The Journal. - What One School District Is Doing About Rising Gun Violence

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Gun violence among young people is on the rise. In Denver, Colorado, one high school in particular has experienced a number of violent incidents in the past year, including two shootings in which two students died. We visited East High School to meet students, teachers and the superintendent who decided to bring armed police back to schools. Further Reading: -‘My Kid Can’t Sleep’: Gun Violence Drives Denver to Return Armed Police to Schools  - Juvenile Crime Surges, Reversing Long Decline. ‘It’s Just Kids Killing Kids.’  Further Listening: - The Fight Over Banning the AR-15  - Remington's Surprising Sandy Hook Settlement  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's Kate. Today, our producer Enrique Perez de la Rosa is going to bring you a story about the fight in one school district over how to keep students safe from gun violence. Here's Enrique. Gun violence among young people has been rising across the country. From 2019 to 2021, the number of children and teens killed by gunfire increased by 50%. And in Denver, Colorado, the debate over how to keep young people safe is centered around its schools. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the progress monitoring session for the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. Earlier this month, parents, teachers and students voiced their concerns over rising gun violence to the Denver Public Schools Board of Education.

I can't believe that I have to fight for my safety, for the safety of my friends and and for the safety of my family, when I and everybody should already be safe. DPS doesn't care about the safety of their students. School should be a place where students are excited to be and not a place where they feel threatened and policed. A lot of that anger is directed towards Superintendent Alex Marrero, the person responsible for student safety. I'm not an elected official. I was hired, I was an educator, still identify as an educator, and I still identify as a principal, which is the best prerequisite to do my job.

Marrero has to come up with a plan to keep students safe in a school district with a rising gun problem. This past school year, 16 students were caught bringing guns to Denver schools, a five-year high. And the crisis has plagued one high school in particular, where students and administrators have been shot and two students have died. The access to guns is something I've never seen in my entire life. I'm from the Bronx. Things are tough down there. But we didn't see this type of gun violence.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Enrique Perez de la Rosa. It's Friday, June 30th. Coming up on the show, one school district's struggle against gun violence. Summer is like a cocktail. It has to be mixed just right. Start with a handful of great friends. Now, add your favorite music. And then, finally, add Bacardi Rum. And there you have it. The perfect summer mix.

Bacardi. Do what moves you. Live passionately. Drink responsibly. Copyright 2024. Bacardi, its trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum 40% alcohol by volume. Can you just do me a favor and introduce yourself? Yeah, I'm Matthew Fulford. I'm a social studies teacher at East High School. Matthew is originally from the UK, but he lives and breathes Denver history.

East High School is the oldest school in Denver. It's a Denver landmark. It's a historic building, and it's a place everyone in the community is really proud of. I met up with Matthew for a tour of East High near the end of the school year. It looks like a high school straight out of a movie. It's a red brick building built in a kind of what I think they call Jacobean style. It's modeled after the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It's got the same clock tower, and it's just one of the most beautiful parts of the city. East High is one of Denver's top public schools. It's hailed for its academics, athletics, and its arts programs. Among its alumni are people like actor Don Cheadle

and members of the band Earth, Wind & Fire. The building sits on a wide street lined with trees. When I was there, they were covered in streams of toilet paper. I see all the trees are teepeed. Yeah, that was a senior prank, unfortunately. It's a classic. Yeah, it's a classic. It's nice that despite the year that the school has had,

there's still that innocence and levity. I think that it's been really important to the students that they kind of come back for the last few weeks of school and really kind of have a normal end to the school year. And our seniors have been really wanting to just focus on all of the traditions and all of the fun and excitement that kind of should be happening at the end of the school year. East High has had a rough year from the very start. Two weeks into the first semester, a dispute among a group of teenagers escalated into gunfire.

