After the tragic death of Amarr Murphy-Paine, Garfield High School implemented several new school safety initiatives. While some programs have gotten funding and are moving along, others have been slowed in Seattle Public School’s planning process.
After a 60 day pilot period of police presence at Garfield High School, students and staff were surveyed about how safe they had felt with police presence at school. According to Garfield Principal Dr. Tarance Hart, results were positive. However, there are currently no officers stationed at Garfield, which has caused some frustration to those in the Garfield community, who don’t know if they are coming back or not.
“[SPS is] working on [police] presence,” SPS Executive Director of School Safety and Security, Jose Curiel Morelos, said.
The plans for police presence around Garfield by SPD, which are in the draft phase right now, will entail a “school engagement officer.” According to Morelos, this officer would mostly remain outside the school, only occasionally entering the school, unlike an SRO.
Meanwhile, SPS has started setting up other security measures. Construction is beginning on a new set of doors in between Garfield’s front entrance and its adjacent hallway (where the bulldog desk has been removed). This will create a small vestibule, complete in January.
“Anyone coming into the school during class hours will have to come through the office to be allowed into the school. The vestibule will force people into the office for check-in,” Morelos explained. “The exterior doors to the school will be locked, like they are now, and anyone wanting access into the school will need to be buzzed into the school exterior doors prior to being guided into the office due to the vestibule doors being locked”
SPS is working on many other safety measures such as improved door control, perimeter fencing, surveillance improvements, and expanding community partnerships with local organizations like Community Passageways. All programs that were meant to join Garfield in September but haven’t yet are still possibly coming, but some are difficult to implement. Mandatory ID wearing is one idea which likely won’t pan out.
“The IDs again present a problem, and that’s still something that is a possibility in second semester… [the problem is] we see one [child’s] ID, that child opens the door and a lot of other students rush in,” Hart said. “So we had to think about, what’s the practicality of requiring that?”
At the start of the school year Garfield administration proposed a parent volunteering program. This would be a social program which would allow other more punitive safety measures to succeed. However, the program is not yet in action.
“We do have a volunteer coordinator, Ms. Ball, and the goal is to, when we return [from winter break], launch that program. It’s just been slow to launch but it is a priority,” Hart said.
Creating a new safety tool which is untested across the district is difficult. Even more difficult is implementing multiple at once. Though these programs are stretching SPS and Garfield’s administrational capacity, no program has been abandoned, only slowed. Garfield is in a pivotal moment of institutional transition to a more safe campus. Half a year into the changes, only time will tell if they will be effective.
