When Uzziah Shell, 16, and Daily Jackson, 17, were shot and killed in late 2024, the students and faculty of Riverside Education Academy took a step back from their typical class schedules. Mel Campbell, a math teacher at Riverside, described a “dark cloud” looming over the school. “Everybody was grieving,” he explained. “Going through different stages of grief at the same time.”
Male students whom he never would have expected to show vulnerability cried. Some students were angry. Some broke down. Others reminisced about the good times they shared with the late students, created posters, and wore memorial hoodies. Everyone needed support.
The deaths occurred only eleven days apart. On the Friday afternoon of November 22nd, Uzziah Shell was shot and killed near Goffe Street and Hudson Street. On December 3rd, just four days before Uzziah’s funeral, Daily was shot and killed on Shelton Avenue. Both Uzziah and Daily were friends and students at Riverside Academy. The deaths, according to New Haven Chief of Police Karl Jacobson, were linked in association to feuds between youth groups.
“It was like the wound was starting to heal, scab over, and started going back to the little bit of normal as we could. And then it was ripped off,” Campbell said.
Located along Long Wharf, Riverside Academy is the last standing alternative high school in New Haven, with a student body of less than two hundred. It is commonly known as New Haven’s school for at-risk students. Since its founding around twenty-five years ago, the school has aimed to provide an alternative path to completing high school for students who struggle in a traditional classroom setting. Its goal is to support students during their final developmental years, especially when they’re facing familial challenges and housing and food insecurity.
Ronald Huggins, Deputy Director of Youth Services in New Haven’s Youth and Recreation Department, explained that matriculating to Riverside is a matter of students having “courageous conversations” to confront their risk of not graduating or getting their high school diploma.
New Haven public schools refer students to Riverside when students struggle to maintain their attendance or meet credit requirements. In most cases, school referrals are made by assistant principals, who identify students in need of more focused attention and personalized instruction that cannot be provided in densely populated schools. Riverside Principal Derek Stephenson, Sr. thoroughly evaluates whether or not a student’s needs can be met through matriculation. Schools sending students to Riverside provide a profile of a potential student, which details their academic, attendance, and disciplinary histories. When a referral reaches Stephenson’s desk, he reviews the application packets and meets with prospective students and their families. A smaller portion of students come through as self-referrals.
The school itself is a plain, stark-white brick, single-story building. Standing just off the road, it is not fenced in. There is little identification other than “Riverside Academy,” written in blue—once above the entrance doors, and a second time on the side of the building.
A security officer stands posted by the entrance to the lobby, where light spills in from an octagonal skylight. Past the metal detector, common to all of the district’s public schools, sits a small water fountain. An illustration of the Riverside Raptors, the school mascot, is printed on the wall above the fountain.
Riverside wasn’t always the only alternative high school in New Haven. In 2018, the New Haven Board of Education voted to shut down the alternative high schools New Light High School and New Horizons High School due to budget cuts. Following the closures, the two schools consolidated with Riverside, the largest alternative school at the time. Seeking more affordable rent, the Board of Education moved Riverside from its original location at 560 Ella T. Grasso Boulevard to 103 Hallock Avenue.
Narrowly spared from budget cuts and now rocked by tragedy, Riverside has faced criticism and calls for it to shut down. Though some argue that the very system of alternative schooling harms students, Riverside continues to defend its model, arguing that it fills a critical niche in the school system for students who need more specialized attention. Now the smallest in the city’s school system, Riverside promises unmatched care and attention to student engagement.
There is no instruction manual for a grieving school. The students, staff, and teachers at Riverside have turned to each other for guidance. Amidst debates over whether alternative education can properly serve its students, Riverside promises to try.
***
For Faith Ortiz, 18, a senior at Riverside, loss seems perpetual. When I met her at Riverside, she wore a plain white t-shirt with black joggers. She had braces, and her hair was swept back into a low bun. Faith’s laid-back demeanor disguised the volume of grief mounted on her shoulders. She counted the deaths of loved ones on her fingers: “Then my aunt, and then my uncles, my cousins, and then my grandma.” But losing her friends to gun violence was a different kind of loss.
Faith knew Uzziah since he began attending Riverside as a freshman three years ago. She looked back fondly on the times the three of them—Uzziah, Daily, and Faith—would spend time goofing around together in the art room or the gym. “They could tell when something’s wrong with you, even if they were not okay themselves. They would still check up on you or goof around to bring up your day.”