A 14-year-old student walking by was hit in the face by a straight bullet and hospitalized. Just two weeks later, East High went into lockdown after reports of a gunman in the building. Police went room to room looking for a shooter, pointing guns and ordering students to leave with their hands up. But it turned out to be a hoax. looking for a shooter, pointing guns, and ordering students to leave with their hands up. But it turned out to be a hoax. And gun violence in the area has also caused East to go into lockdowns. So by February, we were kind of habituated to things happening. Going into lockdown, you know, not knowing what was going on,

felt like sort of like there was a long kind of chain of events that sort of felt scary and chaotic. On our tour of East High, Matthew showed me a big letter E for East that sits in front of the main entrance. Every year at senior checkout, when the seniors leave right before graduation, they sign the E and they sign their name on it. So it's sort of like leaving your mark behind in the school.

This year it looks a little bit different because the E has a white L painted onto it, which is in memory of our student Luis Garcia, who was murdered this February. Luis Garcia was a junior at East High. He was a player on the varsity soccer team. This school year, he helped East High bring home the state championship. On February 13th, Luis was in his car just outside school

when he was shot from a passing car. They had fired a couple shots into the park already. when he was shot from a passing car. They had fired a couple shots into the park already. But yeah, Luis had like circled back to tell one of our deans that he had heard shots. And then, yeah, he got shot. That's Clara Taub. She and her twin sister, Gracie, run the school's chapter of Students Demand Action,

a group that advocates for gun control legislation. Right after Luis was shot, everyone at East was told to stay in their classrooms. Clara says that, at first, she didn't think much of it. I don't remember processing it, though, when he was shot because it just felt normal that that would happen. Normal, why? normal that that would happen. Normal why? Just because of how often it happens and how often I read about it and just how often it happens to people my age and people like me. Two weeks later, Luis passed away in the hospital.

And when students learned the news of Luis's death, they gathered in front of the Big E to mourn. Students lit candles, laid flowers, and stood out in the cold for two hours. And they started to organize. No more silence and gun violence! No more silence and gun violence! No more silence and gun violence! The next day, on March 3rd, students rallied at the Colorado State Capitol to demand action on gun control.

They shared videos of the rally on social media. Here's Gracie. There were a lot of people who were still in grief. At the same time, I felt a lot of anger. I mean, I think if you could have heard our chanting, that's what maybe you would have felt is these kids are angry. What do we want? State schools! What do we want? Now! We had this energy that we are so frustrated this is still happening.

And I mean, we'd had this happen at the beginning of the year. It happened again. We were so frustrated. Students wanted legislators to pass a number of gun control bills, among them a measure to raise the minimum age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21. Colorado is controlled by a Democratic trifecta, but gun control bills are still hard to pass. A decade ago, voters recalled two state lawmakers when they supported tougher gun laws after the Aurora Theater shooting. But before any bills could pass, East High was rocked by another shooting. And this time, it was inside the building.

Four days after Luis's funeral, on the morning of March 22nd, Clara and Gracie were in the auditorium for a school assembly. Here's Clara. We hear the sirens go off, which is this like very loud, anxiety provoking, your school has been placed in a lockdown. And our immediate thought is panic. Like, if there's someone in the school right now, our auditorium doors are glass. There's like a thousand kids here. And we were just told to be quiet so we all go to twitter and i remember like seeing i remember turning around and asking this person i do not know i was like do you know what's going on and they show me this picture i think there was like

45 police cars outside east we have no idea what's going on. That's the first time I've had that, like, this could be the end. Outside the auditorium, in a front office, a 17-year-old student had been found with a gun. There was a struggle, and the student shot two staff members. All of this started coming out that teachers were shot. Like, it started coming out as we were sitting there, and it was, coming out that teachers were shot. Like, it started coming out as we were sitting there, and it was, to me, the part that stuck with me is, like, this was, like, feet from my classroom. This was in our school.

