Almost a year after a student was stabbed to death at Stagg High SchoolStockton residents met again with city leaders Monday night after the murder of a second high school student 12th April.
“I, too, have been to too many funerals for my students over the years,” Traci Miller, interim superintendent of the Stockton Unified School District, told the roughly 150 people gathered at the Arnold Rue Community Center.
Cesar Chavez high school student Thai Khin, 17, was shot and killed on April 12 during a robbery at a park across the street from Chavez, police said.
She is the second Stockton student in a year to be killed near her campus during school hours: Stagg student Alycia Reynaga was murdered on campus on April 18, 2022.
On Monday at City Hall, led by Mayor Kevin Lincoln, Councilman Dan Wright, and the police and school district, khin’s death Frustrations over mistrust in the city, police and school officials, and gun violence in Stockton, across the country, resurfaced.
“We as a community need to know more about what’s going on behind the scenes,” said Yesica Avendaño, a teacher and mother of one of Chávez’s students. “We only listen to gossip.”
Khin’s death occurred in the middle of April 12. resignation of Chávez’s director, Cynthia Cárdenas Sánchez, who quit after a year on the job, claiming she was forced to resign.
With his resignation, half of the Stockton Unified School District’s comprehensive high schools are now involved in a leadership shakeup that could affect the drop of thousands of students.
Avendano said she was concerned for her son’s safety in Chávez. “There are days where I’m like… I hope I don’t get that phone call.”
In the days after Khin’s death, students expressed sadness and anger at the regularity of shootings in Stockton. In the US, said Ellena Bivens, who teaches AP literature at Chavez.
“It was a lot of anger,” Bivens said. “This is the elephant in the room. This is a national problem.”
Several people argued that the lack of safe places for young people to play and work outside of school puts them at risk.
“We’re trying to restore all of those services that were cut off during the bankruptcy,” Wright said. “But it’s not going to happen overnight.”
“They skip class at 2:30; they hang out in the park,” said Lamar Scott, father of a former Chavez student.
“We are all here, but where are the children? Who is listening to the children?”
The city has expanded the Office for Violence Prevention’s reach to children as young as 12, Lincoln said. It also seeks a $4.3 million workforce development program for people ages 16 to 29, the age group most affected by gun violence in Stockton, he said.
“We have the same vested interests…we want to put our money, taxpayer money, where our mouth is.”
Record reporter Aaron Leathley covers public safety. He can reach her at aleathley@recordnet.com or on Twitter @LeathleyAaron. To support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Community Reacts to Murder of Stockton Student at City Hall