Gunfire has killed 18 Chicago Public Schools students this year. Some of those homicides have taken place near schools. And police say many of the shooters have gang ties. That’s led to beefed-up school security and attempts to avert reprisals. Those efforts may save lives this spring. But the safety planning at one high school shows that reducing youth violence in the long run will be a much tougher challenge. We report from our West Side bureau.

With Spring Break over, many Crane High School students are returning for classes this morning in fear. Authorities have charged a Crane 10th-grader with gunning down a classmate just after school March 7. The alleged shooter lived in ABLA, a public-housing development claimed by one of five gangs that operate within the school’s attendance boundaries.

In an ABLA row house, an unemployed cook named Anthony Davis is making beef stew for his wife and their four kids. Davis says the oldest, an 11th-grader at Crane, is a quiet young man.

DAVIS: But he hangs out, he socializes, with a lot of the gang-banger guys. He already says he’s been shot at once already and he’s been chased. So anyone from ABLA that comes back to school, they’re out to get him.

Davis and his wife haven’t let their son or oldest daughter, a 9th-grader, return to Crane since the shooting. Neither have hundreds of other Crane parents.

DAVIS: Even the counselor at the school said, ‘Keep your kids at home for awhile until we decide to say you can let them come back.’

BEVERLY: We had to do something now…

Retired social worker Deveera Beverly heads the ABLA tenant council.

BEVERLY: …because we didn’t want our children out of school. So we came up with this Safe Passage.

Beverly helped city and school officials formulate an unprecedented plan. On school mornings starting today, Crane students from ABLA will meet parent volunteers at the council office. They’ll walk as a group to a CTA stop, board a bus together, then transfer to another bus that passes by the school. The Chicago police, for its part, will escort the buses and then help the students make it inside Crane safely.

BEVERLY: And when they come back, those same parents will be on the bus line to bring them back to the neighborhood.

Crane is one of several Chicago schools racked by gang violence. In response, the city is taking some steps. This month, Mayor Richard Daley announced that Chicago will use Homeland Security funds to link 4,500 school surveillance cameras to police squad cars and the city’s 911 center. On Saturday, the city lowered its youth curfew. And, for the rest of the school year, the police department says it’s shifting about 50 officers to beats around Crane and some other troubled schools. Police Superintendent Jody Weis told us his force will devise new tactics against what he calls a root of the violence.

WEIS: It’s very sad right now that so many disputes are settled by picking up a handgun and shooting someone. We have to come with some different crime-fighting strategies that’ll get more and more guns off the street. And that’s going to be our focus for the summer.

But a lot of people have doubts that the security measures will make a big difference.

HARDIMAN: The police can’t solve this alone.

Tio Hardiman of the Chicago violence-prevention program Ceasefire attended Crane.

HARDIMAN: That’s impossible. The police will tell you that themselves. Because you’re not going to be out there every time these guys decide to shoot the gun.

Since the Crane killing, Hardiman says, he and other Ceasefire mediators have held about 10 meetings with members of the five gangs. The immediate goal is a no-shooting zone stretching 10 blocks around the school.

HARDIMAN: You have to meet with the guys that are right there on the street level.

And have you reached an agreement?

HARDIMAN: Well, not yet. It’s tentative right now. We’ve met with three of the groups involved in this particular conflict already. And we’ve reached out to the other two as well, so right now, just to be straight with you, the three groups are on board. The other two groups—it’s a work in progress. 

Other organizations, meanwhile, would like to expand programs for Crane students. The possibilities range from after-school recreation to restorative justice. Some of the groups flocked last week to a meeting of the school’s safety team.

Ambi: Safety meeting.

The meeting lacked facilitation and a clear agenda. Earnest Gates of the Near West Side Community Development Corporation has been through this before.

GATES: There will be a series of meetings, and service providers and folks will gather around the table to pretty much promote their programs and attempt to secure additional funding.

Only sustainable programs, Gates says, will help cut the violence in the long term.

Ambi: Kids playing.

Back at ABLA, Anthony Davis and his wife aren’t counting on that. Starting today, he says, she’s driving their children to and from Crane herself.

DAVIS: I feel they’re just going to close that school down because that school—that’s a death trap.

For next year, Davis says, they’re hoping to transfer the kids to another school.