“A Nation at Risk,” a federal report issued in 1983, became a gospel of education reform. The phrase “at risk” became shorthand for Black urban youths in danger of plunging through an increasingly porous safety net.
In Richmond, our kids have become appallingly at risk of gun violence. Since Easter, a Christian celebration of resurrection, eight people have been killed in the city — four of them juveniles.
This shocking state of affairs is, horrifically, a trend: 169 young people shot in Richmond since 2019, said Richmond Superintendent Jason Kamras. “Nearly all of those were RPS students.”
Kamras didn’t sign up for this: He’s an educator, not a law enforcement officer or an infantry platoon sergeant. But as the leader of the city’s public schools, he has witnessed an unnatural level of youth carnage, as have the district’s teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists, custodians and other employees.
Before free meals became a staple of public education, educators argued convincingly that hunger hinders learning.
No less applies to community violence.
“Our community, our schools, they are hurting. And they should be focused on the SOLs, which we’re giving in two weeks,” Kamras said at Monday’s City Hall news conference. “And instead, many of them this morning and last week and tomorrow are holding grief sessions.”
Remember that the next time we lament RPS’ underperformance on standardized tests. It’s hard to see how any vestige of education reform would avert these tragedies. These deaths did not come as a result of a mass shooting inside a schoolhouse; they occurred in the community.
“It’s been a terrible two weeks in our city,” Police Chief Rick Edwards said. “Kids have seen their parents killed. Parents have seen their kids killed.”
And lest people feel safe, snug and smug in suburbia, Chesterfield and Hanover counties have also experienced deadly teen violence in April.
“I believe the children are our future,” Whitney Houston sang in her 1980s hit, “The Greatest Love of All.” This violence, and our inability to shepherd our kids through adolescence, is robbing our city of a piece of its future.
The bloodshed has led Edwards to lay down a curfew and start Operation Safe Summer on Friday, nearly two months ahead of schedule. But there are no easy answers for a problem with so many root causes, including trauma’s vicious cycle.
Last week, Kamras attended a standing-room-only funeral for a slain Martin Luther King Middle School student. “And what struck me is all of the kids from MLK who were able to attend, they all have the T-shirts with the picture of the friend that they lost,” he recalled.
“What is heartbreaking is that so many of our kids have that T-shirt, and many of them have multiple T-shirts. No child should have a T-shirt of a friend that they lost to gun violence, let alone two, three or four of them.”
Edwards recalled escorting four children at a homicide scene at Mosby Court last week. “From 15-year-old down to the 3-year-old, having to see those children crying as they’re passing their dead parents is heartbreaking for all of us.” A 17-year-old male was found with a gunshot wound at the scene.
Our criminal justice system, no doubt out of frustration, is targeting parents and educators in response to unfathomable youth violence.
Last week, former Richneck Elementary School Assistant Principal Ebony Parker was charged with felony child neglect amid allegations that she ignored warnings that a 6-year-old who shot his first grade teacher had brought a gun to school. The boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, was sentenced in December to two years in state prison for felony child neglect; she also received 21 months in federal prison on federal gun and marijuana-related charges.
“I want every parent to know that has opened up a whole ‘nother level of case law,” Mayor Levar Stoney said of the Michigan case during Monday’s news conference.
I’m not sure if “tough on parents” will be any more effective than “tough on drugs” as a crime prevention measure. These teens hardly need to snatch a parent’s piece. There are plenty of firearms to be had illegally on the streets in a nation with the dubious distinction of having more guns than people.
We wax nostalgic for the era when “the village” stepped in to help raise each child. And yes, I’m a byproduct of that era in which every adult in the community felt a sense of responsibility for other people’s children. But nowadays, I suspect it’s hard enough for parents to keep track of their own kids, especially in communities with a paucity of two-parent households.
Government tries to fill the void. But it’s a poor substitute for a parent.
“There’s no dollar that can fill in every single gap,” Stoney said. “There’s no employee on the city payroll that can fill in every single gap. And that’s why we are here collectively pleading with our neighborhoods, which back in the day used to raise our kids as well.”
That village, nowadays, has been gutted by an information superhighway and buffeted by the noxious effects of social media and the easy availability of firearms, a match-to-fuse combination for the young mind.
Edwards recalled the 1990s, when the motives for violence were turf, drugs and robbery.
“As bad as those are, at least that makes more sense,” he said. Nowadays, small arguments escalate. Everyone in the war of words is armed. One bullet fired leads to many.
When folks long for the good old days of a fistfight, or look at Richmond’s triple-digit homicide era of the 1990s as a time of relative sanity, you know we’ve reach a point of deep despair and desperation. Our region is not alone. Since 2020, firearms have been the No. 1 cause of death among children and teens in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When energy we could exert to educate our kids is being expended to keep them alive, we’re a nation at risk for sure.
After protesters toppled Confederate statues on Monument Avenue and then-Gov. Ralph Northam announced his intent to remove the Robert E. Lee m…
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney listens during a news conference on Monday as Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras outlines the impacts of gun violence on the school system and student body.
On Monday, Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards announces the department will relaunch Operation Safe Summer, a partnership with Virginia State Police, to address youth gun violence. Police had intended to do that in June, but they will relaunch the initiative early because of the recent spate of shooting deaths.