School extends class cancellations, counseling for students after shooting

Edmondson-Westside High School is asking students to return Friday for a halfday focused on counseling and support following this week’s shooting at a nearby shopping center that left one teen dead and four injured.

Baltimore City schools counselors, social workers, psychologists and other staff will be on-site when students arrive at 8 a.m. The school will dismiss at noon, though students may remain for additional counseling services, system leaders announced Thursday afternoon.

Breakfast and lunch will be available Friday to all students, including takeaway lunches if needed, officials said.

The decision effectively extends class cancellations for the West Baltimore high school following a devastating attack Wednesday on a group of five Edmondson-Westside students outside a Popeyes and Rita’s Italian Ice at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center.

School staff and resource officers were among the first to arrive on the scene, said Baltimore City schools CEO Sonja Santelises. One administrator heard the gunshots while crossing school grounds and rushed to the scene to provide first aid, she said.

Students and staff will need time to process what happened, Santelises said.

“The frequency with which this is happening in our city does not make it ‘normal,’” Santelises said. “This is not the desired normal interaction that we want young people to have.”

The high school was brimming Thursday with social workers, psychologists and counselors, who made themselves available to students in the cafeteria while staffers met in another part of the building. Nearby, representatives from the district and City Hall carved out crisis response plans for the coming days. Leaders of the Baltimore Teachers Union offered comfort to adults lingering in the lobby.

Patricia Roberts-Rose, who coordinates social workers for the city school system, was one of several professionals working in the cafeteria. The situation required “all hands on deck,” she said.

The school system deployed three social workers, three psychologists, four school counselors and five outside providers in addition to the professionals already assigned to the building, Roberts-Rose said. Counselor and professionals from the University of Maryland also were on-site to support the high school’s staff.

“We’re a microcosm of society,” she said. “Schools should be safe, but if the community has some violence, that’s going to trickle into schools.”

The Baltimore City school system, which serves an estimated 78,000 students, deployed a similar response earlier in the fall when a Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School student was fatally shot on its East Baltimore campus less than 20 minutes after dismissal.

By early afternoon Thursday, five or six Edmondson-Westside students had signed up to speak with clinicians, Roberts-Rose said, adding that more were in the building and talking to teachers.

“Grief is not isolated,” she said. “If you’ve experienced loss in the past, grief is compounded. [We] connect them with resources and a safe space to process what happened.”

Santelises said the school system is committed to prioritizing long-term mental health services for students — as well as investments in security. She acknowledged that the latter goal may be unpopular with some city residents, but she said students told her they need to feel safe.

“I’m not going to just sit around and say this is horrible over and over again,” she said.