How the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reshaped safety in the minds of Monterey County students.
On Aug. 8, 2017, students and community members wearing brightly colored shirts that read "#SchoolsNotPrisons" filled rows of chairs at a Salinas Union High School District board meeting. In the back row, a handful of Salinas police officers and Chief Adele Fresé sat together. It quickly became standing room only.
On the agenda that night: whether or not Salinas Union High School District would put Salinas police officers on their campuses, as school resource officers.
Outspoken supporters of school resource officers, including Fresé, spoke about how increased student-to-police officer interactions in a non-disciplinary context make schools and communities safer. Speakers on the opposing side argued that officers on SUHSD campuses would only feed into the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, a theory that shows repeated punitive measures increase a child's likelihood to fall into the criminal justice system in their lifetime – especially for boys of color. SUHSD has an 87.6-percent Latino student population.
Nic Coury
Student after student spoke about experiences with violence in their communities. A few spoke about bad experiences they'd had with cops, both on and off campus. Their message: More policing, they said, would not make their schools safer.
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The board voted unanimously against placing school resource officers on SUHSD campuses. Like a domino effect, the next night, the board of Alisal Union School District followed suit, rejecting Salinas PD's offer.
At Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, the conversation over school safety has been different.
There, the conversation started out about fiscal solvency more than policing practices. The district splits the cost of school resource officers 50/50 with cities, paying $250,000 annually. Faced with some $5 million in budget cuts, the MPUSD board approved a plan that includes going from eight class periods to seven, and no longer paying its share of police officers in schools, effective in the 2018-19 school year.
What exactly that means for the fate of officers in MPUSD schools remains to be determined, in the event alternate sources of funding, such as grants, materialize.
Though the grownups on school district boards have spoken, a devastating shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – which claimed the lives of 17 students and staff on Feb. 14 – has reignited conversations about what school safety should look like. Students across the county (and the country) have organized walkouts, and put together phone-banking and letter-writing campaigns calling on policymakers for stricter gun control. Many seniors, who are 17 or 18, are promising to vote NRA-backed politicians out of office.
On a school-by-school level, some students are calling on their districts to re-evaluate school safety, this time on the their terms – though their views on what that means diverge. Marina High School students have been outspoken advocates in favor of keeping their school resource officer. Yet in the same district, MPUSD, Seaside High School students are instead calling for preventive measures like more outreach programs and counselors.
Meanwhile, Salinas students are still wondering what can be done to keep their city from being the youth murder capital of California.
As the country grapples with questions about firearms and the Second Amendment, as well as with how police officers should interact with schools, local districts are all asking the same fundamental questions: How do we keep children safe?
CHANCES ARE IF YOU GO TO SCHOOL IN MARINA, you know a school resource officer by their first name. By the time you attend middle school, those same officers are a regular fixture not only during the school day, but at after-school programs and in-school assemblies. "We grew up with a good relationship with our [school resource officer]," Marina High School senior Drake Johnson says. "Everyone knows him."
Johnson is one of the many Marina High students who have raised their voices against MPUSD's decision to reject the renewal of police contracts. Most recently, Johnson joined 150 students (out of a total of 557 at Marina High) who marched through the city on April 20 to remember the Columbine massacre.
It was the 19th anniversary of the shooting that left 15 people dead, and introduced what was to become an all-too-familiar concept to the American consciousness: the mass school shooting.
The Marina march's purpose was twofold: to memorialize the victims of Columbine, and to keep their school resource officer, Michael Ball.
Ball doesn't serve just as a watchtower for students. He is also first responder, and he's the front line of the school's diversion program, which is a multi-agency partnership between the school, Marina PD, as well as other county programs and nonprofits like the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center. The program partners aim to identify at-risk kids – usually first-time offenders – before their behavior can culminate into serious crimes.
It's a second chance, an out-of-court system that doesn't toss a kid in jail for things like a first-time fight or vandalism.
"He is actually working with students, not just punishing them," Johnson says.
Faced with the potential of their well-liked officer and diversion program going away, Johnson set up meetings with district leaders and members of the NAACP, which firmly advocates for outing police officers from schools.
While he did get face-to-face meetings with Marina's MPUSD board representatives, Tom Jennings and Wendy Root Askew, he didn't get what he says students wanted. "We received so much pushback from the start," Johnson says.
In light of increased student activism since Parkland, Johnson thinks MPUSD should reconsider what school safety looks like, with fresh eyes and student perspective – and a scope that goes beyond the budget: "How much is one student life worth?"
