ST PAUL, Minn. — Parents and community members in the Saint Paul Public School district are invited to attend a listening session Tuesday afternoon to discuss recent violence seen in the city.
The meeting, held by the Saint Paul Board of Education, will start at 4:30 at Washington Technology Magnet School. The meeting is open to everyone and will be streamed online for those unable to attend in person.
School leaders are hosting this meeting to gather information and talk about potential solutions to improve school safety, according to the SPPS website.
District leaders wanted to hold this session following a violent month in Saint Paul. On Feb. 10, 15-year-old Devin Scott was fatally stabbed on his first day at Harding High School. Then on Feb. 24, three teenagers were shot at the Wellstone Center while attending Scott's funeral reception.
A 16-year-old faces a second-degree unintentional murder charge in Scott's stabbing but police have yet to make an arrest in Friday's shooting.
Following Scott's stabbing, district leaders put additional security measures in place at Harding and several other high schools in SPPS, including the deployment of officers from Saint Paul Police. The district stopped contracting with Saint Paul Police to provide officers as school resource officers after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
A student group, MN Teen Activists, held a protest after officers were stationed outside schools, saying that assigning police officers to schools "will not keep our students safe."
"It gets to be a really complex thing when focusing only on SROs, but I do know that there are things, there are instances, that take place in our schools and our communities where our staff are just not equipped to deal with it," SPPS Superintendent Joe Gothard told KARE 11 on Feb. 17. "It may not be SROs, and I've heard people say it's just police under another name, I understand that. What I am saying right now is that I do think they're an important part of the network for us to keep schools and communities safe."
Anyone wishing to speak in person at Tuesday's meeting can sign up here or contact the board secretary at sarah.dahlke@spps.org or call (651) 767-8149. Each speaker will be limited to two minutes and interpreters will be available.
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