Mayor Bruce Harrell’s $10 million proposal for “mental health support and school safety” in response to the tragic shooting at Garfield amounts to a budget cut as the City fails to free up the bureaucracy-bungled $20 million that students won in 2023 to prevent future tragedy after the last time a student shot and killed another student at Ingraham High School.
“It’s a disappointment and doesn’t follow through on [the City’s] commitment to better serve youth and communities like in Reach Out Seattle,” said Chetan Soni, a representative for the Seattle Student Union, a group of local high school students that lobbies for gun safety legislation and mental health care in schools.
After a 14-year-old shot and killed another child at Ingraham High School in November 2022, the Seattle Student Union demanded that the Seattle City Council reroute $9 million from the Seattle Police Department to pay for mental health counselors in schools, which they believed would better prevent gun violence.
That year, the council unanimously approved a joint proposal by the Mayor and then-Council Member Teresa Mosqueda to increase funding for mental health resources in K-12 schools by $4 million over the 2022-2023 biennium. That money came from a mix of JumpStart and levy funds.
In 2023, the council narrowly passed (5-4) then-Council Member Kshama Sawant’s bill to raise JumpStart less than one-twentieth of one percent to pay for $20 million worth of mental health counselors in schools. While the City began collecting the increased tax rate at the beginning of the year, the council must pass another law to authorize the Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) to spend it, according to the Mayor’s office. That’s because mental health counselors fall outside the purposely restricted use for JumpStart revenue: Affordable housing, Green New Deal initiatives, economic development, and a little bit to administer the tax.
But gun violence continued as the City sat on the money.
On June 6, 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed in the school parking lot while attempting to break up a fight. The Seattle Student Union posted a statement on Instagram, demanding Harrell and the City of Seattle release the $20 million they won in 2023 by the upcoming school year this fall.
“I’m just thinking, like, if this money were implemented quicker, would this have happened?” Soni said in a phone interview. “I don’t know.”
The Stranger asked the Mayor’s office more than once if he will support changing JumpStart to allow DEEL to spend the $20 million the council approved in 2023. Mayoral spokesperson Callie Craighead said, “It is not feasible for the City to stand up a $20 million program in six months” due to a “national shortage of psychiatrists and mental health workers.” Craighead repeated the Mayor’s commitment to seek $10 million from JumpStart in the mid-year supplemental budget, which will include $2.4 million for telehealth services and $2 million toward violence prevention. This move will serve 2,000 students—“a number determined by [City] research of students considered medium to high risk,” she said.
The Mayor’s $10 million investment still requires approval from the city council to spend, Craighead said.
The city council doesn’t seem motivated to set the full $20 million loose, either. In a budget committee meeting last week, Council Member Maritza Rivera—who used the tragedy at her kids’ school, Ingraham, to propel her campaign— expressed skepticism about the funding. Budget Chair Dan Strauss did not respond directly when The Stranger asked if he would act to free up the revenue generated by Sawant’s 2023 JumpStart hike.
“We are assessing what needs to be changed and how to get dollars out the door quickly to support student’s mental health,” Strauss said in a text to The Stranger.
One could argue that to propose $10 million and ignore a previous commitment of $20 million amounts to cuts to mental health resources for students. Soni speculated that the Mayor is trying to use the DEEL money as a “sneaky” way to balance the $250 million budget shortfall in 2025. He pointed to Rivera’s universally condemned amendment to freeze up funding to Equitable Development Initiatives as another possible attempt from the City to use JumpStart funds to fill the deficit, something big business seems to be lobbying for.
The Mayor’s office did not address accusations of withholding the funds to balance the budget in an email exchange with The Stranger. The Mayor’s office also did not respond to a request for comment about the characterization of their $10 million investment as a cut to the promised $20 million.
It took us a year to find an MSW to treat our daughter – counseling for the usual teen stuff. Trained mental health support is a in very short supply right now and the idea that they can “fix” the powerful forces of poverty, grievance, and loneliness of the American psyche in the schools is a very tall order.
that’s Okay
we’d Much rather
Bitch about the Symptoms
of Amerikkka Inc LLC [lol] than
Address their Causes.
just say No to
predatory Winner
-take-ALL Capitalism
‘Private Equity’ not to Men-
tion Housing-as fucking-Commodity
and a Citizenry, second-fiddled into a one-way
Meal ticket for Monopolies Profiteers & Billionaires
tho I repeat
myself. the Business
of America IS Business
the
Citizenry,
Secondary.
at best with
Mother Nature
who always bats
Last not even an
Honorable Mention.
