Juliet Haesly
On November 18, 2025, around 10:15 a.m., a Long Beach Polytechnic student was shot outside of Atlantic Avenue. CBS News reported, “According to the Long Beach Police Department, a 16-year-old student was injured when an adult male walked up to a group of boys and fired shots at them.” The boy was immediately sent to a local hospital, but has non-life-threatening injuries. Poly Principal Dr. Alejandro Vega reports that “our campus remains safe, and there was no impact on school instruction.” But this issue raises the question: are we truly safe while on campus? Parents are now concerned that it is unsafe to send their child to school, fearing that their kid could be the next victim of a violent attack. Long Beach Polytechnic High School is in a neighborhood that has historically faced crime challenges, but in recent years, it seems as if crime has gone down. Crime rates for specific high schools are not publicly reported in official city statistics, but less and less stories are being told about crimes occurring in the neighborhood. The last shooting in the neighborhood occurred on March 27, 2024, when a 34-year-old man shot 17-year-old Brianna Soto outside 11th Street when she was on her way back from work. On July 31, the man was sentenced to 358 years to life in prison. Now that students are being shot outside of school zones again, students begin to fear for their lives. Dr. Vega reported, “As an added precaution, LBUSD School Safety will maintain an increased presence around our school,” but what does that mean for the future of Poly? Polytechnic is a part of the LBUSD district, which is said to have a safety plan that includes emergency drills for various scenarios, a campus-wide notification system, visitor registration, and the use of school safety officers for suspected criminal activity rather than all student incidents. The future of Poly remains unknown, but we hope that this incident will provide an understanding of why we need increased safety procedures implemented throughout schools. Schools can be made safer through a combination of physical security measures, creating a positive and supportive environment, and implementing safety training and emergency preparedness.
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