The students at Brockton High School, in Brockton Mass., are not working and playing well together. In fact, they haven’t been for a long time. In December of 2022, Cliff Canavan, a math and computer science teacher with 22 years’ experience tried to break up a fight outside of the school. Canavan described it this way:
We flipped over the tackle sled. The student was on one side, I was on the other and the steel hit me in the arm and broke both forearm bones. We are outmatched. There are several fights every day throughout the school. Some of them are not too bad, some of them are quite horrific.
In fact, so horrific that four members of the Brockton School Committee, Joyce Asack, Tony Rodrigues, Claudio Gomes, and Ana Oliver, sent a letter to Mayor Robert Sullivan to ask Gov. Maura Healey for National Guard support amid safety concerns at the high school, specifically “to assist in restoring order, ensuring the safety of all individuals on the school premises, and implementing measures to address the root causes of the issues we are facing.”
This week Sullivan stated that he does not support the idea, and Canavan doesn’t think it makes sense. “I understand why they’re asking for the help, but I would really love clarification on what they expect them to do,” Canavan admitted.
Canavan believes that a Brockton teacher shortage and state regulations in the “Chapter 222″ law limit how administrators can discipline students is the problem. The law states that “exclusion from school is a last resort,” but Canavan explained that it makes removing the problematic students from the classroom almost impossible.
Those kids causing trouble, they’re not going to classes anyway. They’re not taking advantage of their education while they’re here. They’re running around the hallways in the middle of class time, they’re doing drug deals in the bathroom, they’re staging fights in the stairwells because there are no cameras in stairwells.
Winthrop Farwell Jr., the former mayor and councilor at large, does not believe that the National Guard is the answer. He said, “The National Guard is a military organization, people professionally trained to be soldiers. They’re not teachers, they’re not hall monitors. This problem is on us.”
Healey issued a statement last Sunday saying that she is “committed to ensuring that schools are safe and supportive environments.” She stated that she has been in touch with local officials about the concerns at the school.
The four members of the school committee who wrote the letter to the mayor held a press conference to explain the situation. Tony Rodrigues said:
We do need to take our schools back into control and make sure our students have a safe learning environment because what’s going on at the high school is disheartening. Kids are losing precious learning time when kids are causing chaos.
Ana Oliver said, “We’re not asking them to deploy a whole army to our school. We’re asking for support.”
Claudio Gomez added:
I know the first thought that comes to mind when you hear National Guard is uniform and arms. That’s not the case, they’re people like us. They’re educated, they’re trained. We just need their assistance right now. We need more staff to support our staff, and help the students learn, have a safe environment. That’s the case for us. We need the hands. And they have it, so why not provide their assistance?
Sullivan opposes the proposal, but some of his reasoning sounds dated.
We need to give our administrators the tools to keep order in the school, including amending certain state rules and regulations that currently hamper these efforts. National Guard soldiers are not the answer. We have had school police working effectively and safely at the high school for decades.
Sullivan is correct about amending the state regulations, but the police “working for decades” falls on deaf ears. Last Thursday, 11 teenage students were arrested and criminally charged after a large fight broke out at the school. No matter how you want to frame it, having 11 students arrested and criminally charged is an insane number. We all know that not every student in a fight is arrested, so you can extrapolate out how large the brawl actually was.
This is a school that has almost 4,000 students, and if the day-to-day operation of educating high school-age kids is this dangerous, changes need to be made. The “Chapter 222” law that dictates expulsion to be the very last alternative, reeks of a strong woke stench.
This is a classic case of handcuffing the staff and allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Like liberal laws that allow criminals to steal up to a certain dollar amount without retribution, this is giving punks dominance and enabling them to ruin the education of others.
I hate to think that calling in the National Guard to establish control of a high school is necessary. It sets a precedence that I don’t want to even think about. However, these teachers are obviously fearful, and if they are that concerned, imagine how the students feel. This is not an atmosphere that is conducive to learning, so at this point, it sounds like a lose-lose situation.
Something needs to be done, and if a mind is a terrible thing to waste, then 4,000 minds is a catastrophe.