Ingraham High School gets nearly $500K to help struggling students, staff in wake of shooting

SEATTLE — Ingraham High School will be getting $493,923 in federal funding from the Department of Education to help the school recover from a shooting that happened in November of 2022.

The grant is part of the department’s School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV.) It provides short-term funds for schools to help them recover from a violent or traumatic event that caused their learning environment to be disrupted.

“We’ve learned a lot from everything that we’ve gone through and we’re better because of it,” said Seattle Public Schools superintendent Dr. Brent Jones, “There’s a multitude of things that we need to do, not one singular thing is going to make our students safer, not one singular thing is going to have a culture of wellness.”

At Wednesday night’s school board meeting, the board voted unanimously to accept the funds.

“We’re trying to create multiple layers of safety, multiple layers of wellness,” said Jones.

Since that shooting, the district has reported a significant decline in attendance compared to the year before. For instance, the district said during the 2021-2022 school year, 82% of 12th-grade students attended school. Pre-shooting attendance for 12th graders during the 2022-2023 school was at 88% and post-shooting, it dropped to 77%.

“We’re not immune to what happens in our communities, we’re not immune to the proliferation of gun violence however we do what we can within our school systems, within our school buildings to make them safer,” said Jones.

The district also reported a spike in disciplinary incidents. In 2021-2022 Ingraham High School had a total of 29 incidents and in 2022-2023, that number jumped to 67. The funding will provide access to mental health assessments, mental health experts, and security specialists, among other resources. All of these things are part of what Jones believes is necessary to help the school thrive again.

“Our students should really come back with a feeling of you have a whole collection of community of folks inside and outside of Ingraham High School that really care about students,” said Jones.

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