Every kid is reachable. by Ashley Nerbovig Two Seattle high schools opened their doors on Monday to violence intervention teams as the City and Seattle Public Schools (SPS) strive to reduce gun violence in and around the city’s schools. SPS and the City contracted with teams from Community Passageways and the Boys & Girls Club of King County’s SE Network SafetyNet to work within Garfield High School and Rainier Beach High School to help stop shootings before they happen and to build relationships with kids most likely to be affected by gun violence. Community Passageways CEO Dominique Davis made his goal for the year clear: No shootings at Garfield for the whole school year. On Tuesday, Garfield Principal Dr. Tarance Hart arranged for Davis’s specialists to meet with students in every grade. The safety specialists are trained to stay calm, remain empathetic, allow time for people to make their own decisions, and to approach the situation as an equal rather than a person of authority. Davis plans to station six of his specialists in their fluorescent yellow shirts at the school, with at least two people inside the school at all times to make sure students flow through the halls safely and to try to keep their ears to the ground about potential conflict. When fights or arguments break out, Davis’s teams can respond to help de-escalate. Community Passageways will also place a case manager in the school, which should be funded through the city budget. That person will help connect students and families with services, such as rental assistance, or, in some cases, temporary housing if they’re scared of retaliatory shootings targeting their homes, Davis says. Davis wants his specialists to act as proactively as possible to make sure kids most affected by gun violence remain connected to the school.  SE Network also plans to have six violence interrupters inside Rainier Beach, where they’ve had case managers since 2018. Both SE Network SafetyNet and Community Passageways already station violence interrupters around both schools to de-escalate arguments and fights. The group focuses their efforts before school and during lunchtime, and they provide safe passage to students after school. The two shooting incidents at Garfield last school year happened while Community Passageways specialists were absent, including the shooting at the end of last year that killed 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine on June 6. At the time, the Community Passageways team was attending a gun violence prevention conference at Lumen Field. With this new memorandum of understanding with the schools, Davis says his new teams won’t miss any days. While Community Passageways began expanding its work to include more foot patrols around the school in 2023, SE Network has worked with the students at Rainier Beach High School since 2015 through its Safe Passage program, which has its community safety specialists in recognizable blue coats, walking around the neighborhood around Rainier Beach, including around the community center, the library, and the school. Students also regularly attend the SE Network’s Friday night Community Healing Space Activation in the Safeway parking lot that abuts the high school.  The SE Network SafetyNet Community Healing Space Activation sets up chairs for people to gather in a circle and talk about good and bad things happening in the community. Billie Winter That healing space provides a one example of how the SE Network organizes to decrease crime and violence in the Rainier Beach community. SE Network began setting up in the lot in 2020 after the shooting deaths of two young Black men. For three years, SE Network showed up to the lot, provided hot meals to people, played music, and set up chairs for people to sit and talk.  A shooting at the end of last year that left five people injured served as the exception, not the rule, for these gatherings. As SE Network Executive Director Marty Jackson pointed out then, for three years the group had dealt with zero shootings in the lot during their events. The shooting occurred outside the parking lot, with the bullets spraying in through the fence. The group took a little break to recover after the shooting, but they ultimately relaunched the activation space.  That’s where The Stranger spoke with Rainier Beach High School sophomore Que, 15, who says she likes the SE Network safety specialists, or the “Be Safe Bros,” and that they’re more effective than teachers when it comes to breaking up fights and de-escalating arguments. The kids look at them more as their friends, and it's easier to talk to them, she said.  SE Network SafetyNet “Be Safe Bros” wear distinctive blue jackets with their message stamped on their backs. Billie Winter Another student, 16-year-old Maryan, says kids trust the SE Network team. They liked the idea of putting the team in the schools, especially instead of having more police in the halls. Que, Maryan, and their other friend, Faye, all say they’d prefer more counselors and social workers in the schools over more cops. Community safety specialist Hassan Qatamin started working for the SE Network about a year ago, and he says he’s able to see the difference in the kids he works with everyday. Every kid needs something different, he says, and some of it requires the SE Network’s case managers. But some of it just means showing up every day, talking to the kids, talking to them about staying on top of their grades, seeing if they have something to do after school, and asking if they want to join a Boys and Girls Club program. People on the SE Network team really care about the Rainier Beach community as a whole, as well as the students. They want to see them succeed, and with the right resources, Qatamin says more kids would be able to stay on track, graduate, and maybe come back and keep helping the community grow. “Every kid is reachable,” Qatamin says.