Opinion | ‘The safest small city in America’ no more

Just five years ago, my hometown of Rochester Hills was named “the safest small city in America.” I doubt this title would still hold true. Just to our north, four students were killed in Oxford. It’s hard to find someone without a personal connection — a teammate, a teacher, a relative. I felt numb to the epidemic of school shootings until one happened in our own backyard and was ill-prepared for the spillover effect on our community.

A year later, while at a school board meeting during a contentious debate, of all things, on distributing safe-gun-storage information to families, our phones pinged with another tragedy unfolding: a shooting on the campus of Michigan State University. Every person at that meeting had some sort of tie to MSU, including parents with children currently sheltering with a shooter on the loose.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death among children. On a hot summer day this June in “the safest small city”, nine people were shot at a splash pad. The unthinkable came not to a neighboring town or nearby college campus, but to our home.

We teach our children to be resilient. After the Oxford shooting, my son showed me strings of social media feeds with copycat threats. Our district canceled school as authorities couldn’t investigate fast enough. My son is the same age as the children from Sandy Hook — and just graduated. Those 20 children should have been celebrating their own graduation too. When I told my daughter about Uvalde, she presumed it was at a high school. No, I shook my head. Her eyes widened, then her little body crumpled, when she realized she was the same age as those elementary-aged children.  

Are we teaching our children resilience or are we teaching them to be numb? Each lockdown drill harkens back to a very real memory of a very real trauma. My son has experienced not one but two accidental lockdowns in which the entire school, including the staff, thought they were under imminent threat. They are learning that their school is not safe. That the local park is not safe. That their childhood is not safe. I shudder to think what happens to a generation that does not experience a foundation of safety. 

We must address the very foundations our children are learning. The answer isn’t more guns or school police officers. The answer lies much deeper. Most people agree that children can’t learn when they are hungry. The state of Michigan now has free lunch for all children. Children can’t learn when their physical and mental health is under assault. When their teachers are stretched so thin that they leave the profession altogether. When school bus drivers could earn considerably more driving a delivery truck, it’s no wonder there is a nationwide shortage. When school board members receive threats because they stand up for practices of diversity, equity and inclusion. When expectations are so high on the shoulders of our students that kindergarten is now like 1st grade, high schoolers are expected to have perfect grades with a heavy load of AP classes while operating on less sleep than they biologically require. Even if students achieve the mythical success of academics, varsity athletics and club leadership, selective college admissions are far from guaranteed and often are accompanied by years of debt. 

And for the child who lies outside of the dominant paradigm? What about children with special needs, learning and/or physical disabilities, English Language learners, economically challenged, non-White, non-Christian, LGTQBIA+: What about them? 

The pressure cooker finally blew during COVID. We can and must build back better. We must address the foundational issues affecting not only our schools, but our students, educators, and families. The recently passed state budget however has drastically reduced mental health funding by $300 million. Michigan already has one of the worst student-to-counselor ratios in the nation. We must reverse this trend; now is not the time to cut funding for an education system still recovering from the pandemic. 

It is not a surprise that a profession dominated largely by women that serves children has been overlooked and underinvested for decades. We must invest in our children’s physical and mental health. We must recruit and retain not only teachers but all forms of education-adjacent professions, from social workers to counselors to bus drivers to paraprofessionals. We must prioritize our children and we must do so by investing in the adults serving them.