Adults have calming effect after school
By Mark Hebert
May 11, 2023—It's 2:20 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon and Tonesha Hearn is hanging out at her usual spot, on the corner of Jackson and Lampton Streets, near the front of Meyzeek Middle School. Hearn and a small group of other adults chat with the students from Meyzeek as they head home or to a neighborhood after-school program. Hearn even gets a couple of hugs from students who have come to recognize her since March 1, when she and other city and Smoketown neighborhood leaders began showing up at the end of every school day. The adults help school administrators keep an eye on students and help them feel safe as they walk away from Meyzeek.
Meyzeek Principal Charles Marshall said he was looking for ways to build bridges between his school and the community. The school’s Youth Service Center Coordinator Richard Wilson accepted the challenge after hearing from a student that he didn’t feel safe walking home from school. Wilson contacted Louisville Metro Government’s Office for Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods (OSHN) for ideas and assistance, and the Meyzeek/Metro Government/Community initiative was born.
“We’ve created a perimeter around the school where kids feel safe with help from churches, community organizations, the city, and our school,” Wilson said. “The parents appreciate that adults are here to intervene before anything gets started after school.”
Hearn is a community engagement supervisor for OSHN. She says five to seven adults show up every day, most of them members of an anti-violence coalition that’s now holding its meetings at Meyzeek. Hearn says the initiative has been helpful in “getting the community talking to us and communicating with the kids about what’s going on in their neighborhood and school.”
As the students leave Meyzeek, adults from Youth Build and Hope By Hope, which are both a couple blocks away from the school, meet a few students to walk or drive them home or to their after-school programs. A couple of trucks patrol a six-block area near Meyzeek until the students are long gone.
“It’s definitely making an impact,” said Lee Vaughn Morris, a director at Hope by Hope, which provides after-school programming for kids.
“It has cut down and deterred the after-school drama,” said Marshall, the principal. “But most importantly, it’s made kids feel safe and helped them develop relationships with adults in our community.”
As for the students, they’re happy to see the same adult faces, including Hearn’s, every day after school.
“She’s cool,” said Akoriyha, an eighth grader at Meyzeek. “They keep the drama down and talk to me.”
And seventh-grader Caiasia says simply, “They are very helpful. I like that they’re here.”
Hearn says Smoketown is one of OSHN’s six priority neighborhoods. One of the others, Newburg, has approached OSHN about starting a similar watch program near the Newburg Library and Newburg Middle School.