Parents Join Together to Reopen P.A.L. for Their Kids
Parents have started a petition to try and reopen the center, and now another organization is forming to help reopen the center and enhance the P.A.L. program. When the Gulfport P.A.L. closed and days later, 19 year old, Raymond Howze III was fatally shot on Old Pass Road, parents and leaders in west Gulfport felt something needed to be done. Rickey Toles, a community advocate, says, “We want to be able to support them and to be able to guide them through the hard time they’re going through. We want to be able to give them outlets so that they will have ways to tap into our network that we’ve built for them and they’ll have ways to get out of here.”
Toles is helping gather local judges, police officers, city officials, and parents who want to see the Gulfport P.A.L. reopened and improved. The group, which doesn’t yet have a name, is supporting the petition started by Patricia Silva and Christopher Smith to reopen P.A.L. Silva says, “And it’s not just that the parents are petitioning, but that the citizens of Gulfport are petitioning to have this P.A.L. center back open.”
The group hopes after P.A.L. is reopened they can develop a program to make P.A.L. even stronger. Toles also says, “Education is going to be our goal, it’s all about education. As you educate the student athlete or just the student overall, as you educate them, they become more of a base of recognizing who they are.”
Toles and others plan to partner with P.A.L. to develop summer programs and even more after school programs. Gulfport Police presence is required to reopen P.A.L. and Gaston Point leaders hope they can work with and not against Gulfport Police Chief, Leonard Papania.
Silva closes, “We want to work with Chief Papania, but from what we understand, he has authority to put those police officers back in the building.”
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