Like, I can't feel safe at all anymore. There's nothing left. The two staff members who were shot were hospitalized, and the student later died by suicide. Superintendent Alex Marrero was on a conference call with the chief of police and others when he found out about the shooting. Ten minutes in, someone barges into my office saying,

Dr. Marrero, there's been a shooting at East. So I look at the screen and I say, folks, we just had another shooting. It's at East. I'll meet you there. Marrero drove over to East High. On the way there, he learned that the shooting had taken place inside the school. He decided to make a controversial decision. Knowing the situation at East and the three now, incidences that they had,

and how close we were to the end of the school year, to me, it was a no-brainer that I needed to have an active presence there or else I was truly going to have mutiny or zero attendance. So before I walked in, I said, Mayor, Chief, I hope that I have your commitment to have an armed officer at East for the remainder of the school year. your commitment to have an armed officer at East for the remainder of the school year. Morero decided that school resource officers, armed cops who would patrol the school, should be placed at East High School. And that decision unleashed a wave of controversy. That's after the break. We'll see you next time. get a chicken parmesan delivered a cabana that's a no but a banana that's a yes a nice tan sorry nope but a box fan happily yes a day of sunshine no a box of fine wines yes uber eats can definitely get you that get almost almost anything delivered with uber eats order now alcohol and select markets product availability may vary by regency app for details need a great reason to get up in the morning? Well, what about two? Right now,

get a small organic fair trade coffee and a tasty bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. After the shooting inside East High School, administrators decided to start spring break early to give students and teachers time to recover. But the downside of that was we were all really isolated. That's Matthew Fulford again, the social studies teacher. He says that after the shooting inside East,

he was nervous to come back to work. I've never, I come back to work. I've never, I love coming to work. I love what I do. I've never dreaded coming back to work the way I did over spring break. Just, you know. Why did you dread it? I think it was partly fear, but also just, I just felt by this point, it just felt like a cycle. And I was like, I can't do that to myself again.

felt by this point, it just felt like a cycle. And I was like, I can't do that to myself again. I can't try. It takes a lot of energy to try to restore stability to the classroom, to the school, to kind of get students back into the rhythm of things. And that takes a big toll. Matthew says that students felt especially burned out. You know, I had a lot of students who just never came back, you know, some students who just, know, I had a lot of students who just never came back, you know, some students who just, they were doing work from home or I just didn't hear from them. And, you know, we were worried about how they were doing because, you know, we were healing each other as a community, but I also totally understood why some people would not want to walk back into the building. What would you like to see the school district do?

I absolutely think that SROs need to be in large high schools permanently. You know, they've done, since they came back, they've done such a great job at our school of connecting with students and making us feel safer. Denver Public Schools used to have school resource officers, or SROs, at high schools in the district. But back in 2020, many in the district wanted to take police out of schools. The debate was part of a broader conversation on police reform, sparked by national protests after the murder of George Floyd. Many parents in Denver argued that school police disproportionately target Black and Latino students, who make up two-thirds of the school district. Ultimately, the school board voted to get rid of school police.

But three years later, and with mounting shootings at East, Superintendent Alex Marrero says he was left with little choice but to bring armed officers back. But the circumstances were so clear, and to someone say it's being reactive, no, it's being responsive. How can you plan to open up that school the next day just saying, hey, I'm sorry this happened? It's just simply not gonna work.

It was 100% the right decision. Marrero also put armed officers in about a dozen other Denver high schools. The decision was technically against school board policy, but the board let Marrero bring officers back for the rest of the school year. Staff overwhelmingly have given me feedback for the two years that they wanted them, parents as well, especially when we started to see the violence happening close to the schools, in particular East. I think when it comes to our teachers, it has been favorable for them to return,

meaning they didn't want them to leave. The board also asked Marrero to come up with a comprehensive safety plan before July, one that goes beyond having armed officers. To come up with that plan, Marrero has organized several public meetings. Where angry parents and teachers demanded that the board, that Marrero do something. That's our colleague Dan Frosch. He's been following Marrero's efforts

to create a safety plan. Parents were yelling at him saying their children couldn't concentrate in school anymore, that their children couldn't go to school anymore because they were too terrified of what was happening. Teachers were presenting him lists of demands saying we need more metal detectors, we need more mental health counselors.

