“He taught me there’s more than just sitting out here waiting for dreams that are not going to be,” Khalil says.

Rowe started the mentor program called “Seeds of Promise: Transforming Black Boys into Men” last year. She hired four African American men who understood her students’ lives and assigned each between 20 and 30 teenagers who could reach out to them anytime, including holidays and weekends. The mentors’ salaries, $25 an hour without benefits, are paid through a partnership between the high school and a University of Maryland program called Promise Heights. Run through the university’s School of Social Work, Promise Heights counts Renaissance among its community schools, where students and residents can find a wide range of help. The initiative also employs Atwater, a 29-year-old licensed clinical social worker whose school office is stacked with personal hygiene products, air mattresses, donated clothes and other emergency supplies.

Atwater and Cooper, 32, often work together to keep Khalil on track, encouraging him, nagging him, pushing him out of his comfort zone. Atwater helped him write the Sun op-ed. For the White House trip, Cooper used his own money to buy Khalil a $150 suit from H&M and then accompanied him on the train.

The success of the mentor program can be seen in cellphones that ring day and night and in the way students seek out Cooper and his three colleagues in the halls, asking them for advice or to play basketball.

Scribbled in red marker on a white board in Cooper’s office are the mentors’ thoughts about what they are trying to achieve: “You can’t expect a boy to be a man if he never seen one!” reads one. “To show genuine love in a world that doesn’t produce it regularly,” reads another. On another wall, a poster of a stop sign simply says: #Stop Fatherlessness.

Not lost on any of the men: All three teenagers who died this school year, and the one now facing first-degree murder charges, had mentors. Jolley’s mentor cradled him on the ground after he was stabbed. A month after Jolley’s death in December, the school mourned Darius Bardney, 16, who was killed in an apparent accidental shooting at an apartment building. Then in February, Daniel Jackson, 17, who had stopped attending classes months earlier but kept in touch with his mentor, was shot several times less than two miles from the school.

Fights break out with little provocation in Renaissance’s halls. Within a 30-minute period one day, two girls tear at each other in a classroom, drawing a crowd. Once that conflict is quelled, two boys shove each other into walls until they are pried apart. On another day, a boy who struggles with mental illness and drug addiction is furious that Atwater won’t give him a snack at that moment and walks close to her, swinging what looks like a metal pipe. “Don’t get shot,” he says.

[‘I don’t know if people understand what is happening in Baltimore’]

“It can be seen from the outside eye, and even from the inside eye,” Cooper says, “that Baltimore is a place with no type of hope.”

But then there are kids like Khalil. “That’s past hope now,” Cooper says. “That’s one of those ones you see and say we made it happen. We got one. We saved one.”

The night of the panel, Khalil stays to eat a community dinner that’s being served. He hasn’t had a deep talk with Cooper in weeks, not since the two went to New Mexico to attend a conference in which Khalil was invited to discuss the benefits of community schools with the mayor of Madison, Wis., and others. He did well in front of the audience. But privately, he said something disrespectful to Cooper — neither will reveal what it was — and Cooper is waiting for an apology.

Khalil still hasn’t addressed it when Cooper sees him sitting alone at a table. He takes the seat across from him. Khalil doesn’t look him in the eye. He can’t. He gets up and walks to the bathroom before the tears come. Cooper follows him.