NEWPORT NEWS — Parents, teachers, community members and city officials filled the room Tuesday night at the first school board meeting since two teens were shot and killed in separate incidents.
A few people wiped away tears as pastors prayed for the school division and city, community members recounted their own experiences with gun violence and a student read a poem titled “What Will Matter.”
Board chair Lisa Surles-Law opened the meeting with a moment of silence.
“Our city has gone through a challenge over the past week,” she said, adding that it was comforting to see city officials — including the mayor and police chief — attending the meeting in support of the division.
Earlier Tuesday, minutes before the start of the school day, police said a 17-year-old was shot near Cottage Grove Apartments, less than a half-mile from Heritage High School. He later died at the hospital. The shooting came one week after a 15-year-old Menchville High School student was shot and killed at a school bus stop.
Police said they would not rule out a connection between the two killings, but assured the community in a news conference Tuesday morning that the violence had not “spilled over” from any disputes at school. They said both slayings appeared to be “targeted.”
During the meeting, several people said they came to offer encouragement.
“We’ve been having an immensely difficult week — frankly, an immensely difficult few years — here in Newport News and all across the country, even globally,” Rev. Michael Burnett of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula told the school board. “I also have faith that you will be able to do what you need to do.”
Burnett said there are no easy solutions.
“We need to not only disarm people,” he said, “but to disarm hearts.”
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, one parent shared concerns that the division’s security policies were not making children safer. Crystal Beauvais said the metal detectors, clear backpacks and other measures have not deterred school violence.
“The only achievement that has been accomplished is successfully making our children feel that they are prisoners in the system that they have no power or voice in,” she said.
She also expressed disappointment that she first heard about the shooting from her middle school daughter through a text asking about her older sister. Beauvais said her husband spent 15 minutes trying to contact Heritage High, before reaching out to the police department to find out what happened.
At the morning news conference, police also reported that some parents took their students out of school at Heritage after news of the shooting.
At the end of the meeting, Surles-Law thanked everyone for their comments and said they were “sobering and uplifting.”
She also thanked students who are looking out for the “collective safety” of their peers.
“They are doing the job that shows they still believe in us,” she said. “They let us know when they see something, they say something, and they expect us to do something about that.
“So we’re not going to give up.”
Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com
