Keeping kids away from gangs in and out of school

Keeping kids away from gangs in and out of school. That’s some of the work being done in East Salinas right now. On Tuesday, the city celebrated improvements at a local park at the heart of gang activity. On Wednesday, the Alisal Union School District is getting ready to keep a program aimed at keeping students safe.

Closter Park is a hot bed for gang violence, but the city is taking it back. After months of renovations to the basketball courts, it wants to send the message – gangs are not welcome. Around the corner, the Alisal Union School district is repeating that message in a different way.

“I think if my teachers or a counselor or something who would’ve stuck with me or talked with me, it would’ve been a really big impact,” Adrian Duarte said.

Duarte, 21, works in the culinary program at Rancho Cielo. He said his home life wasn’t that great growing up and having someone who would listen could have made a big difference.

“I would’ve stayed in school,” Duarte said, “finished my education, graduated in the class I was supposed to, would’ve maybe surrounded myself with positive friends and people and not listen to some family members.”

He’s in counseling right now, but for a different reason. His brother, Paul Morales, Jr. was the city’s first homicide victim of 2015.

“In shock, it still hasn’t hit me yet,” Duarte said. “Rancho Cieco provides us with counselors. I deal with it every day, I still have to keep going forward.”

Talking it out is what the Alisal Union School district wants to do more of, by continuing a new partnership with the county.

“If they’re sitting there worried about what’s going on in their life or their family,” Gary Johnson, Alisal Union School District Director of Special Education, said. “If someone got hurt, if they’re not feeling safe or they’re not feeling comfortable.”

The district plans to extend a contract with license behavioral therapists, trained in ways to address different traumas a student may have faced. According to the data that’s still being collected, they say it’s working.

“If we aren’t addressing those social emotional needs then we aren’t going to be able to teach them academically,” Johnson said.

Duarte said he knows better than anyone now.

“I’m just trying to be better and succeed and get a career,” Duarte said.

Keeping the six full-time therapists and 12 interns for the rest of the year will cost $240,000, but the county is helping offset those costs.