A high school football tragedy

On October 3, our oldest daughter emailed me a copy of a letter from Dr. Whitney Oakley, Superintendent for the Guilford County School System in North Carolina. The letter had been sent to families and community members addressing a shooting incident after the Dudley High and Smith High football game on September 29. Our daughter and her husband have two elementary age students in the system.

As a parent, grandparent, and retired public schools educator, I read about another senseless loss of life from the reckless use of a firearm. This was a brazen attack as police officers were in close proximity to the shooting. Clearly, this did not matter to the shooter, and it only serves to remind us there is no immunity in our communities from such attacks.

For over forty years, our family has resided in Henrico County, Virginia just a few miles from our capital city, Richmond.

Late on the afternoon of June 6, 2023, as students and families were exiting a high school graduation ceremony, a student who had just graduated and his father were shot and killed. Again, numerous city police officers were in the area working the event, but not close enough to prevent another senseless tragedy.

I was born and raised in Burlington, North Carolina. I remember Dudley and Smith high schools when I was a student at Walter Williams. As a student, I attended a lot of football and basketball games, and I never remember any situations like our public school leaders face today. A lot has changed since my graduation in 1971.

For thirty one years, I worked in the public schools of Virginia as a teacher, coach, assistant principal, and principal. As an assistant principal at a large high school, I was assigned to cover many high school football games. There is something about the cover of darkness that makes high school students a bit more edgy and willing to take a regrettable risk at a football game.

In fact, if inclement weather required the postponement of a Friday night football game to Saturday afternoon, the difference in the environment was significant. The daylight took the tenseness away. Sitting in the bleachers for a Saturday afternoon game felt like sitting in a friendly church sanctuary on a Sunday morning.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore. Doesn’t matter if the game is played at night or during the day, trigger pullers have no fear in pointing and shooting anytime they want.

As sad as the loss of life is in these mindless shootings what is even more concerning is all of the required initiatives that have been implemented to curb violence and improve safety in Guilford County Schools.

In her letter, Superintendent Oakley listed twelve new tactics that are now part of the system’s safety plan. And she also noted that safety has become one of the top four strategies in the school system.

I have a heartfelt respect for Superintendent Oakley, the school board, her staff, and the students, parents, and teachers in the system. I know this is tough work everyday, and I don’t think the challenges of educating our children will become any easier.

Doesn’t matter to me if we’re talking about schools in North Carolina, Virginia, or America, I sense our school and community leaders keep overlooking a critical factor in the daily operation of our schools— the erosion of our families.

In August 2022, the Annie E. Casey Foundation reported nearly 24 million children live in single-parent families in the United States, or about one in every three kids across America.

During my career in education, I worked with many gifted single parents. Somehow, they figured out how to make life work for their student, but that isn’t always the case.

Today, many single parents are trapped in vicious generational cycles related to unemployment, homelessness, food insecurity, physical and mental health challenges, and the scars of emotional and physical trauma. Many students enter a school on a daily basis carrying these challenges in their backpacks.

I wonder what the family status is for the person who fired the lethal shots at the Dudley and Smith football game on September 29?

I wonder what a school system might be like for students, parents, and teachers if superintendents and school boards could invest in a dozen tactics designed to bring stability to our families?

I wonder if investing in our families and their students might help us to reduce our school safety challenges?

Look, I’m not saying to defund our school safety initiatives. However, we are overdue to start considering the accumulation of data that we have about our students and their families.

We are also overdue to carefully evaluate our school and community resources. If those resources aren’t making a difference, we need to rethink and repurpose their use to help students and their families.

There is one more critical piece to this— making and taking the time to listen to the students, their parents, and our classroom teachers. Often, teachers are trying to overcome multiple obstacles that are beyond their control in attempting to educate these students.

It does not matter the location of a public school system, the erosion of our families is an urgent matter.

Yes, working to solve this problem will require hard work.

But, our students, their families, and our teachers deserve better.

We can’t continue on our current path.

If we do, we’ll be reading more tragic school headlines.