By Srishti Prabha | OBSERVER Staff Writer
On Tuesday this week, Grant Union High School students found themselves having to barricade their doors in response to a campus shooting, with Leah Nelson, President of Grant High’s Associated Student Body, among them.
“I think that when you hear the words lockdown, your heart immediately goes racing and your mind goes all the wrong places,” said Leah.
Looking over to her friends and her Grant High community, she said she was able to remain calm in a crisis.
“I remember seeing ASB Vice President Andrea [Chaparro] and her strength. I was like, ‘Okay, she’s not stressed out, I’m not stressed,’” Leah recalled, and emphasized how the high school rallied together. “We’re all rooting for each other and so when something happens to one of us, it really feels as though something’s happening to all of us.”
Leah’s father, Charles Nelson, expressed frustration over lenient gun regulations but found comfort in the support services integrated into the school by organizations like the Roberts Family Development Center and Neighborhood Wellness Foundation.
“As a parent, I look at the incident that happened at my child’s school and I’m left wondering what parameters can be put in place to try to help prevent this … from happening again,” he said. “Thank God that it wasn’t worse than what it actually was.”
The North Sacramento school was put on lockdown Tuesday after a student was shot by another student in a parking lot on campus. According to the district, the first student sustained a non-life-threatening injury, while the other is in police custody.
To her surprise, Leah found that the systems in place at the high school worked cohesively and she never felt the need for a shift in mindset at the school following the incident. The day after, she noted that teachers, staff and the school-based wellness center were actively engaging with students, offering support groups and counseling.
“The staff was very understanding, but also it’s the Pacer way to be always pushing for academic success,” said Leah on the gravity of learning in spite of the challenges presented.
The Black Child Legacy Campaign in partnership with Roberts Family Development Center addresses the high volume of Black child death and violence, explained program manager Bryant Wyatt. The organization has counselors and after-school programming at Grant High. The onsite access of organizations, like Wyatt’s, is one of the reasons for the seamless, even heightened, utilization of support services onsite without disruption, Leah described.
“Neighborhood Wellness Foundation and Roberts Family Development Center are on the campuses every day just serving the youth giving them safe spaces and after-school programming,” described Wyatt. “And so the beautiful thing is that we’re already doing that work.”
Dr. Gina Warren, co-founder of The Neighborhood Wellness Foundation, was part of the effort to open Grant High’s “Pacers Take Space” school-based wellness center which offered healing circles every day this week.
“It’s most important for us to know the impact on students at Grant High School, the parents, the faculty, staff but also those who are involved — the victim, the victim’s family, and the young student who pulled the trigger,” Warren said.
The approach is to take a holistic look at every person involved, according to Warren. Her organization humanizes all young people, their possible background circumstances and delves into the “root cause of violence” in order to mitigate it, she said.
“Our team went out there and walked the streets when the person was still at large,” Warren advocated. “Our entire staff understands the challenges of living in poverty and in environments where anger and frustration and violence become commonplace in how we respond to adversity.”
Finding healthier pathways includes prevention, along with pushing Sacramentans to change their perceptions of the North Sacramento region, confronted Wyatt.
“Hopefully it opens our eyes and helps us to see the fact that there’s extra support and extra resources that are needed here in this community,” he said, whose family has generationally lived in Del Paso Heights since the 1960s. “This is a family community.”
Shootings at Grant High are not the norm, he explains, but school shootings are becoming more frequent. These types of events are not unique to Grant High. There have already been seven school shootings nationally this year, and there were 38 last year.
“Things like this happen and people use it as a way to feed into stereotypes when realistically, we’re just as hurt,” said Leah, the Grant High senior. “It’s difficult to overcome because, collectively, we’re all working towards ensuring that things like this don’t continue to happen. It’s very unfair that we have to think like that instead of being kids, instead of healing.”
In the wake of the shooting, Grant High remains resilient, reminded Warren, Wyatt and Leah.
“My message to everybody looking from the outside on Grant High School is to come visit,” conveyed Leah. “It’s some of the best people that I have ever met and I can ensure that they will light up the lives of other people as well.”
Support for this Sacramento OBSERVER article was provided to Word In Black (WIB) by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. WIB is a collaborative of 10 Black-owned media that includes print and digital partners.