On first day back after four Overbrook students were shot, the district aims to ease anxiety and fear

Five days after four teenagers were shot at dismissal time, Overbrook High students on Monday returned to school for the first time since their classmates’ shooting.

When they entered the imposing structure on Lancaster Avenue, the school’s 400 students were greeted by a phalanx of extra adults — from Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. and counselors to elected officials and parents who showed up to send a message.

“Their goal was to let the students know, ‘We’re doing everything we can to keep you safe,’” said Monique Braxton, spokesperson for the Philadelphia School District.

Classes had just been dismissed early for report-card conferences in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday Wednesday when the shooting took place. Four students were standing outside a beauty salon a block away from Overbrook at 11:30 a.m. when a silver Hyundai SUV approached and someone began firing at the group from the car. Two 15-year-old girls and two 16-year-old boys were struck by bullets.

Three of the four have since been released from hospitals, Braxton said; the fourth remains hospitalized but is expected to recover.

Principal Kahlila Johnson spent the long holiday weekend planning how to help students cope, Braxton said, and when students walked in on Monday, the district’s emergency response crisis team of counselors and social workers was on hand as well.

“They are meeting with students, they’re talking about not just grief, but coping with what has happened to their classmates,” Braxton said. “No one knows why those students were targeted, no one knows if one was being targeted — right now it’s all about providing a safety net for the four students who were shot, as well as the students here at Overbrook. This is devastating for them. The violence is senseless. The victims and the perpetrators are getting younger and younger. No one knows why this is happening.”

In addition to talking with students, Watlington held a meeting of his cabinet at Overbrook on Monday. While the school and the district have no easy answers to the city’s gun violence crisis, the act of having senior staff show up at the school was meant to tell children: We see you. We’re trying to find answers and ways to help, Braxton said.

Every student who walked inside Overbrook had an opportunity to process their feelings about Wednesday’s shooting and gun violence generally, Johnson said. Some shared their feelings easily; some wrote in journals; others weren’t ready to talk, but were asked to do something as basic as circle their emotions on a worksheet.

Johnson and other adults in the building asked every student to identify at least one person at school and one person at home they can share their feelings with, with no judgment.

“I help them understand that it’s OK to cry, it’s OK to be upset, and it’s OK to be sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s not OK to not address problems, to not be part of the solution,” said Johnson.

Johnson and her team set aside a triage space for students who were overwhelmed to get more individualized attention, but only a few young people needed that.

“What I heard is they will continue to be proud Overbrook High School students, and they will continue to be resilient,” said Johnson. “I saw their courage in just showing up.”

Like many city schools, violence is not new to Overbrook, which has lost a number of students to shootings in recent years. Still, the particulars of the Wednesday shooting — in such close proximity to the school, in broad daylight — rattled the community deeply. The traditional Thanksgiving Day football game between Overbrook and West Philadelphia High School was canceled because of the shooting; it will not be rescheduled.

As violence around schools has ramped up, city police and the district’s Office of School Safety have added additional patrols and programs. Overbrook was already part of the safe corridors program that stations city police near certain schools at arrival and dismissal time.

Now, the district’s safety office “is talking about increasing patrols at other high schools in the city.”

The focus at Overbrook Monday was on acknowledging students’ fears, anger and grief, Braxton said, and eventually “restoring some normalcy, and moving forward with their education.”

But how do you feel normal when violence has become commonplace? When simply going to and from school safely is not guaranteed?

“We help our young people process that this will not be normalized,” Johnson said. “This is not normal.”