Small Wonder
those set to Inherit
this now-ravaged Planet
are a lettle bit
Pissed Off.
A good way to tell that Hannah doesn’t actually give a fuck about the mental health of children is that when parents begged the city to protect their kids from rampant criminality in their neighborhood Hannah wrote an article ripping the shit out of them:
“The issue was gun violence, fire, and drug use at the encampment (which exists because people can’t afford a home, just saying). Some parents used that framing to argue that KCRHA must sweep the encampment immediately and treat residents like “any other criminal ” by jailing them for using drugs and firearms.”
https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/03/21/78913110/the-parents-dont-want-shelter-they-want-sweeps
Said one parent that Hannah criticized for being concerned about the well being of his children:
“If someone has a gun a block from a school, he said the conversation should be about arresting that person, not referring them to shelter.”
Immediately after this quote Hannah embedded a tweet saying “This is a photo of wealthy people who DGAF about the survival needs of people in their community.”
When parents begged the city to protect their children’s mental and physical well being from people with guns committing crimes, Hannah said the parents were in the wrong, and the criminals with guns were who the city should accommodate. Shootings like the one at Garfield are the predictable consequence of Hannah’s demand that no one be held accountable for criminality, ever, especially when it harms children. Stop pretending that you care about the well being of children when it’s clear you don’t. They’re just another pawn for your constant mendacity.
For every mental health counselor in a public school, they need to add a mental health counselor to the local police precinct. Cops are all crazy as jay-birds.
@6
so True.
they need
all the punching
bags the City can supply
and’re likely
vastly Cheaper
than the Public
at large. good idea.
“A national shortage of psychiatrists and mental health workers” you say? Well clearly we need to increase city psychiatrist and mental health worker entry level pay to at or around the highest in the nation and provide hiring bonuses. Or does that only apply to city workers who arrive after the fact, not the people who might actually prevent a tragedy from even occurring?
@8
that only ‘works’
for those who use
Deadly Force — not for
those who may Prevent it.
so for Now
we’d Much rather
Bitch about the Symptoms
than even consider Addressing their Causes
we’re being
Socially Engineered
by all the Wrong People.
@10: “…students said they want more counselors, but they also have been polled as wanting metal detectors, zero-tolerance weapons policies, and things that would prevent them from having to sit in class with known criminals.”
See @5 for an excellent recounting of how the Stranger responded to parents of kindergarten students, after those parents had the unmitigated gall to ask for a gun-free environment near said kindergarten.
Somehow, I doubt the Stranger will be any more supportive of older students who request gun-free schools, either.
Once upon a time Garfield had a police officer assigned to its grounds. Then 2020 happened. The enlightened denizens of 206 found the ghost of Elridge Cleaver clanging around #BLM irresistible, and thus began the New Way.
By now, the adherents of the New Way that I have known in person, specifically those with kids, have to a one put their kids in private schools, moved out of the district for safer places, or actually left the country for purposes of safety and sanity.
When I say adherents, I mean to say these individuals professed fidelity to the New Way on social media and ftf to coworkers, casual friends and chance encounters. However, often at night, after the 2nd glass of wine in the backyard tent where schooling “pods” brought parents together, they confessed in solemn hushed tones (lest the neighbors hear) that they needed to get the kids out.
Of course they all had one thing in common – affluence. And as such their dalliance with warmed over black nationalism, was what can be called a “luxury belief.” At home that final month, when I entered my partners daughters room to change the ceiling light bulb, I noticed that the wall I had painted in blackboard paint had been converted into a police slaying billboard where once it had been a riot of art and whimsy of a gifted 9 year old. Below in the office, school transfer papers lay atop the now discarded copy of Kendi.
For those who are not affluent, who cannot afford to indulge in luxury beliefs then inoculate themselves from their effects, we are left in the debris. Another shooting in Garfield. Another scolding from the Strangler.
@12 you really think having a cop in the school would have prevented this? Big-government libs are really recycling “good guy with a gun?”
@13: Unsurprising, that’s all you got out of @12.
But thanks for picking up the slack for the Stranger’s staff on the weekend. Validating @5 and @10, and, more importantly, reminding everyone just how gawdawful the abolitionist position really was, all performs a valuable public service. Thank you!
@14 no I also got out of it that @12 associates primarily with classic Seattle performative libs, and when their daughter became politically aware they tried to nip it in the bud by uprooting her to a different school. But that’s all besides the point, which is that putting cops in schools is an infinitely stupider intervention than adding mental health resources.