At Seaside City Councilman Dennis Alexander's first council meeting after the shooting, high school students gathered to support him, packing the council chambers in an emotional hearing with standing room only.
Nic Coury
IN FRONT OF A CROWD OF MORE THAN 1,000 STUDENTS JAM-PACKED INTO BLEACHERS, 17-year-old Seaside High School junior Sydney Johnson took to the podium on March 14 in the school's gym for a few reasons. One was to memorialize the victims in Parkland. Second was to join students nationwide to call for stricter gun control laws. Third, she wanted to address an issue closer to home: mental health.
"If we take away all their guns, they use bombs. When you take away the bombs, they use knives," Sydney Johnson (no relation to Drake) said in her address. "Where they continue to fail us is the support of our mental health."
Those remarks are against the backdrop of a school that's on the upswing: In January, Seaside High was nationally recognized for closing education gaps, preparing more kids than ever for college. (Johnson is one of those college-bound students.)
But as the school is gaining ground on academic success, Johnson, along with many of her classmates, are saying they have no one to talk to when the going gets tough. Johnson says the existing college counselors are not enough.
"Students are going through things that aren't related to school – family issues, emotional problems with friends, addiction issues," she says. "That's not in our counselors' job description."
Seaside High School's parents and students have been vocal about their needs when it comes to creating a culture of safety. The night of the Aug. 28, when the MPUSD board was set to vote on school resource officers, dozens of Seaside residents and community groups showed up in support of more counselors and decreased police presence on campus.
One Seaside student expressed distrust between residents and police, especially for students who are undocumented immigrants, or whose family members are. "The majority of students have parents who were born here, but what about those who don't?" she said. "Why would they go to a [school resource officer]?"
For Johnson, who is black, that experience of not knowing when to go to the police is true for her too – she can recount multiple times family members have been detained for no reason, or pulled over when "they did everything perfectly."
In Johnson's mind, if that trust isn't there in the first place, then her school shouldn't rely on police to protect them.
"School resources officers shouldn't be the first response to bad behavior," she says. "Students need resources to express themselves in healthy ways before it escalates into lashing out, hurting themselves or violence on campus."
IN THE WEEKS AFTER THE SHOOTING IN PARKLAND, NRA officials started talking about their idea for prevention: arming teachers. On Feb. 22, President Donald Trump suggested a financial incentive for teachers who agreed to carry a gun and got training. "They'll frankly feel more comfortable having the gun anyway," he said, according to media reports. "But you give them a little bit of a bonus."
On March 13, the day before Walkout Day, a teacher at Seaside High School did come to school with a gun. Dennis Alexander, also a Seaside City Council member, and at the time, a reserve officer for the Sand City Police Department, unintentionally fired his gun at the ceiling; falling debris left three students with minor injuries. He was teaching an administration of justice class.
Two days later, dozens of current and former students crammed into a standing-room-only City Hall to speak up in defense of their well-loved teacher. Sydney Johnson, the student who would speak the next day during the walkout, helped rally support for Alexander. Speaking to Seaside City Council, she said, "Family is forever, mistakes are temporary."
On March 19, Alexander resigned from the police reserves; on March 29, he resigned from MPUSD. The Monterey County District Attorney's Office continues investigating whether to file charges in connection to the incident.
WHEN STUDENTS RETURNED TO MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS HIGH SCHOOL after the mass shooting, they were ordered to wear clear backpacks. While a mass tragedy has thankfully not befallen students locally, some are already acquainted with measures inside their schools to try and keep violence outside.
At Salinas High School, the dress code goes beyond modesty; it bans blue and red, to avoid gang colors. Safety protocols, including probation officers and drug searches involving police dogs, are part of the school experience.
"These are things that are supposed to make us feel safe," 15-year-old sophomore Skylar Betts says. "But they don't."
Betts is one of the many organizers of the school's March 14 walkout, in solidarity with the victims in Parkland and pledging Never Again. But students also wanted to shine a light on the violence and the insecurities that students face regularly. Though Betts says SUHSD officials are doing the best they can combating gang membership and Salinas' repeated status as California's youth murder capital, those efforts hardly scratch the surface of what drives those problems.
When she sees her classrooms sniffed by drug dogs, Betts says it has the opposite effect from making her feel safer: It makes her more anxious and scared. And she says dress code enforcement singles out Latino students, especially when red or blue (the affiliate colors for Norteño and Sureño gangs) are involved.
"I've never been cited for a dress code violation when I wear red or blue," says Betts, who is white.
She wants more counselors, and an assurance that counselors are bound to confidentiality. Her take is that even with intensive safety measures at school, it's mostly outside of school where the intervention is really needed: "Safety is a complex issue."
