School Shooting Prevention Task Force Launches After-School Program at East Middle School

More than four years after a group of concerned citizens formed a task force to minimize Traverse City’s school shooting risks, one of the group’s core recommendations has finally taken root.

This school year, Safer Kids Safer Schools (SKSS) has teamed up with Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) and SEEDS Ecology & Education Centers to roll out a new after-school program at East Middle School. The program is a pilot initiative that, if all goes well, will soon be replicated across town at West Middle School. First, though, SKSS has to raise nearly $1 million to give the program a three-year runway.

Jay Berger, who co-founded SKSS in 2022 after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas left 19 children and two teachers dead, says it’s been a long road to create actual change in the way Traverse City supports its kids and teens. Pointing to a recent New York Times article, published in the wake of yet another school shooting – this one in Bend, Oregon – Berger notes that the conventional wisdom around school shooting prevention continues to focus on fortification.

“That Times article said the school safety industry is worth $4 billion a year,” Berger says. The first paragraph of the article mentions everything from metal detectors at school entrances, to bulletproof chalkboards, to “ballistic backpacks.”

The problem is that sometimes those safety protections fail. In Bend, the shooter shot through a locked door at an elementary school and then proceeded to kill three children and one teacher. Speaking to the Times, Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise, an anti-gun-violence group founded after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, said school security was the wrong approach for preventing further tragedies.

“This is not about security,” Hockley said. “When the threat is at the door, it’s too late.”

SKSS has taken that stance from the beginning. When the task force unveiled its initial batch of “community-based recommendations” in early 2024, almost all of them focused on how to improve youth connection, welfare, and mental health in Traverse City.

Now, one of those recommendations is finally finding its footing at East Middle School. The new program runs for three hours after school Mondays through Thursdays, and is mostly intended to give students a safe, welcoming place to go after the last bell rings.

Sarna Saltzman, executive director of SEEDS, says afternoons start with 30 minutes of homework help or reading, before pivoting to group activities. Those activities can include cooking and baking, music, art projects, hiking and biking, outdoor games, gardening, or ecology activities.

“We like to have three options of activities for students to choose from each day,” Saltzman says.

The programming is free and open to all, and will occur mostly on premises at East, “to make it as frictionless as possible to come just hang out with us for the afternoon,” Saltzman says. There are also plans for the program to continue in the summertime, offering field trips and experiential learning opportunities for students.

The goal is to fill a gap. By default, students are kept occupied until school ends. But for kids who aren’t involved in extracurricular activities like sports, “there is no regular program, no dedicated space, and no adult whose job is to be there for them,” per an FAQ for the East Middle School program. The gap is particularly severe in middle school, “when peer relationships, mental health, and a sense of belonging take shape.”

“Students this age are often too old for traditional childcare but still benefit greatly from structure and caring adults,” the FAQ notes. “Research shows that feeling connected to school protects students against violence, emotional distress, and high-risk behavior.”

“East Middle School gets out at 2:35pm,” Berger adds. “If you're a kid who's not connected, you've got three or four hours to get into some bad stuff, and that's what we're trying to get in front of.”

SEEDS proved a natural partner. The nonprofit has been “operating school-time programs around the region since 2009,” and now has after-school programs “in more than a dozen school locations,” according to Saltzman. When SEEDS caught wind that SKSS and TCAPS wanted to create something new at East, it jumped at the opportunity.

“In my mind, it’s public-private partnerships that actually make things work in this day and age, and this program is a great example of that,” she says. “Each of us alone couldn't pull this off, but as a collaborative, it’s more possible.”

The hurdle now is getting money to keep the program funded for the long-haul. A 2025 grant from Rotary Charities helped make the East Middle School pilot possible, and TCAPS kicked in $50,000 to help fund the first year. But year one carries a price tag of more than $200,000, and three years of operations – which include plans to replicate the program at West Middle School – will cost nearly $1 million. TCAPS can’t afford to fund the programs on an ongoing basis, and Saltzman says state and federal funding opportunities are limited because those dollars are largely set aside for more socioeconomically disadvantaged schools.

Instead, the money will need to come from foundation grants or private philanthropy. And getting people to give to a program like this, Berger tells The Ticker, comes with obstacles.

“The biggest pushback is ‘We already give tax dollars to public schools,’” Berger says. “People also like to see concrete results. This community is super generous when it comes building things or buying things. Traverse City Central wanted a new scoreboard for football, and we got it done in like a week. But giving to programs? Giving to salaries? That’s really hard. And it’s especially hard with something like this, because what do you have to show for it? We can show that we’re going on offense, that we’re helping kids get connected and become better versions of themselves. Does that help safety? Maybe. But it’s hard to sell ‘maybe.’”

While fundraising has been difficult, there have been signs of light.

“We have one donor who has committed $100,000 to the cause,” Berger shares. That person’s justification for the six-figure contribution?

“If we don’t do it, who will?”