And so he's at the center, he's the face of the public school district facing this oncoming barrage from every corner. And so it became this incredibly divisive, angry, yet totally understandable emotional outcry for Marrero and the district to do something. Because at a fundamental level, parents were terrified about sending their kids to school, and teachers were terrified of teaching in the schools. And how did Marrero handle these meetings? I think what Marrero understood very quickly was that everyone was really angry and wanted a quick fix. But simply standing up in front of a town hall where a thousand people are shouting at you is not going to get him any closer to coming up with a safety plan.

is not going to get him any closer to coming up with a safety plan. So what he did with his staff was convene these private meetings with select groups of staff, teachers, students, and try to use them as sounding boards for what should go into this safety plan before presenting it back to the board. Did you attend any of the private meetings? I did. I attended two of the private meetings, and I found them to be really fascinating because you had this group of teachers, parents, staff, students

wrestling with these really, really difficult issues right there in person. And there were plenty out in the public eye in the district saying, oh, this school district is not doing anything to address these issues. They're not holding enough public meetings. But there really was a lot of work going on behind the scenes. A lot of that work focused on armed officers in schools. Dan remembers one exchange between two people. The first was against them.

He was very forceful at the meeting, saying, we cannot bring police back to campus. It's not a good idea. There has been, throughout the history of time, there's never been a good example where police have been beneficial to Black folks, particularly young Black folks. And if we bring police back to campus, we are going to see just sort of an extension of that. One parent at the meeting disagreed. Listen, the Black community doesn't speak monolithically on this issue. just sort of an extension of that. One parent at the meeting disagreed. Listen, the Black community doesn't speak monolithically on this issue. There have been plenty of school resource officers

in schools that I've worked in who have been helpful. And what happens when we don't have school resource officers who can build relationships with kids and teachers call random police when there's an incident and those cops show up who don't know any of these kids. Marrero says the debate around school resource officers took center stage at these meetings. It has been the major part of the conversation in terms of the airspace taken up, which I think is a necessary step we need to take, but my hope

and what we need is to move on from that so we can engage in the other conversation. So it is still the biggest debate, followed by weapons detection technology, and then a third is mental health in terms of how we're providing it. On June 15th, the school board met to vote on whether to bring back armed officers permanently. Without the motion passes, EL 10.10, as amended, has passed.

Welcome back, cops, y'all. We have completed all business before the board. After almost four hours of debate, Marrero got what he wanted. The board voted 4-3 in favor of reinstating police officers to Denver schools. Marrero says he understands the decision won't satisfy everyone, and that it wouldn't completely shield students and staff from violence. Today, Marrero released his 57-page safety plan for the district. In addition to the return of school police officers, there are also plans to improve mental health services for students and staff.

It also says that principals should decide on whether to put metal detectors in their schools. The plan now goes to the school board for approval. It's not realistic to have six weeks to put up a safety plan that's going to fix a national phenomenon. If that's the case, then no, we would have had it already. Does it feel like an impossible job? It is, but I see the benefit in that there's going to be, you know, camaraderie in our district and some unity.

In terms of a fix, never thought that this was going to be the fix. Before we go, we wanted to tell you about something exciting coming to the feed next week. It's a four-part series called With Great Power, The Rise of Superhero Cinema. It's hosted by my colleague Ben Fritz, who's been working on this for two years. Hey, Kate. How's it going?

It's going really well. This podcast is almost done. You're in a closet. I'm in a closet. We're obviously podcasting. What else do people do in closets in 2023 besides record podcasts? Exactly. So, Ben, you have this awesome series coming out next week about superhero cinema. What exactly is superhero cinema? Superhero cinema are all those movies that maybe you go to all the time or maybe you keep hearing about and are sick of. You know, The Avengers, Black Panther, Captain Marvel.

