Yes, reflect on the Parkland shooting, but also consider Baltimore

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the devastating massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where an expelled student shot to death 17 people — 14 of them children — and injured 17 more. It was the deadliest attack ever on an American high school.

Presidents past and present recognized the significance of the day on Twitter, the New York Times featured thoughtful interviews with nine survivors, and schools across Florida held a moment of silence at 10:17 a.m. to remember the dead.

That’s as it should be.

But now that we’ve appropriately paused to reflect upon the shocking violence that occurred there and upon similar attacks at other schools around the country (there were 25 during the last academic year, according to a Washington Post analysis, the highest number in decades), we should also spare a moment to consider the violence children face in Baltimore every day.

A Johns Hopkins study, published Wednesday in the journal Sociological Science, found that kids whohaveto travel through the city’s most violent areas on their way to school are more likely to be absent. They’re too afraid to make the journey to school, not about what could happen inside of it.

The average student here lives in a neighborhood that experiences 95 violent crimes during the academic year, researchers found, and they go to school in a neighborhood where 87 violent crimes occur.

They likely know that homicide is the leading cause of death in Baltimore for high-school-age African American boys and that the juvenile homicide rate in the city is many times the national average. They hear the shots outside their windows, see the shell casings in the streets and feel — vividly — the pain of losing relatives and friends to gunfire.

Many of them doubt they will see their 25th birthdays.

Last year alone, more than a dozen children were killed in Baltimore, and more than 30 were non-fatally shot. Among the injured was a 5-year-old girl, whose 7-yearold sister had been shot to death only months earlier.

Last year alone, more than a dozen children were killed in Baltimore, and more than 30 were non-fatally shot. Among the injured was a 5-yearold girl, whose 7-year-old sister had been shot to death only months earlier.