Do We Really Need To Call The National Guard?

When Brockton High School students go to school—if they go to school at all—they need to avoid hallway fights, open drug use, and verbal abuse. As recently reported in the Boston Globe, the Brockton Enterprise, and other news outlets, Brockton High School is in a state of chaos so dysfunctional and disruptive that some officials have called for the National Guard to step in to restore order. Turning our schools into a militarized zone is not the answer, but the call to do so speaks to the desperation in our communities. The fact that the idea is even being considered is a powerful and cautionary tale of the dangers of neglecting education.

Underfunding and understaffing are fueling astronomical rates of teacher and student absenteeism in the city and across the state, leaving parents, students, and educators in despair. It is no wonder that children avoid and fear going to school. They avoid going to the bathroom all day to stay away from drug users and are warehoused in the cafeteria with little or no supervision as a safety measure, while their teachers are bullied by groups of teenagers. This turmoil and debilitating absenteeism is alarming. Chronic absenteeism is becoming entrenched in student and school culture, and with every day that passes, it is more difficult to reverse and remove barriers to coming to school.

Each school day without enough teachers devalues the education a student can receive, and each school day missed by a student increases the likelihood that yet another young person will quit school permanently and be left with fewer opportunities to get ahead but with greater chances of falling behind into poverty, poor health, and even premature death.

These problems are not only in Brockton or Massachusetts but throughout the country. As absenteeism rates soar and chronic absenteeism increases, hundreds of thousands of students are disconnected from their communities, their schools, their teachers, and their friends. Social isolation is detrimental to student emotional health as well as their educational life in a world already beset by loneliness.

These challenges aren’t new. They are the result of decades of policies that have ignored the needs of students and teachers. This is exactly why we started Coaching4Change 13 years ago, to find better ways to support school systems such as Brockton, whose student body is 60% Black and 20% Hispanic.

While there is no single fix, communities and schools must take action now to begin drawing students back—and, most importantly—to keep them coming back through graduation. The responses have to be comprehensive and multi-faceted to combat the enormity of the problem, but they do not have to be complicated to make a difference.

Near-peer coaching and mentoring were two of the pragmatic solutions recently explored at the National School Staffing Summit 2024 that make a significant difference for under-staffed inner-city schools and particularly for deeply stressed and challenged students of color, such as those in our Gateway Cities.

Mentoring is clear in its simplicity and straightforwardness. Give a child a mentor, someone who looks like them, with relatable background experiences, and with time to spend talking one-on-one, and almost invariably, they want to come to school. Time after time, research has shown that mentoring can provide powerful results, reversing absenteeism, curbing behavior problems, and boosting academic learning. It contributes to increased graduation rates and success later in life. However, it is also only part of a critically needed support system for teachers who are overworked and struggling to be their best. If we are to show teachers that we value them, we need to help create an atmosphere where they, too, can thrive.

At New Heights Charter School in Brockton and in mentoring programs in other Gateway Cities, where C4C has placed diverse, college-age mentors, teachers say they feel more supported, and mentors are finding their experience so enriching that many of them are entering the educator pipeline. Students state time and time again that interacting with mentors makes the school day meaningful.

Bringing in the military to occupy our schools is not a solution. Students would benefit more from being surrounded by teachers who feel appreciated, from having counselors trained in mental health and substance abuse available, from being involved in peer-to-peer conflict resolution programs, and from seeing more adults in their schools who reflect their community.

Every day a student attends school prevents them from falling behind and increases the chances they will lead a happier, healthier, and wealthier life. We must find more ways to make sure that happens.