Spider-Man. Spider-Man, oh my gosh. Flash, Guardians of the Galaxy. The list goes on forever. And the fact that the list goes on forever is sort of what this podcast story is about. How did superhero movies take over Hollywood? Half of the top 10 movies in any given year recently

are superhero films from Marvel or DC. How did that happen? You know, when I was a kid, comic books were for geeks and nerds and losers like me. Oh, Ben. Now they completely rule. Because my husband was deep into comic books and I'm not putting him in the loser column. Not anymore. But that's the thing. Now we're cool. This rise of superhero cinema largely focuses on one company, on Marvel.

Correct. Because Marvel is both an amazing business story and, of course, they are the dominant superhero movie company right now, which is in and of itself kind of unlikely. 25 years ago, Marvel was barely surviving. Okay, cool. What are people going to learn that's new? All modesty aside, I've interviewed people who have never gone on tape before, who have never told their stories before. And I've got stories of fights, of deals that have never been reported on before. And, you know, I've been covering this stuff for 20 years and I learned things doing this podcast.

So I definitely think the fans are going to learn about personalities, opinions that they never knew about before. Okay, so what if you're not interested in superhero movies? Well, if you listen to the journal, if you're listening right now, you're probably interested in great business journalism. And I mean, this is the biggest thing to happen in Hollywood. It's a truly compelling corporate drama. It's a great business story. So Ben, let's listen to this trailer. Let's do it. So Iron Man, Captain America, Thor.

Batman, Superman. Spider-Man. I just love everything at the heart of the Spidey universe. Wonder Woman. Black Widow and Hawkeye. Gamora and Star-Lord. At the box office, no one wields more power than superheroes.

They gross billions of dollars, break records, and mint new movie stars. But whether you think superheroes are the only reason to go to the movies these days, or they're the death of cinema, you've got to know

how they took over Hollywood. And Marvel at the time was in very poor shape. There was piles of furniture in the corner with a post-it note that said sold. They were selling filing cabinets for cash. He doesn't seem like a second tier character anymore, but it's like, who's Iron Man? I was petrified.

I remember thinking, oh my God, I've made a really emotional comic book movie. I hope people are going to go for it. And I hope we all get to work in this town again when it's all said and done. It's a story of audacious ideas and incredible luck. A story of how a very unlikely group of people turned Marvel from a bankrupt comic book publisher to the most successful movie studio of the modern era. We were a nothing company.

So the idea that we could actually make movies was an astounding idea. And if you thought the fights on screen were fierce, wait till you hear what went on behind the scenes. He developed a fire in his belly of hatred. And we won't do this, and you won't do that, and we won't do this, and you need us, and we don't need you. I mean, I thought the final film was terrible.

It didn't feel like we're all on the same team here. We were never all on the same team. I'm Ben Fritz from The Wall Street Journal. I've spent most of the past 20 years covering Hollywood. And the story

of superhero movies isn't just a great Hollywood drama. It's one of the best business stories of our lifetimes. From The Journal, a new four-part series

with great power, The Rise of Superhero Cinema. Find our new series in The Journal feed on Spotify, From the Journal, a new four-part series. With great power, the rise of superhero cinema. Find our new series in the Journal feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coming July 5th. We hope you'll check it out. That's all for today, Friday, June 30th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal.

Additional reporting in this episode by Sarah Randazzo, Dan Frosch, and Shannon Najmabadi. The show is made by Maher Adoni, Annie Baxter, Ariana Bowe, Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Ariana Bowe, Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Pia Godkari, Rachel Humphries, Brian Knudsen,

Matt Kwong, Jessica Mendoza, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez-Espinosa, Heather Rogers,

Jonathan Sanders, Pierce Singey, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, and me, Kate Leinbaugh. Today is Ariana's last day with us. Ariana, best of luck.

Thank you for all your work on the show. We'll miss you. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard, with help this week from Sam Baer. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger,

Nathan Singapak, So Wiley, and Blue Dot Sessions. Fact-checking by Nicole Pasulka and Kate Gallagher. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.