Murphy-Paine was remembered as a dedicated athlete and friend gunned down as he tried to keep the peace. Police have not made an arrest in the murder. (Image: Converge Media with permission to CHS)
Mayor Bruce Harrell has announced a $14.5 million effort between the city and Seattle Public Schools with a focus on Garfield High School and ten other district schools “with the highest rates of violence in and around their campuses.”
The initiative comes in response to campus officials and families who called on the city and the district to act to respond to gun violence after student Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed in the Garfield parking lot in the final weeks of the 23rd Ave school’s year amid a wave of shootings across the county involving both young victims and young perpetrators.
The initiatives do not include a plan to restore the Seattle Police “school resource officer” program at Garfield but the district will be deploying additional “school-based safety specialists.”
The announcement comes with the start of school for Seattle’s public system coming next week.
The strategy announced by the Harrell administration will include “school-based measures, violence intervention and community partnerships, and law enforcement support,” the city said, and includes more than $12 million in city spending plus another $2.3 million from public schools to increase access to mental health support, add enhanced school security, hire additional school staffing, and expand violence prevention and intervention services through community-based providers, the city says.
“Students and young people need to feel safe to learn and to grow – this comprehensive set of programs, investments, and actions will support the safety of our youth and community,” Harrell, who graduated from Garfield in 1976 as class valedictorian, said in a statement.
Principal Tarance Hart (Image: Garfield PTSA)
The other high school campuses included in the initial focus for the strategy include Rainier Beach, Chief Sealth International, Franklin, and Ingraham. Area middle schools Washington and Meany are also on the list as our the Aki Kurose, Denny, Mercer, and Robert Eagle Staff campuses.
Harrell has made his time at Garfield a key component of his storied rise as a city leader. The murder of a student on the campus has been a personal tragedy in the communities he remains connected to and a stain on Harrell’s efforts to address ongoing public safety concerns in the city.
The money now earmarked to help address the problems at Garfield and the city’s most challenged schools will include $5.6 million to hire mental health counselors and care coordinator positions in 21 school-based health centers managed by Public Health – Seattle & King County. These will include 42 new positions to “provide in-person support to students who need clinical interventions while also being able to make referrals to other services as needed.”
$2.4 million will be spent to expand access to telehealth therapy services.
The city say it will invest $4.25 million as part of the school safety pilot to fund community-based partners “to provide a range of interventions.” CHS reported here on the “intervention” specialists at Community Passageways and the group’s ongoing work at Garfield. The organization, which offers both one-on-one support and community support for teens and young adults, is planning to increase the number of violence interrupters going into Garfield High.
Return of ‘school resource officers?’
The plan does not include adding SPD personnel to the school campuses.
CHS reported here following the June murder on calls from families and Garfield principal Tarance Hart for strengthened safety measures including some calling for the return of a dedicated police officer assigned to Garfield and hallways metal detectors.
Members of the Garfield PTSA have also said they were working on a Safe Schools Action Plan and the group voted to demand the Seattle School Board make a decision on restoring the school resource officer program and placing a dedicated SPD officer at Garfield before the start of the school year.
In the summer of 2020, the board suspended a partnership with SPD that provided five armed officers with rotations and placements across Seattle’s public schools.
This week, the Seattle Police Department says it will “focus patrol officers, during critical times such as before school, during lunch, and after school, as staffing allows” at the five “focus high schools” including Garfield.
“Keeping students safe is the top priority for everyone in our community. Police can’t do it alone and schools can’t do it alone. It is crucial that our entire community steps up and works together,” Interim Chief of Police Sue Rahr said in the announcement.
Seattle Public Schools says it does plan to increase the district’s security staffing at Garfield. The district will also hire an Executive Director of Student and Community Safety “to improve collaboration with first responders and law enforcement agencies to implement a unified student safety plan.”
In a message to the campus, principal Hart said students returning back to school next week “will see an increase in the number of security specialists assigned to our campus.”
“This additional support will strengthen our safety efforts and provide a more secure environment for our students and staff,” Hart said.
Typical of Harrell administration efforts, the mayor’s office says it will include analysis and measurement “to understand impact and scaled to more schools and neighborhoods based on data, available resources, and successful outcomes.”
In a vigil on the campus sports field, Murphy-Paine was remembered as a dedicated athlete and friend gunned down as he tried to keep the peace.
Police have not made an arrest in the murder.
Whether there will be money and support for more resources on the Garfield campus remains to be seen. Superintendent Brent Jones said before summer that the district was considering “several safety changes for next school year in our high schools” to “ensure the well-being of our students and staff” including increasing district security and “neighborhood safety organization patrols around our buildings,” requiring identification badges on campus, requiring clear backpacks, and closing campuses for lunch. Parents at Garfield might also be interested in stronger communications and policies around gun violence issues on campus.
For now, the focus will be on intervention, mental health, and Seattle Police.
You can see the full announcement of the city and district plan here.
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With this plan the Mayor and City fall $8M short of the $20M commitment they made to students last year. $20M is what was fought for and won by Seattle students, to be funded by a small increase in the JumpStart tax.
The current Council and Mayor have weaseled out of fully funding student health and safety because they want the $8M to help cover a general fund deficit in next year’s budget.
This will become a pattern in the coming months – the Mayor and City Council stealing from JumpStart to fund the general budget, the largest item of which is SPD’s bloated $385M which they will not touch.
These sounds like good initiatives – just don’t want to people to forget that the Mayor has refused to fully fund them in the amount already committed.
“stealing from JumpStart to fund” the fund should be used for whatever the public thinks is best. I don’t remember any vote on whether to give $20M. But when I looked at who was involved it was the same non-profit restorative justice organizations that already get tons of tax payer funds.
If the city is investing in licenced counselors and mental health professionals that is great. If they are investing in more police abolition- restorative justice organizations then that is not great. It is a waste of money and deprives students of quality mental health care.
Only banning guns will reduce gun violence.
Almost all of the shootings are males under 25 so clearly other things are at play. If just having access to guns was the root cause there would be a more diverse group of people doing the shooting.
Your endless, boring refrain reminds me of the classic quote, “Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25″… tautologically true but completely unhelpful.
This seems like a weak plan. How does providing more mental health services prevent incidents like the murder of Amarr Murphy-Paine, where the perp appears to have not been a student? And more SPD presence at certain times “as staffing allows”? That will be a very low priority for the SPD.
It’s simple, they don’t care and never will care
Vote out Sara Nelson and Bruce Harrell first chance we get. Only way to change this crap.
Typical Seattle government, acting like they care just to save face. They claim to be working to stop the shootings around Garfield, but in reality they only started “caring” after someone died. Unbelievable, how am I supposed to enjoy my sophomore year at Garfield while worrying that I could never come one day? Someone needs to tell these city officials the difference between leadership and ignorance.