She and other Salinas High students are going straight to the top with their demands – they're hoping lawmakers in Washington, D.C. are listening.
"We're not marching so that one school has to wear clear backpacks now," Betts says. "We marched to ban assault rifles and to have stronger age restrictions and background checks. The culture outside of school dictates our safety inside school."
At Seaside City Councilman Dennis Alexander's first council meeting after the shooting, high school students gathered to support him in front of City Hall.
ON MARCH 1, THE PACIFIC GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT received a report of threatening graffiti, scrawled in black pen on a bathroom wall in Pacific Grove High School.
"Imma shoot up this school / Just wait on it… my shooter, he already got a plan."
In another point in time, it might have been wiped away and forgotten. But this was two weeks after 17 died in Parkland.
In the subsequent days, PGPD received two more reports of threatening graffiti, culminating on March 7, just a week before national Walkout Day.
Green writing on the wall read, "bang bang like florida on #walkoutday."
Attendance at P.G. High on Walkout Day was just about 30 percent.
With the exception of that day, Pacific Grove Unified School District's director of school safety, Barbara Martinez, says students have rallied, refusing to be fazed by the fear of gun violence: "We did a lot of team-building with our students," she says. "They wanted to really build a sense of hope instead of fear. They believe their school campus is a safe place to be."
Pacific Grove police have not identified a suspect, despite calling in the FBI, reviewing surveillance footage and offering a $5,000 reward for information.
But the board of Pacific Grove Unified School District took a swift step of its own: On the night of March 8, they voted 5-0 to approve a powerfully worded resolution titled, "Demanding federal gun control action to prevent death and injury."
While the board called on the federal government to take action, they are also taking action themselves. When they meet on Thursday, May 3, the PGUSD board is set to hear a presentation from the district's facilities director on potential perimeter fencing at P.G. High School, Middle School and Forest Grove Elementary School. P.G.'s school resource officer recommended fencing for two reasons: one, to make it easier to keep track of who's coming and going from campus. Two, according to a report to the board: "it allows the campus the ability to completely lock down."
As laid out in their resolution calling for stricter gun control, PGUSD knows what's at stake: "Since the Sandy Hook Massacre in 2012, where 20 6 – and 7-year-old children and six members of the school's staff were murdered by a single gunman using a semi-automatic handgun and semi-automatic rifle, there have been more than 200 school shootings nationwide with 138 people killed and another 300 people injured, shattering communities and leaving emotional scars."
BEFORE HE WAS ELECTED TO CONGRESS, U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, worked as a prosecutor. He still clearly recalls a case in which two young men were cruising around on March 5, 2008. They were in the busy East Salinas neighborhood right near Alisal High, at 3:15pm, just as school was getting out. As Panetta puts it, "They were driving around, and hunting for Sureños. They came up to a car and shot right into it." (Fortunately, everyone survived.)
The shooters, Alberto Lopez and Steven Perez, pleaded guilty and received sentences of 50 years to life.
While gun violence is not a new problem, Panetta says the grassroots pressure on lawmakers is new. And while he hears from students in Salinas who are frustrated that their calls to end gun violence have gone unheeded, he says all across his district, from Santa Cruz to South County, the message is the same: "Some of them are questioning, ‘Why now? We've been dealing with it for a long time.' They also feel, let's get something done, because something does need to be done.
"You're seeing schools across the country be organized, come together and hopefully pressure our lawmakers to do the right thing."
For his part, Panetta – a first-term Democrat – says it's relatively easy for him to try to do the right thing as he hears from high-school-aged constituents and survivors from Parkland. The NRA has never attempted to contact him or donate money (he says he wouldn't accept it if they did).
And his two daughters, who both attend Carmel Middle School, have learned an escape route to a nearby field in case they ever have to flee a shooter. "This is something I never had to deal with," Panetta says. "The only thing we ever practiced was getting under our desk for an earthquake."
On April 25, Panetta introduced the Armed Prohibited Persons Act, which would provide federal grants to states to remove guns from convicted felons and mentally ill people deemed as dangerous.
He's realistic about the prospects of his bill given the climate in Washington – "the chances are slim" – but he's taking the long view, and hoping the balance of power shifts in the midterm election. "If [the majority] does change, these bills will be ready to go and hopefully be pushed through – and on the president's desk, where he's going to have to be confronted with having to sign or not."
Panetta is hopeful that something will finally get done, even if it takes time. "You have to have hope that there are students organizing and pushing," he says. "It's going to come down to when they vote."