Outside of the classroom, Uzziah worked for the city through the Youth@Work program and participated in LEAP, a youth development program. He enjoyed playing football and basketball and volunteering at his church. While he kept himself busy, Uzziah was always gracious with his selflessness.
“He was a great friend, even if you didn’t know him personally,” said Aniqua Booker, Uzziah’s older sister. “If he had to give his last, he would.”
At school, Uzziah always smiled, Campbell remembered. He was reserved—the kind of person who would simply walk away when upset. In Principal Stephenson’s last memory of him, Uzziah was skipping away from his office, smiling from cheek to cheek.
Daily shared a similar playful spirit. “Daily was just starting to open up,” Campbell said. “He was one of the ones that was kind of hard to get to open up and trust us.” Eventually, though, he began to crack jokes back and forth with Campbell.
On November 27th, just a day before Thanksgiving, Riverside students gathered in the school gymnasium for a ceremony honoring Uzziah. Daily was one of the main speakers at the school’s memorial service. The two were close, described by Faith as brother-like. At the service, Daily wept, but tried to hold his emotions together for the sake of Uzziah’s mother and sister, Faith remembered.
Uzziah was to be laid to rest on December 7th. Faith recalled discussing with Daily what to wear to the funeral. But Faith would attend his funeral alone.
***
On the evening of December 3rd, Dalonna Jackson was walking into her house after work when the emergency lights of an ambulance flew past her. Six minutes after stepping into her home, Dalonna’s aunt yelled out, “Buster got shot!” When Dalonna arrived at the scene, Daily—known affectionately as “Buster” by friends and family—was being transported to the hospital. By the time Dalonna arrived, it was too late.
Daily was walking along Shelton Avenue when he was killed in a drive-by just a few blocks away from home.
Over a month after the killing, at a press conference at the New Haven Police Department that Wednesday afternoon, Assistant Chief of Police David Zannelli announced that Daily’s alleged killer, a 17-year-old juvenile defendant, was taken into custody and arrested. Family members and friends in attendance sobbed as Zannelli recalled the details of the crime scene.
Dalonna was the penultimate speaker at the press conference. She spoke with a calm and languid countenance, her hands clasped by her chest and shoulders swinging from side to side. She wore a sweatshirt, gifted by her godparents, printed with pictures of Daily and accessorized with pins reading, “Forever in our hearts. We will always remember you.” For Dalonna, the familiarity of the podium was especially painful. Sixteen years ago, her father was shot and killed when she was only 8 years old and Daily was 1 year old. Now, 24 years old, she carried the weight of two losses. Standing before city officials, news reporters, and family members, Dalonna prayed for the boy who killed her brother.
“I pray,” she said, pausing to take a breath, “that God shows you that there’s another way in life but this.”
Just a few hours after the press conference, I met Dalonna in the basement office of the Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church on Brewster Street. The Dalonna I sat down with was much different than the public-facing Dalonna from earlier that day. She spoke softly with her hands folded into her lap, head hung low.
“My brother really was my best friend, my confidant, my everything. We did everything together,” Dalonna said. “When I’m down, I can’t go to nobody else because my person is in the ground.”
Growing up in the absence of her father, it was her brother, Daily, through whom Dalonna often found strength. She recalled the sleepless nights when Daily would come into her room and sit beside her. His presence was enough to reassure Dalonna. Daily could light up a room simply by standing in it.
“He was, if I could be totally honest, the only reason why I’m still alive,” she said.
As she mourned the loss of her brother, Riverside faculty called and checked in on her, sent flowers to the house, and sent social workers to sit and talk with the family in the first couple of weeks after the death. Stephenson reached out personally to tell Dalonna about his affection for Daily and his strengths as a student.
“They were very there emotionally for us,” she said. Dalonna is a Riverside alum herself.
***
For some community members, Riverside is part of the problem.
Three days after Daily’s death, family and friends celebrated his life by gathering outside at the basketball courts on the corner of Ivy Street and Shelton Avenue as the sun set, to celebrate Daily’s life. The memorial service honored the late teen with prayers, candle lighting, and a balloon release. Among the many gathered to mourn the loss was Sean Reeves, a community gun violence advocate and local business owner. In his speech at the gathering, Reeves implored youth to stay out of trouble. Thirteen years ago, Reeves made the same plea before a similar crowd—only that time, the memorial was for his son, whom he had just lost to gun violence.
