In the 2016-2017 school year, there were 177 shootings within 1,000 feet of a school in D.C., according to research by Guns & America (which is owned by DCist’s parent company WAMU). Eighty-four schools saw a shooting near their campus that year. And five of those schools—most of them elementary schools—saw 10 or more shootings near their campus.

Shootings and violence near campuses have continued to alarm parents and students in the following years. In June, Washington Mystics player Natasha Cloud organized a media blackout in protest of at least two shootings near Hendley Elementary School in Southeast. A spate of shootings near Columbia Heights elementary schools this year has spurred parents to action. In July, the Washington Post published an article highlighting students’ worries as they commute to and from school, sometimes on trips lasting longer than an hour. The students featured spoke of classmates who had been stabbed or shot on the same routes they took every day. The District does not have a school bus system, and students often have to rely on public transportation to get them to school.

City leaders are trying to lessen some of those fears with new programs meant to get children to and from school safely. On Friday, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office announced a series of new initiatives as part of the Safe Passage program, which dates back to 2017.

Among them is an initiative called “Safe Spots,” which creates a partnership with several businesses, government buildings, and faith-based organizations located along streets frequented by students as they commute to and from school. So far, 23 businesses and organizations have signed up to put a “safe spot” sign in their windows, signaling that they’ll allow any student who feels unsafe to enter and use a phone to call a friend, family, or the police, per a Friday press release from Bowser’s office. The participating locations are found in Congress Heights and Anacostia, “with the intent of expanding to other interested communities across the District.”

In the coming school year, the Safe Passage program will focus on six existing priority areas, identified as places where children may be at risk as they travel to and from school. Partners will “increase the consistent presence and visibility of caring adults … growing a model piloted last school year in the Minnesota Avenue Metro area,” says the press release from the mayor’s office. Most of them are close to Metro stations, like Anacostia, L’Enfant Plaza, and NOMA-Gallaudet, with the city adding Columbia Heights Metro as a seventh this year.

The District is also partnering with CarpooltoSchool, a kind of ridesharing app meant to help parents organize carpools for their children to school, which will launch at 10 public schools and public charter schools this year. It will pilot a program called LiveSafe at 20 schools this year, which allows students to easily send emergency alerts, send their location to trusted people, make reports to the police, and flag potential problems on a map for other students, per the release. The mayor is also allocating $65,000 to the District Department of Transportation to gather data from students and parents that will “will help to identify routes that are currently complex or difficult to traverse using public transit and connect that information with data about student attendance,” the release says.

The ideas for the new initiatives came out of conversations with 200 students from across the District about what might make them feel safer when they commute, per the release.

Back in July, At-large Councilmember David Grosso introduced legislation that would establish an Office of Safe Passage that would be in charge of helping students commute safely. It would also require Bowser to provide shuttles for students to and from Metro stations to certain schools “with the fewest transportation options,” per a press release on the legislation.

Grosso’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Bowser’s new initiatives.