Jorge Chavarria Rodriguez was only a few weeks into his first year at Wakefield High School in Arlington when he overdosed and died on Sept. 24, 2023. His mother, Luz Rodriguez, doesn’t want his death to be in vain.

“Before September 24th, I didn’t know that fentanyl was so easy to get. I didn’t know that only a tiny amount could kill you. I didn’t know you could die the first time you used drugs. I didn’t know that the peer pressure to use was so bad. I didn’t know that drugs could catch up with you, even if your mom tried hard to protect you,” she said in Spanish. Her voice broke with emotion, but her purpose did not.

Rodriguez spoke to a community meeting about the problem of student mental health, drug use and overdoses in Arlington on Wednesday night.

Two Arlington students — Chavarria Rodriguez and Sergio Flores — died after overdoses in 2023, and more teens reportedly experienced non-lethal overdoses. The tragedies have prompted a building wave of community outcry for the school system and county to respond swiftly to the emergency among youth. Nationally, overall drug use among youth is down compared to pre-pandemic levels, but overdoses are on the rise as a result of the presence of the powerful synthetic opiate fentanyl in the drug supply. In addition, youth mental and behavioral health problems have worsened in the wake of the pandemic.

Now, three major Arlington advocacy groups — Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement (VOICE), the local chapter of the NAACP, and Arlington Schools Hispanic Parents Association (ASHPA) — are calling on the county to include $2 million in its upcoming budget to fund after school programs that would provide young Arlingtonians with safe, structured activities following school dismissal.

“As parents, adults and community leaders, we have to act immediately to rescue our young people,” said Janeth Valenzuela, the founder of ASHPA. “There must be changes in their system of care, and we need high quality, free after school programs like those parents asked for.”

Valenzuela and other community members made that point to County Board members Takis Karantonis and Maureen Coffey and school board representatives Bethany Sutton and Mary Kadera on Wednesday night, at a packed meeting in the Kenmore Middle School cafeteria. Organizers said the event was attended by more than 260 people.

Advocates envision the $2 million being spent on a free after school pilot program, to run from 3-6 pm and serve 200 youth drawn from Arlington schools with the highest rates of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch: Wakefield High School, Kenmore Middle School, Gunston Middle School, Thomas Jefferson Middle School, and Washington-Liberty High School.

The groups’ call for more funding came after a VOICE-led series of listening sessions with more than 240 high school students, who agreed after school programs would help. Students also cited some of the obstacles to joining afterschool programs, including language barriers in signing up, the costs, and transportation.

The findings about limited after school programming options are similar to those of an ASHPA survey of nearly 190 Latino parents in Arlington.

The uptick in student overdoses is not limited to Arlington. School districts across the D.C. region are facing the troubling trend, which is eliciting similar community concerns in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, and Alexandria. In some cases, it’s also becoming a focal point in local politics: in Loudoun County, for example, Superintendent of Schools Aaron Spence faced criticism from local conservatives and Gov. Glenn Youngkin for not promptly notifying community members about a cluster of overdoses at Park View High School this fall.

At Wednesday’s meeting, current Arlington high school and middle school students spoke with urgency about their own experiences watching peers struggle with drugs — or struggling themselves.

“If left untreated, this issue will seep into the lives of everyone seated here today. Your brother, child, or cousin may pick up a pill to focus. Your mother might need a medication to manage her pain,” said Marina Cura, a student at Wakefield High School in recovery from her own mental health challenges. Cura now serves as an EMT in Prince William County, where she often treats people who have overdosed.

Several speakers made the point that the high cost of living in Arlington makes affording after school offerings like joining sports teams all the more difficult — and worse, puts tremendous stress on students and families.

“A lot of parents are actually working two or three jobs to just keep the house afloat,” said Ahmad Ali, the vice president of the NAACP youth advisory council. “That puts pressure on kids. That puts stress on them because first off, they don’t have a parent to talk to anymore because that parent is at work all day, all the time. And that could lead those children to go down these harmful negative avenues.”

Ali and Jy’Den Myles Richardson, the president of the NAACP advisory council, said they were aware of overdoses in their school, Arlington Tech. Speaking to WAMU/DCist after the event, they described what it felt like to have to know how to administer naloxone, an opioid reversal drug. Both said they thought focusing on after school programs was a good place to start in responding to the crisis, but they listed some bigger ideas, too: Richardson suggested countywide youth recreation centers, and Ali called for destigmatizing conversations about drug use and mental health in schools.

Students who participated in the VOICE listening sessions also called for better substance-use education, more opportunities to learn about administering naloxone (students in Arlington are now able to receive the training), and more help for overworked mental health counselors.

The request for $2 million — at one point, the room broke out into chants of “Dos millones! Dos millones! — comes after the county board set aside $750,000 in unallocated funds from the closeout of the fiscal year 2023 budget in November to add capacity to existing programs addressing youth substance use.

Karantonis, who pushed for that funding, said it was already being put to use, citing the rapid growth of an after school program run by the Department of Parks and Recreation at the Arlington Mill Community Center. The money could also potentially help to offer teachers or others who work with youth stipends for leading after school activities, he said.

Karantonis and Coffey stopped short of promising to meet the request, though both expressed strong support and sympathy for the cause. Karantonis, who pushed for the initial $750,000, said he would go into budget negotiations “with a $2 million mindset.” “We all know that the cost of failing is immensely more,” he said.

County Manager Mark Schwartz, who also attended the gathering at Kenmore but did not speak publicly, will present his budget proposal to the board this month. This year’s local budgets, including in Arlington, are expected to be challenging, with governments contending with increased personnel costs, inflation, uncertainty around Metro’s fiscal cliff, and climbing commercial vacancy rates in office buildings.

This story has been updated with comments from Ahmad Ali and to clarify remarks by Marina Cura.