@15: “…putting cops in schools is an infinitely stupider intervention than adding mental health resources.”
I wasn’t aware this was an either/or proposition. Thank you for clarifying that!
There’s just no way having police at schools could possibly make any students feel safer, because you said so. Another helpful clarification!
(It must be nice, living in such a clean, simple, strictly-ordered, and thus easy-to-understand little world. None of that messy nuance the rest of us must deal with on the daily.)
@16 what you or I think might possibly maybe make students feel safer is not important. The students themselves requested more mental health resources. The city says there’s no money for that which means, financially speaking, it was an either/or proposition. That money was spent on something else (maybe the recent massive new pay raise for cops?).
@17: “The students themselves requested more mental health resources.”
Yes, they did:
“…but they also have been polled as wanting metal detectors, zero-tolerance weapons policies, and things that would prevent them from having to sit in class with known criminals.”
Luckily, they have you here to tell them how stupid they are in asking for such things.
until parents take an interest in raising their kids, none of these bandaids will help much. letting Auntie and Grammy raise these hellcats is a recipe for more of the same. Nice try though, performative words about ‘more counseling’ will really make a difference.
@18 first of all you appear to be quoting a comment by “420blazeit” that didn’t cite to any actual poll so I’m not certain that’s accurate. But regardless nowhere does it state that any students want cops in schools, which is what I called a stupid intervention. So while your ideas are definitely stupid I wouldn’t say the same about the students’
City pols good at sitting on their hands.
@20 — It’s fine for the Seattle Student Union to demand whatever they want, but nobody should view it any differently than when SA/Sawant would pack the council chamber with people yelling about whatever topic was on their mind at the time. They’re a high school DSA/SA group and should be viewed accordingly.
More importantly, considering there is a statistical reduction in firearm related crimes and homicide (good!) with more active policing, along with a ton of analysis that says that additional police hires reduce criminal activity (particularly homicide, which is what we’re talking about here), you should reassess your incorrect position that cops in schools is a stupid intervention. Just because you don’t like cops doesn’t change the mountain of data that having more of them reduces homicides. We should want schools to be gun free zones. The only way to realistically enforce that is to have cops assigned to schools to deal with the students who are breaking the law by carrying guns.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4850382
@22 data is inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction on the question whether more police equals less homicide (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/us/police-crime.html), but more to the point data is fairly clear that School Resource Officers do not reduce gun crime in schools.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-police-prevent-some-violence-but-not-shootings-research-finds/2023/07
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pam.22498
“We find that SROs effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent gun-related incidents.”
Also:
https://humanecology.wisc.edu/research-insights-police-may-not-make-schools-safer/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cl2.1360
“The existing literature does not find that School Based Law Enforcement makes schools safer. The evidence suggests that SBLE has detrimental consequences, particularly for exclusionary discipline.”
The kids are not alright, that’s pretty evident. It’s also evident that using guns to solve disputes is becoming the norm all over the country and Seattle is no different. The kids seem more interested in solving a centuries old problem in the middle east that they just learned about. Sadly many more will die and from this form of domestic terrorism but we don’t recognize it as such or want to admit it. There are too many people making too much money from things like guns and social media that are causing real mental health and educational issues and there seems to be very little courage to take it on. Debating whether we have the police or mental health resources has its place but it’s like debating great gas mileage on a car that has wheels falling off.
@26 until you address poor and/or absent parenting, no amount of police or mental health spending will fix the majority of the criminal behavior. the fact that murder convictions are rare and relatively light does not help either. http://www.king5.com/article/news/local/2-men-sentenced-southcenter-mall-parking-garage-shooting-claimed-life/281-4e5d514d-8033-45b9-b9d4-01f7ea61dcec
School counselors aren’t there to prevent shootings; their job is to rubber-stamp students’ self-diagnoses of popular maladies they found out about on the internet. Think of TikTok as the doctor and your school mental health counselor as a notary public.
Vote out every worthless Seattle School Board member. The board is owned by Labor Unions and work for them first.
Why is City of Seattle responsible for any public school? The only reason is more money for our failed and bloated Seattle Schools and a rotten superintendent.
Or perhaps we can go after the bad guys with guns who are terrorizing the community. You know, like Nikita Oliver types who shouldn’t be in prison because it’s racist or something.
Oh sorry, I always try to put this here. Hanna is just the epitome of a clueless white chick who thinks she somehow know how the “ghetto works.” It makes me horribly embarrassed for her via proxy.