legislation around gun violence prevention.
This is another tragic reminder of how, as students, we risk our lives everyday (sic) going to school. Firearms are now the number one cause of death for children and teens. It shouldn't have to be this way. We have had enough.
Today we grieve, tomorrow we act.
At the Board meeting, it was a sober President Brandon Hersey who seemed near tears. He said that they needed to do "all in our power to prevent it from happening again." He said that the safety of SPS students is their top priority. He said that this is an example of the public health crisis, not just in schools but throughout the greater community.
Superintendent Brent Jones was also spoke gravely. He said that "We are healing and dealing with the trauma" and that there are many adults coming forward wanting to help with the trauma. He says that SPS has been "working on this issue for years."
He reiterated what he has said about SPS actions:
- safety and security audits
- "immediate determinations of action" working with Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief of Police Diaz.
- A "child wellbeing council" led by health professionals
Both Hersey and Jones praised Ingraham Principal Martin Floe, the teachers, and all the staff for their actions that day.
And then the student board members spoke.
First it was Luna Crone-Baron who absolutely hit hard and eloquently. (To note, neither student got visibly upset or raised their voice.)
Luna said she was giving "fair warning" and not speaking as a Board member but "as a kid and a student."
She said that "student mental health is the basis of student success." She continued, "To thrive they must stay alive at school" and "speaking for my peers, we are all upset." She said some students she knows did know the murder victim and said that person was "sweet and funny" but that now, that student is dead.
"The thing that’s making me, as a person, very, very angry is the response/comm 'this was isolated incident'. So what? There is still a child killed at school. It’s unacceptable and a failure of this district and all of us up here. I feel lost because I don’t have the words to know what to say."
I don’t have all the solutions. I am still a student and a kid and I’m scared and sad and what I need - we need to know we are safe in our school buildings. We do not feel safe at school and even as we look to how to create systemic solutions to prevent this, this kid, someone’s baby is still dead and that’s on all of us.
We need to see how the adults around us are going to keep us safe. More police in schools will not help," if there is "police bullying and harassing of students in schools. I will never support policing in schools.
Love to my peers at Ingraham and throughout the district. I am so so sorry."
The other student board member, Nassira Hassan said she was "heartbroken for Ingraham." She echoed Crone-Baron in saying that "regardless of the circumstance, a student died at school under this district."
She said both she and Crone-Baron are "confused" about their role on the Board.
"We can't fear for our lives at school. I accepted this position to be a student voice but I am at a loss for words and I can't imagine this in our district that I am a leader of."
Later on just two directors spoke on the incident (I suspect that the others may have thought they didn't have anything to add and didn't want to make the meeting longer).
Director Lisa Rivera Smith, also near tears, said that she has a senior and every day she worries for her child. "There are no guarantees that your child will come home." She said that we need to elect more leaders who will work for "gun safety legislation."
Director Liza Rankin said she was making a request to community. She said:
"In incidences of school gun violence, 78% are by a student or former student." Of that group, 79% got the gun from home or a family member/friend. One thing everyone can do is, if you have guns, please lock them up." As well she encouraged people to tell others in their circles to do so as well.
She did not mention that Ingraham High School sits in her district.
Director Michelle Sarju thanked Rivera Smith for her remarks but also, somewhat curiously, said people should let Superintendent Jones "do his job." Not sure if she was trying to fend off any criticism of him.
There was then public testimony but only one person spoke and that was Chris Jackins because he was there in person. Person after person was called but there was silence. Clearly something was happening with their phone-in system and this was acknowledged later on.
Ever sharp-eyed, Jackins said that the "less detailed" minutes from the last meeting showed that on the redistricting of director regions, that the vote on Amendment One was not cited nor its discussion. He also said it was not noted that there was a math error in the redistricting report from the consultants - a report that is about the electoral position for directors. The Board office staff later said those issues would be fixed.
I'm with Chris; the minutes are so stripped down, you have no idea what the discussion truly was on any given issue.
Anaylsis
- The quality and courage of the student board members is excellent. Someone should clarify their roles if they feel confused.
- Students - for the most part - do NOT want police in their buildings. I think that when there were police in schools, several schools had friction and upset with the officers.
- You could put in metal detectors but if a student slips into a building through another entrance, that's a problem. It might be better to spot wand kids (but certainly not the same kids, over and over).
- One thing that might help is fidelity to safety measures. No propping open doors, etc.
- One other idea is a school "if you see something, say something." Now this flies right into the face of "snitches get stitches" but there needs to be some way for students to report concerns anonymously.
- Lastly, on this "safety and security audit" by the district.
Know what was said after Uvalde? The exact same thing by Superintendent Jones.
And yet, just a week after that, a guy invaded the playground at Sand Point Elementary and chased 5th graders back to their portable classroom. The teacher was AWOL so the students tried desperately to hold the door shut after they could not figure out how to lock it. The guy got in and harassed them until a nearby classroom teacher came to investigate and got him out of the room.
