Stop the bleeding: SPS needs to do better to keep students safe

“Someone was shot.”

That was the text. The second such text in three months from my son, a student at Garfield High School.

This is heartbreaking. A family has lost their child. There can be nothing worse. Seattle has to do more and better for our young people. This is unacceptable. 

I read about the enrollment decline in Seattle Public Schools. I know that the decline is part but certainly not all of the cause of the district’s budget woes (committing to teachers union contracts they cannot afford is a bigger contributor). These incidents of school violence also impact the district’s budget — doubly in fact. Families are surely leaving district schools in part because of their safety fears, and these incidents are also contributing to the district’s rising liability insurance rates, which The Seattle Times reported on last week (see this week’s $45 million suit from the family of a student murdered on Ingraham’s campus). 

Seattle should not need monetary pressure to prioritize fundamental safety, but perhaps it helps.

The upstream causes of the gang and gun violence are deep and need to be tackled, but we need an immediate downstream plan as well. Prevention alone won’t stave off the literal bleeding of the school district. 

One year ago, I attended a community meeting after there were three shootings around Garfield in as many weeks. We were told that police would patrol the neighborhood as they are not welcome on campus (recall that SPS severed ties with the Seattle Police Department in 2020), that temporary security guards would patrol the campus but not the building because they were not allowed to interact with students, and that trained restorative justice facilitators would interact with students in the building. They would do this for two weeks. I mean, the incredulousness of us parents at this non-plan was palpable and remains so as I type this. 

Since then, there have been five more shootings (that I know of) in or around Garfield. Two students have been shot in the past three months, one fatally.

SPS is worried about enrollment, their insurance rates and their budget. Parents, students and surely SPS school staff are worried about fundamental safety. This is a crisis and a two-week, patchwork solution will not fix it. 

Having Seattle police officers in schools as school resource officers is not without its controversy, but we are leaving principals, staff and students on their own to combat societal issues that seep into schools. It is untenable.

Another student has died. We are long past saying this is tragic — that undersells the loss of lives and innocence here. If SPS wants to keep its families, it needs to re-partner with SPD, it needs to address students’ mental health needs, it needs to send an unequivocal message that it is moving heaven and earth to create safe learning and teaching environments. The bleeding needs to end.