TBH I get why Council is loathe to hand this $ over to Seattle Schools. The district is facing its own $90M revenue shortfall and schools are not the best vehicle for offering mental/health care, they are educators (and the world is already short on qualified pediatric care workers). It’s not unreasonable for Council to want to use this money for services within their scope, like parks, libraries, homelessness etc.

Better access to mental healthcare in schools may be a good idea on its own merits, but implying it will prevent shootings is a stretch. There's no evidence to support this claim.

Hollingsworth, Saka, and Woo are the council members who voted for this Morales-sponsored amendment. Just thought it was worth mentioning since this article about the amendment doesn't bother to for some reason

Is there any evidence that the money/spending has had the intended impact? at all? or is it more about creating employment for "counselors" and making us all feel good about "trying"?

Tens of millions given away to therapy bureaucrats just might not be the most effective way to halt "gun" (gang) violence

First, anytime the Stranger pretends to care about protecting children, we know it’s merely a deceitful cover for advancing some other agenda. That goes double for protecting schoolchildren, and triple for protecting schoolchildren from gun violence. We know this because the Stranger published a story where it ripped a group of Seattle parents a new one, after they demanded the removal of a gunfire-spewing homeless encampment from the street near their children’s kindergarten. Nothing, not even preventing young children from catching stray bullets, was more important to the Stranger than sparing homeless criminals the terrible inconvenience of having to move before they damned well felt like it. (https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/03/21/78913110/the-parents-dont-want-shelter-they-want-sweeps) So no, the Stranger does not care about protecting Seattle’s schoolchildren from gun violence. At all.

Second, I must commend Seattle Student Union organizer Chetan Soni on incredible media savvy. This person seems to have a superhuman knack for rattling off quote-friendly copy, strings of words which just so happen to support exactly the Stranger’s position. Why, this person even knows the correct way to invoke the name of one of the Stranger’s top political hate-objects, without directly admitting (as @3 noted) CM Tanya Woo voted FOR what the Stranger claims to want. Excellent work!

Third, kudos to the Stranger for some incredible doublethink on the JumpStart tax. Near the end of the post, we’re informed the Stranger wants to protect “… the sanctity of JumpStart, a hard-fought tax on big business earmarked for affordable housing, Green New Deal initiatives, and economic development.“ Of course, as @1 noted, the Council generally does not give money to Seattle’s schools, and as we learned earlier in the Stranger’s post, “the sanctity of JumpStart” is exactly why the current Council now needs to take action: a previous Council raised the JumpStart tax to fund these student services, not “… for affordable housing, Green New Deal initiatives, and economic development.” Therefore, to release these funds to the schools, the current Council must now act to violate that very sanctity: “… council would have to vote to approve spending JumpStart revenue on non-JumpStart priorities.” How dare they do, um, what the Stranger demands?!?

Fourth, as @4 and @5 mentioned, there has been absolutely no evidence presented — zero, zip, zilch, nada — to show this money will do anything positive for any child at all, let alone prevent fatal gun incidents from happening on school grounds. (A topic about which the Stranger cares nothing anyway.)