I was told the 5th grade class had a sub that day. Did the sub know the safety protocols? Had he/she been informed how to lock the door from the inside? Subs need to know this stuff and, again, keep fidelity to those protocols because as we all know, anything could happen at anytime.
So forgive me at this seemingly easy statement tossed off by Jones because if you do a minor safety check and proclaim all is well, it might come back in your face.
Comments
just tirades
I will say this, however. If young people want to effect change in gun laws, they need to vote in large numbers. If young people between 18-29 doubled their turnout, they would have real power. They would have the leverage to demand change from politicians and would be able to shape policies that affect their future. The adults in their lives should be telling them this.
Want to do something about gun violence? Sign young people up to vote and make sure they get to the polls. Double the vote!
DE
- Proud Parent
I doubt even a single one of the elected board members will propose this. Something to keep in mind next year when board elections roll around.
Ingraham Strong
I do hope the other kids who were, along with the 17 year old, bullying the two younger kids see serious consequences for their actions (automatic expulsion? something more severe?). Gang activity needs to be cleaned up at Ingraham and all our schools - and it should start with all who were involved in the altercation that led to this shooting. Consequences should be severe enough to give other students pause about idiotic bullying / hazing / and otherwise joining a gang.
Just sad. So sad. Three destroyed lives.
BLUE SKY
Hey Hey
DE, well, the Gen X kids voted and because of that, the script has flipped in this country. So yeah, let's get even more kids to grow up, wanting to vote.
That's why I say: double the vote!
DE
Thank you for pointing out that more than 100 students from Ingraham attended the rally. I went by the number in the Seattle Times; I should know better than to trust one newspaper article. My mistake.
DE
There would be on less deceased students, and two kids in class today instead of jail.
I am proud of these young teens, who are learning to use their voices and are learning how to act for the good of many. @DE, you better believe they're going to exercise their right to vote once they're 18.
It's also amusing how students whine that adults have failed them, and adults dutifully agree -- but I wonder if anyone could articulate clearly how responsible adults failed the students. It seems like everyone is engaged in magical thinking -- if only adults had virtue signalled a little bit harder, shaken their fist a little bit harder, or something. There was a real failure, but I doubt anyone involved could or would say it out loud. The failure was adults talking as if there are some alternatives to law enforcement to maintain order and safety, even though adults singing that song have no apparent idea what it would be, and make no apparent effort to find it.
Overall, this walkout just shows students who think virtue signalling is an end in itself, and have little capacity for logical thinking, understanding of cause and effect, or interest in real problem solving. Protest seems like just another participation trophy.
There may be "zero evidence" that the students involved might have sought help but you don't know that. If there were a good number of counselors available in every high school, maybe the teacher who saw the 14-year old melting down could have sent him to a counselor. Instead, she could only alert school security.
And this:
"The failure was adults talking as if there are some alternatives to law enforcement to maintain order and safety, even though adults singing that song have no apparent idea what it would be, and make no apparent effort to find it."
Law and order is good as far as it goes but there are alternatives to violence and THAT is what needs to be available to kids.
You go listen to the Board meeting and listen to Luna Carone Baron - she was NOT virtue-signaling. Protest is NOT "a participation trophy." A lot of change happened over the years in this country because of protests.
My husband teaches in an SPS middle school and I think that some commenters would be taken aback at issues that children these days face. There are students who lack housing, or lack a stable home situation, or who have lost a mother or father. He has students who talk about self-harm, who use drugs, who have threatened violence (including gun violence). Parenting is hard work, teaching is hard work. As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Everyone has to work to catch kids who are troubled, afraid, lost, or just struggling with ordinarily early adolescence. Fortunately, his school has a strong team of counselors and a wonderful school nurse, who have worked together for a number of years. I don’t know that this is the case in many schools. It is clearly something that we, as a society, need to focus on and FUND. Thank you to the Ingraham students who are advocating for all students, and asked City Council for funding for mental health supports. Their request was heard and the Council directed $3 million in the next 2 years. More needs to be done and the Council called “a down payment,” but kudos to the students and to the Council. I am grateful to this young generation for standing up and fighting for what they need to move forward in school and into adulthood. We should thank them, not heap scorn their direction.
I'm with Outsider. The activists are calling for what they always call for, and what they called for would not have made a difference. When an activist or someone in power uses a tragedy to call for what they were always calling for anyways, they're not responding to situations. They're using them to their advantage.
If that act of violence hadn't have happened with a handgun, it would have happened with a knife. This is group violence among young men. When that kind of group violence becomes entrenched, the locations and means of retribution or secondary to settling the score.
The kinds of activists who we tend to highlight in these cases are not the kinds of students who interact with the kinds of students who shoot one another in hallways. They're in completely different social spheres that don't interact much at all.
