In 2024, Leelanau Investing For Teens (LIFT), a nonprofit offering after-school programs, served over 430 students, marshalling 128 volunteers to offer activities on more than 260 days of the year. Jay Berger wants to bring a similar model to Traverse City, with the goal of engaging at-risk youth – and potentially even averting future tragedy.

Berger is one of the co-founders of Safer Kids, Safer Schools (SKSS), a task force launched in 2022 to explore what Traverse City could do to prevent school shootings from happening locally. Fueled by a $15,000 seed grant from Rotary Charities, SKSS gathered input from teachers, counselors, mental health professionals, children’s advocacy workers, and other community members. The study led to a 60-page report, presented by SKSS last January, which recommended a local movement to “make TC known for how much it cares for children.”

Now Berger thinks he has the idea for how Traverse City can do just that. This week, SKSS announced it has received a second Rotary seed grant – this one for $10,000 – “to support exploring the feasibility of developing after-school programs for middle school students within the Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) system.”

“We’re trying to get to the kids that aren’t involved in other things,” Berger explains. “They’re not in sports, they're not in band, they're not in theater. They're the kids that go home, and then maybe bad things happen because they're not connected or engaged. Or maybe they hang out with some other people that aren't good influences on them. Right now, if you’re a student in Traverse City and you’re not involved in one of those other standing-engagement type things, there’s nothing for you. We want to change that.”

The vision, Berger says, is to establish twin after-school programs at both East and West middle schools through a public-private partnership between TCAPS and SKSS or some affiliated offshoot. The schools would provide space for students to congregate, and volunteers from SKSS would lead engagement activities using that classroom space as their home base.

If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because it’s already in place at all four public schools in Leelanau County.

Launched in 2017 on the back of less than $500 in startup cash, LIFT began because founder and executive director Rebekah Tenbrink saw a need for community investment in local teens outside of their classrooms and homes. In addition to a “clubhouse” space at the Friendship Community Center in Suttons Bay, LIFT now has dedicated classrooms at Suttons Bay, Northport, and Glen Lake schools, and is establishing a presence at Leland Public School. Programming spans a variety of recreational outings like nature hikes, painting pottery, and rock climbing days at ELEV8 in Traverse City – but also incorporates things like homework help and service learning.

Since SKSS held its initial community engagement sessions two years ago, Berger says people told him about the work LIFT is doing in Leelanau County, and how a similar model might flourish in Traverse City. Last summer, he finally paid a visit to Suttons Bay.

“I saw immediately that this is such an obvious thing that we need in Traverse City, and therefore something that SKSS needed to put our attention behind,” Berger tells The Ticker. “Programs like this, they help build relationships, and my slogan – not the SKSS slogan, but mine – is ‘Connected kids don’t shoot up their schools.’ We need to give our kids an opportunity to connect in a positive way, and I think this is the way to do it.”

While Berger asked TenBrink and LIFT Associate Director Audrey Luksch if they’d be willing to lead the charge to bring LIFT to Traverse City, he says the pair have their hands full in Leelanau. That means SKSS will need to build its own model, hence the Rotary-funded feasibility study. That study, which will be spearheaded by local consultant Megan Motil of Parallel Solutions, will gather community input from educators, students, and community members to assess “needs and demand, required resources and costs, governance and management, funding sources, and a potential timeline for developing and implementing programs.” Motil's report is due to SKSS in June.

Cost, Berger says, is going to be the big question mark.

“LIFT gets most of their funding from the community, and their budget is around $350,000 a year,” Berger notes. “TCAPS Superintendent John VanWagoner is really supportive of this idea, but he wants us to make sure that both middle schools have the same program, and he's told us that TCAPS doesn’t have any money to support the program. So, it’s going to have to be community funded, because we think it has to be free in order to be accessible and to reach the kids that we want to reach.”

LIFT got a boost for its operations last fall when it netted one of Impact100 Traverse City’s three $116,000 grants for the 2024 cycle.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Berger concludes. “If we have a school shooting, you can’t put what's broken back together. So, once we’ve done this study, we want to be able to go back to the community and say, ‘This is how much the program is going to cost, and we think it’s a good investment. Can you join us to help fund it?’”

Pictured: West Middle School