Baltimore mentors 'in harm's way' while stopping recent school violence

Brooke Conrad, The Baltimore Sun on Jan 22, 2025

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BALTIMORE — Adult mentors were on scene and engaged during two recent violent incidents at a Baltimore high school, where the city has been implementing a violence intervention program in recent months.

While their actions likely prevented further harm to students and staff, the fact that the incidents occurred at all is a source of concern to community members.

On Thursday, a juvenile was arrested after an assault outside Carver Vocational-Technical High School, resulting in three students and a staff member being sent to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. One student had their lip almost “cut off” during the fight, said Elisha Johnson, who works with students at Carver to help them with job training through the Requity Foundation. A month before that, a school hall monitor was attacked by students in December, she said.

A local nonprofit organization — The Movement Team — has been administering Baltimore’s School-Based Violence Intervention Program since the beginning of the current school year. They were “on-site when the incidents took place and in both instances immediately intervened — putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent further violence,” Jack French, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety & Engagement, said in an email.

Videos of the two incidents obtained by The Baltimore Sun confirmed that adults were physically engaged in breaking up the conflicts.

French added, “Following last week’s stabbing and as part of their work inside the school, in partnership with City Schools and MONSE, The Movement Team has mobilized resources [including trauma support and wraparound services] to support the Carver community and work to prevent any retaliatory violence stemming from this incident.”

Johnson, from Requity Foundation, said the Movement Team’s presence is making a difference when it comes to making sure students aren’t lingering outside the school or neighboring stores or “hanging out” on residential front lawns as they used to do.

“I definitely can see the difference, but there’s always room for improvement,” she said.

Johnson said that while the story of the attack was widely covered by news media, there are a lot of positive things going on that don’t get as much attention.

“It’s easy to broadcast the negative, but what about the students who are doing right?” she said.

But students still need more help, she said, especially when it comes to mental wellness and making sure things don’t escalate toward violence. She added that kids need more opportunities for productive activities, such as the job training her organization tries to provide.

Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Matthew Henson Neighborhood Association near the school, suggested another solution: getting parents more actively involved in meetings with the community, school and police.

“Many of them have very, very busy schedules,” he said, noting that many kids travel to school alone without their parents.

“It’s challenging here,” Cheatham added. “This is a very poor neighborhood here. Very poor, high crime, high drug incidents.”

Asked about the effectiveness of the city’s program, Baltimore Councilman and Public Safety Chair Mark Conway described the violent incidents as “really, really disappointing.”

“Anytime we see this kind of violence in school, it’s deeply unsettling,” he said. Conway said he hopes the program will provide an opportunity to keep last week’s violence from spreading into further incidents.

The city secured around $1.1 million for the violence intervention program, which is being implemented at three other schools in addition to Carver: Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School, Digital Harbor High School and Edmondson-Westside High School.

At Digital Harbor, where the program started last school year, student suspensions declined from 99 around the end of 2023 to 67 by the end of 2024.

The Movement Team is also engaged in the city’s Safe Passage program, where mentors monitor students’ travel to and from school near the public bus stop.

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