Reeves argues that alternative schools like Riverside are fundamentally flawed because they put kids and their self-esteem—particularly their belief in their intellectual capabilities—at risk. “Putting a label on the kid,” as Reeves says, teaches children that they are “bad seeds” and promotes a cycle of disengagement. “Riverside should be shut down.”
Reeves’ concerns over Riverside’s merits allude to a broader mistrust in the system of alternative schooling. ProPublica has reported that school districts often involuntarily reassign students to alternative schools for contestable disciplinary reasons like “common decency” and “disrespect,” sentencing them to less rigorous curriculums and deteriorating facilities.
In 2019, similar doubts emerged among the New Haven community when then Superintendent Carol Birks proposed to close Riverside amid a 30.7 million dollar budget deficit. The motion came less than a year after NHPS had merged two other alternative schools with Riverside, which at the time had 135 students. According to The New Haven Independent, Birks expressed doubt about the success of the alternative learning model, citing high chronic absence rates.
To push back against Birks’ doubts, Riverside students and teachers testified in defense of the school. Students tearfully shared that they felt cared for by Riverside faculty, thanking teachers for providing emotional and professional support, as reported by the New Haven Independent. Teachers highlighted the trust they built with their students over the years. Riverside survived its second closure threat.
Six years later, Stephenson is confident the school is not at risk for closure. “Riverside is not going anywhere,” he said. Since its inception, Riverside has continued to accommodate students with a variety of needs, despite being viewed monolithically as a last-resort destination for struggling students.
Riverside takes on students who struggle to show up to school or meet attendance requirements due to housing problems. Students who are being evicted. Students whose parents are incarcerated. Students who are reading at very low levels. Students who cannot read at all. Some students are 21 years old, overaged and under-credited. Others are described by teachers as “academically brilliant,” but unable to handle stimuli.
No matter the need, Riverside vows to meet students where they are.
***
In the wake of Uzziah and Daily’s deaths, Riverside mobilized its longstanding systems of support. The school, working with the New Haven Police Department to bolster student safety, employed a full-time school resource officer and scheduled more frequent patrol visits. The intention, says Chief Jacobson, is not to over-police, but to “focus our attention there in a positive way.” The Connecticut Violence Intervention Program has a staff member at the school lead small group discussions. The school has brought in therapy dogs and mental health professionals from Clifford Beers Community Care Center. The school’s social worker, Lisa Agosto, sat down with students to offer one-on-one supportive counseling. Students were given a pause from schoolwork.
“The school really supported all of us,” Faith explained. To Faith, the school’s response mirrored patterns of support she’s experienced as a student at Riverside. Faith appreciated being able to take a break from normal coursework in the weeks after the loss of her friends. On more routine days, too, when she feels overwhelmed or unable to engage in her school work, she goes to the music classroom to listen to or make music, or just talk to the music teacher for advice.
Michael Pavano, an art teacher at Riverside, expressed that matriculating at Riverside was about support, not punishment.
“It’s about transitioning them, getting them to understand that when you come to school, we are going to support you. You’re not going to be thrown out of class, you’re not going to be suspended all the time because you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that—that traditional environment,” Pavano said.
D’Shawn Coleman, 17, a senior at Riverside, can often be found playing the piano in Pavano’s art room. D’Shawn shared that when he came to Riverside as a freshman, he doubted whether he would be cared for by the school community. He entered with a preconceived notion about Riverside being a “bad school,” and friends and family sometimes belittled him for attending an alternative school. Over time, D’Shawn grew an appreciation for his peers and teachers for the support they provided him academically and personally.
He has built meaningful relationships with trusted teachers, which he says is rooted in mutual respect and seeing that they are “genuinely trying to help.” The level of support he has received at Riverside, he said, can only be found in an alternative setting, which he has found easier to adjust to.
For Silvia Sanchez, 17, Riverside’s smaller class size of five to eight students was the reason why she transferred to the school as a sophomore. At Hill Regional Career High School, where the school population is about seven hundred, Silvia felt “claustrophobic” and anxious, which took a toll on her mental health and school performance. She often skipped class because “it was just too much.” Since switching to Riverside’s more intimate setting, Silvia’s attendance has improved and she has been able to keep up with all her assignments.
“I’m doing better here,” she explained, “At Career, [the teachers] are busy. There are a lot of kids. They can’t even focus on one student at a time. But here, you know they care for you.”
Riverside holds regular town halls, assemblies in the gymnasium, to discuss matters of significance with the entire student body and teachers.