So yeah, we're calling for more mental health professionals for the traumatized, privileged students who go to teen health centers, and the kind of tough young man who engage in group violence towards one another don't go to therapy sessions during third period.
SP
“Adults and parents need to stop enabling these nanny protest and student activist.” – just tirades
“If young people want to effect change in gun laws, they need to vote in large numbers” (in a comment about a middle school and high school action where >>90% of the participants can’t vote) – DE
“Overall, this walkout just shows students who think virtue signalling is an end in itself, and have little capacity for logical thinking, understanding of cause and effect, or interest in real problem solving. Protest seems like just another participation trophy.” – Outsider
“The activists are calling for what they always call for, and what they called for would not have made a difference... we're calling for more mental health professionals for the traumatized, privileged students who go to teen health centers.” – SP
The level of contempt for this community’s children here is pretty sickening — but I’m even more sickened by the sentiment these posters are expressing that things right now are fine and don’t need fixing, and HOW DARE those teens want the world to be better than it is.
Really? That’s the argument you’re going with? Less than a week after a kid got up in the morning, went to school, and died?
I am a mental health care provider myself. In driving my kids to school today, we listened to Lawyers, Guns and Money by Warren Zevon in the background as we discussed what it it would realistically take to address these situations. Mental healthcare is a wonderful thing to have in the schools- Have those counselors available, add emotional regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, and mindfulness skills into a mandatory health curriculum. But there also has to be a sense of law and order in the greater community (Hello Aurora Avenue and your open air drug and prostitution market!), and the school itself. Security officers may be that answer. And just maybe there could be cross talk between security officers, counselors, and maybe some of those anti-racist, restorative justice activists. They are all working to the same ends of increasing security, non-violence, and kindness in the world. None of this is cheap of course, but of course FEMA estimates the economic value of one of our lives around ~7.5 million dollars. Humans lives aren't cheap...
I only disagree with SPS HS teacher about guns vs knives. Nonsense. Kids with knives can do damage to each other, but not to the extent of guns. Gun control and regulations of all types are a common sense solution that I hope we can all get behind. Hundreds of people in the US are shooting themselves or others in the US each day. We don't need to wait for a tragedy to get behind reducing gun violence- they are happening constantly.
SPS parent
I'm sorry to have offended you and anyone else who felt my comments were disrespectful. I meant no disrespect. I certainly didn't want to mock anyone and cast blame on the young people who are rightfully frightened and traumatized by what happened at IHS and elsewhere. Obviously I failed to express myself clearly.
Of course middle school students and most high school students can't vote. But they are future voters, and now is the time for adults and other young people to do everything they can to encourage them to register when they're sixteen and seventeen and vote when they turn eighteen. For all that has happened to young peoples since, for example, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, young people 18-29 still do not vote in numbers that would make them a powerhouse voting bloc in the way that seniors are. Again, only 27% of young people eligible to vote cast their vote in the midterms.
Perhaps what I'm struggling to say is better coming from David Hogg in this recent article urging young people to vote in the midterms. He has a positive take on the influence young voters have already had; my view is that doubling the youth vote is an aspiration worth struggling for.
DE
Of the 6 students in the pre-assassination bathroom fight, 1 is dead and 2 are in detention. Are the other 3 back at school?
Unanswered Questions
These types of students come from all kinds of backgrounds and students from all types of backgrounds need help. You don't need to look past fentanyl overdoses to understand that there is great suffering amongst all types of students.
Please don't pit people against each other.
But I think it's become clear to many of us that simply casting a ballot once every two years isn't enough. And I'm not going to tell my 14-year-old, eager to make a difference NOW, that the only thing to do is sit down, be quiet, and wait until he's 18. So IN ADDITION to voting, we need to encourage our kids (and every other engaged citizen) to pursue peaceful protest, advocacy, campaigning for candidates, and coalition building.
"So IN ADDITION to voting, we need to encourage our kids (and every other engaged citizen) to pursue peaceful protest, advocacy, campaigning for candidates, and coalition building."
I completely agree with you. You said it well.
DE
Bingo for both of us. My only spots to fill were "using children as props because adults lack the courage or legal power to act" and "incentivizing privileged kids to do things that look good on a college resume."
I'm with you that students should begin to practice their civic responsibilities at a young age.
The problem is that SPS teachers, SPS, SEA, The Seattle Times all pick and present students who come from a single economic class, a single political mold, and a specific worldview.
Those students are being used. And they're using the adults.
And the students who shoot, stab, and fight reach other in bathrooms, at parks, behind grocery stores, behind cemeteries, are not reading this blog, don't carry signs to JSCEE, don't put memes on Facebook, and don't talk to therapists about their feelings instead of skipping third period to vape in the bushes behind the pool.
So many of these solutions are by educated white people for educated white people. We need to be more culturally responsive with our proposals, and responsive to those who engage in the violence.
SP
Security First