Every day before class, Visitacion Valley Middle School students pass an informal memorial known as the “R.I.P. wall,” a reminder of trouble that awaits them when the afternoon bell rings.
In 2004, two students discovered the partially decomposed body of a 19-year-old stabbing victim. Later that year, a gunman brazenly stormed into the school, threatened to kill a teacher and robbed two employees. In the 2009-10 school year, one-fifth of the students had one or both parents incarcerated.
“Everybody in this school was either related to somebody who has been shot, who did the shooting, or who saw a shooting,” said Jim Dierke, the school principal. “We had kids who couldn’t learn.”
In the spring of 2007, Dierke decided he would try a simple solution.
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner
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