On a Thursday morning in January, thirty students and teachers gathered in a semi-circle around a small wooden podium for a town hall. Stephenson opened the assembly with general reminders about school credit requirements, attendance rules, and basic student responsibilities. Following Stephenson were U.S. Navy recruiters, an anti-gun violence advocate, and Aniqua Booker, Uzziah’s sister.
Aniqua gave a short speech about the power of decision-making and resistance to peer pressure. After her brother’s passing, she began speaking at Riverside town halls. “It just brings me joy and a lot of gratitude to try to come out and speak…so they know there’s more to your life,” Aniqua said. “Right now is not the finish line, there’s so much more.”
“We like to come, not just as classmates, but as a family,” Faith explained. “We come as a community and make sure that we’re here to help each other out.”
In addition to offering typical courses—English, history, and algebra—Riverside gives students the room and freedom to pursue their hobbies and interests in a way that is low-pressure but still structured and guided. Pavano, the art teacher, has had students interested in carpentry build kitchen cabinets and countertops, students interested in automobile mechanics draw schematics, and students hoping to become hairdressers develop new hairstyles. Faith, who wants to become a Certified Nursing Assistant, prepares for the exam during Pavano’s class. “My classroom is, ‘Listen, whatever you love, bring it in here. I’ll find a way to make it happen for you. I’ll find a way to support it,’” he said.
Pavano says that most of his students have gone on to lead “great, productive” lives.
Peter Chase has taught history at Riverside for five years. On his wall hangs military badges, patches, and a portrait of him in uniform, where he served as a Petty Officer Third Class, with a brooding blue-eyed gaze and a chiseled face. Faith remarked that back then he was a heartbreaker and now he’s a chair breaker. It’s an inside joke the two share.
But more importantly, Chase is a product of alternative education himself. He described himself as “a rough kid,” joking that he had “so much fun senior year” that he did it twice. After five years, Chase graduated from a basic studies program, similar to Riverside’s alternative schooling model, in Branford, CT. His personal experience with alternative education was the reason why he wanted to teach at a school like Riverside.
Coming from a place of understanding, Chase connects with his students outside of the classroom, too. He does cookouts with his students and takes them fishing.
For some outside of the school, Riverside is one piece of a larger fight to protect young people in New Haven.
Reverend Dr. John E. Cotten, Jr. is the senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church, founded in 1958. Dalonna has a close relationship with Cotten, referring to him as “dad.” On December 19th, Daily’s celebration of life ceremony took place at Cotten’s church.
Passionate about helping the city’s youth, Cotten founded Queen Esther, a faith-based initiative that recruits foster care and adoption parents. He expressed his frustrations with the lack of support systems for young people, even as they share a city with an institution like Yale.
“I don’t understand why our children are not protected,” he said. “We are here in a major city, New England, the top school in the world, and yet we can’t figure out how to do this, how to protect our young people, or how to educate our young people.”
But for Cotten, while Riverside might not be the perfect solution to protecting the most vulnerable students in New Haven’s public school system, shutting it down isn’t either.
“If you shut it down, where are they going to go? What’s going to happen to the kids?” he asks. “To shut down something without providing a better alternative that meets the needs of the reason why you are shutting down the first institution—that’s confusing to me.”
***
“December 3rd will always have a question mark next to it,” said Dalonna. “I’ll never understand why my brother was taken from me. I’ll never be able to just move on from this, because he was such a big part of my life, and knowing that my brother died the same way my father did, it’ll never be real or seem real.”
Like Dalonna, Riverside continues to mourn. But its systems of care persist too.
There are teachers at Riverside who never want to leave. There are students who leave and come back to thank their teachers with a hug.
“We’re planting seeds. We’re not going to always see the flower, but just know we’re planting the seeds for it to sprout and grow,” Stephenson said.
Faith is graduating this year. She plans to move to Georgia to live with her older brother and pursue her nursing degree, as well as her own clothing line. Some day, she hopes to build a homeless shelter. For now, Faith is focused on moving forward. “It ain’t the same, but I can’t keep letting these deaths hold me back.”
Faith is excited for a new start. She’ll miss her friends and family in New Haven—especially the ones she can’t take with her. “Most of all, I’ll miss going to the grave sites,” she said.
When asked about Riverside, without hesitation, she says, “I’ll be back to visit for sure.”
–Christina Lee is a junior in Davenport College.