Jay Berger wants 2024 to be the year that Traverse City puts youth welfare and mental health at the top of its priority list. The goal? To create a supportive local environment where the circumstances and conditions that lead to school shootings are never allowed to take root. The challenge? Achieving that mission might just require the involvement of every single person who calls northern Michigan home.

Berger formed the local task force Safer Kids, Safer Schools (SKSS) in the wake of a May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead. Now, 19 months later, SKSS is ready to share its recommendations for how everyone – not just teachers, school administrators, and other school employees, but also healthcare professionals, economic development experts, community volunteers, law enforcement, the media, and other local leaders – can work together to “nurture a caring and connected community.”

SKSS presented that 60-page report to the public this past Thursday at Traverse City Central High School, the first of two public engagement sessions. The second session is scheduled for 7pm this coming Thursday, January 18 at the West Senior High School library.

“We really broke the report into two parts,” Berger tells The Ticker. “One part is about what we hope the school system will do, and then the second part is about what regular people in the community can do.”

On the school side, Berger says Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) has been “outstanding” so far, both in its willingness to work with SKSS and in the steps it’s already taken to invest in things like youth mental health. As one example, he points to the new student health center at West Middle School, which is now up and running, according to a TCAPS press release shared with local media on Friday, December 12.

That center, which TCAPS is running in partnership with Northwest Michigan Health Services, isn’t all about youth mental health: Other services – including physical exams for school sports, vision and hearing screenings, immunizations, urgent care visits for minor injuries, bloodwork and other basic lab tests, and primary care – are all available to students through the center. However, behavioral health is also a major focus for the facility, with professionals on hand to provide crisis intervention, mental health counseling, and more. The community can get a look at the new center on Monday, January 29, when TCAPS will host an open house and ribbon-cutting event from 3:30-5pm.

But while Berger applauds the opening of the student health center – as well as other recent local efforts around youth mental health, including a new ARPA-funded regional mental wellness center at Munson and a student-led Youth Wellness Initiative convened by the Grand Traverse Regional Community Foundation – he says there’s plenty more to be done to make sure Traverse City doesn’t become the site of the next school tragedy. In its new report, SKSS explores how school shooters often fit a certain profile – lonely kids struggling with some sort of trauma or crisis, experiencing overlooked mental health challenges, or victimized by bullying – and how schools and communities can work against those types of risk factors.

“We want to be as proactive as we can in our community,” Berger says. “When it comes to preventing school shootings, there’s a lot of talk about physical security. But physical security is really just the part of the iceberg that is above the water. Below the water, you have all the things the schools can be doing and all the things the community can be doing to care for kids. We need the community to be engaged and to keep those things at the top of mind, and we really hope that, this year, we’ll find a way to do that.”

The recommendations detailed in the SKSS are varied and wide-ranging. On the school front, for instance, the task force is encouraging numerous system-wide projects aimed both at identifying struggling kids and creating environments that foster greater compassion and connection among school communities.

One SKSS recommendation is for schools to use the “Comprehensive School Climate Inventory,” a survey tool developed by the National School Climate Center to assess the perceptions that students, parents, and school personnel have about their school environments. The survey is designed to assess “five dimensions of school climate” – including safety, teaching, interpersonal relationships, institutional environment, and leadership and efficacy – to create an inventory of a school’s strengths and weaknesses.

SKSS also wants schools to embrace the “Circle of Concert Strategy,” a social-emotional learning concept developed by Harvard University’s Making Caring Common Project and aimed at helping students develop greater empathy. “Children and adults alike are predisposed to empathize for those who are in their own social group,” Harvard writes of the concept. “For example, ‘jocks’ may have empathy for other jocks, but not for ‘nerds.’ Boys may have empathy for other boys, but not for girls. Sometimes children lack empathy for their peers who are socially challenged or have disabilities.” Circle of Concern lesson plans work to help kids “become more aware of those for whom they don’t have empathy.”

Out in the community at large, meanwhile, the recommendations from SKSS have more to do with building a local movement that would “make TC known for how much it cares for children.”

“Develop a campaign: TC Values Its Kids,” the report reads. “Include in Traverse Connect website. Include ways adults can value kids… Redesign the community/system to show that TC cares about kids (just as TC redesigned to support tourism and alcohol).”

Per SKSS, building a more kid-friendly Traverse City is a multifaceted can involve everything from getting more adults involved as mentors – whether through coaching youth sports, signing up to work with organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, or volunteering for the TCAPS “Lunch Buddies” program – to creating more opportunities for youths to “take on leadership roles within the broader community.”

“I kind of point the finger at my peers: the baby boomers who are maybe empty-nesters,” Berger laughs. “We need to get off the couch and be foot soldiers in this process, because we can’t afford to have 50 kids waiting for a Big Brother; we can’t afford not to have enough Norte coaches. There are a lot of opportunities for the community to make an impact, and we need to work on making those matches.”