Supporting Seattle Youth with JB Proctor-Mills: The Urgent Need for Student Support

Last week on The Day with Trae, guest host Omari Salisbury welcomed JB Proctor-Mills, a pastor and Prevention and Intervention (PI) Specialist with Seattle Public Schools (SPS), to discuss the critical challenges facing young people today.

Currently stationed at Garfield High School, Proctor-Mills’ role as a PI specialist has him conduct "check yourself surveys" to gauge their social and emotional health. Based on these surveys, he provides support and resources tailored to the students’ needs. 

Proctor-Mills shared a sobering observation on the overall well-being of Seattle youth. 

"You can see that there are kids who come to school every day, they get their lesson, but they’re broken and they’re suffering in silence,” he said. “Everything looks good on the outside, but on the inside, they’re dealing with a lot of suicidal ideation. They're dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety."

Furthermore, the PI highlighted how issues outside of school deeply affect students, citing statistics on student homelessness and food disparities.  

"If you got all of that going on in your personal life, how do you think that a kid’s going to sit through six and a half hours and just be joyful about writing a five-page essay?" he said. 

Alongside his PI role, Proctor-Mills is also the Black Student Union (BSU) coordinator at Garfield. He recently helped the BSU lead an event called Reclaiming the Village, which featured a panel discussion about the disparities that Black students face within the district and school.

Proctor-Mills also shared how his work in schools informs his second vocation as the pastor of the Greater New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church. Working at SPS helps him become a better pastor, he said, because he sees the same struggles in the pews that he deals with five days a week in the schools. 

With great sincerity, the pastor’s ministry extends beyond the pulpit, focusing on meeting community needs at the forefront. "We put food in empty bellies. We put clothes on naked backs,” he said.

He implored parents who receive the PI program’s survey to opt their children in.  

“Let your kids take our survey and let us connect them to some resources because we’re not trying to make your life harder. We’re trying to make your life easier,” he said. 

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