Shooter incident at elementary school in Uvalde, Texas - 19 children and 2 adults dead

Sad read
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It was just before 11am on a Friday and the hallways of Stege elementary school in Richmond, California, were quiet save for the muffled sound of children’s voices coming through the classroom doors.

Behind the heavy doors of Hannah Geitner’s fifth-grade classroom, 26 students were seated at small tables and on a cozy green rug. It was sunny and warm out, but inside, it was impossible to tell; the room’s windows had yellowed over the years.

I was there to talk to the 10- and 11-year-olds about gun violence, a topic I suspected many of them had been personally affected by.

“How many of you have heard a real gunshot by your house?” I asked. Twenty-four arms went up in the air.

“How many of you know someone – a family member or friend – who has been shot?” Eighteen students raised their hands.

For more than six months, I had been researching gun violence near elementary schools in my hometown of Richmond.

By analyzing police department data, I found that 41% of the 2,300 shots fired in the city over the past decade happened within a half-mile, or about a 10-minute walk, of one of the city’s 33 K-12 public schools.

More than 80% of the shootings that took place near schools occurred within a half-mile of an elementary school. Stege elementary has seen an average of six shootings nearby each year since the beginning of 2013.

Some of those shootings were homicides, some were armed robberies, some happened during the school day and some outside of it.

The campuses with the most incidents nearby were those in neighborhoods with lower median incomes than the rest of the city, census data showed.

This means that for the past decade, thousands of Richmond kids, many of whom are Black and Latino, were exposed to a violent incident before they turned 13.

Chronic exposure to gun violence like what some young kids in Richmond face can create a “war-zone” mentality among affected youth, James Garbarino, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago who specializes in child and adolescent development, argues in a 2022 New England journal of medicine article, resulting in a world view in which community violence is normal.

Yet few American school districts, including Richmond’s, have consistent programming for K-12 students to help them navigate the emotions, stress and anxiety that come with being exposed to day-to-day gun violence.

Most efforts in schools are centered on mass shootings, and the few initiatives focused on community gun violence that do exist are tailored towards high schoolers.

When I asked Geitner’s fifth graders how many had had someone at school – other than Geitner herself – talk to them about guns and violence, some of the kids raised their hands and began pointing to their peers.

But when I clarified that I meant teachers and school staff, all of the hands came down.….





https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...sd-richmond-california?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other