After four Brockton School Committee members called on the governor to send in National Guard troops to bring order to the state’s largest high school, education specialists, racial justice advocates, and even other Brockton officials on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected the prospect of a militarized campus.
“It’s a ridiculous idea that is incredibly problematic on multiple levels,” said Leon Smith, executive director of the Boston-based advocacy group Citizens for Juvenile Justice.
Backlash to the proposal comes as Brockton High’s nearly 3,600 students, home on February break, await news on how leaders will address their school’s unruly environment when classes resume Monday. The school, 25 miles south of Boston, has been engulfed in turmoil for months, with its halls and classrooms drastically understaffed due in large part to cuts last year caused by back-to-back multimillion-dollar budget deficits — and worsened by staff attendance issues as teachers seek to avoid the disruption. Staff, students, and parents have reported verbal abuse, regular fights, and open drug use.
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The fever reached a new pitch Friday when the four School Committee members — Claudio Gomes, Ana Oliver, Tony Rodrigues, and Joyce Asack — called for the National Guard to be brought in. The committee members said they were seeking additional adult supervision at the school.
Aside from the Guard, “everything is on the table,” said Mayor Robert Sullivan, who holds a seat on the School Committee and opposes bringing in the National Guard. “I’m ready, willing, and able to work with anyone to alleviate the situation.”
Sullivan said he’s met in recent days with Police Chief Brenda Perez, US Representative Stephen Lynch, and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll to discuss the state of affairs at Brockton High. But Sullivan on Tuesday could not provide concrete plans on how to resolve the upheaval. The state’s top education office would only say in a statement that it is “committed to making sure our schools provide safe and supportive environments for all students, educators, and staff.”
The school district and Police Department have not responded to requests from the Globe for the number of suspensions, arrests, or emergency calls this year at the school, which might shed light on the full extent of disruptions. In prior years, according to state data, as many as one-third of Brockton High students were suspended, either in-school, or out, in a single school year.
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About 80 percent of Brockton High’s students are Black and Latino, and the majority are high needs and from low-income families, according to state data.
Tony Branch of the Brockton Area Branch of the NAACP said in a statement that the organization opposes the deployment of the National Guard.
”It would perpetuate a militarized image we deplored in Brockton during the 2020 George Floyd murder unrest and the busing years in Boston,” Branch said.
The organization supports investing instead in mental health resources and restorative justice practices, as well as “strong parenting to combat behavioral issues.” But the group also supports “a model that maximizes the presence of Brockton police and video surveillance,” Branch said.
The school has nine school resource officers as well as a Brockton police officer there every day, according to Sullivan.
F. Chris Curran, director of the Educational Policy Resource Center at the University of Florida, studies inequities in school discipline. The presence of the Guard on campus could have negative long-term effects on the school climate, even if it helps quell misbehaviors in the short term, he said.
“School is supposed to be a place where students are excited to be, where they’re in community, where they’re learning,” Curran said. “And whether it’s law enforcement, or certainly, military presence, it sets a very different tone for the school environment.”
Students would be better served by experts trained in substance abuse, mental health, and peer-to-peer conflict, or by seeing more adults in the building who are directly from their community, Curran said. A Louisiana high school welcomed a group of fathers into the building last year during an uptick of school violence, for example.
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Some families who spoke to the Globe Monday said that while they are also concerned about the conditions at the school, they don’t believe the National Guard is the answer.
Ana Reyes, grandmother of a ninth-grade student, said her grandson often sees fights and sometimes will go the whole day without using the bathroom to avoid the drug use there. But Reyes said her grandson said committee members were “being too dramatic” in their call to bring in the National Guard.
The tumult at Brockton High has been months in the making.
The district has faced one multimillion-dollar budget deficit after another, resulting in cuts to about 130 staff positions. Then-superintendent Michael Thomas said last May that the shortfall was due to shrinking enrollment, down 16 percent from its peak in 2007, according to state data. In total, the district last year faced a roughly $36 million shortage.
The high school also has had a turnstile of leaders, with five principals in eight months.
Thomas, who had been on the verge of stepping in as principal after the previous one was put on leave, instead took an extended medical leave in August when part of the budget shortfall was disclosed. Two more acting principals followed in the fall before Kevin McCaskill, a former assistant superintendent for Boston Public Schools, took over as permanent principal in January.
McCaskill told School Committee members in January that he was making several changes, including hiring six more safety and security specialists, adding a structured mentoring program, and increasing use of in-school suspensions.
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One element school officials must contend with is the school’s massive size, which, at 545,000 square feet, is the largest in Massachusetts.
“If you’re relying on the physical presence of manpower, it’s very challenging for a building that large,” said Regan Goan, president of R J Goan and Associates, a Portland, Maine-based consulting firm that specializes in school safety and security.
Goan said that however school leaders handle the situation, they must be aware of the message they are sending to the community.
“When someone walks onto school grounds, do they see a sense of pride? A sense of ownership?” he said.
For years Brockton has sought to rebuild the aging school building, winning a grant worth as much as $800 million in 2022 from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. But even with the state covering 80 percent of the cost, the city is shying away from the rebuild, as its share of the project could be as much as $200 million, the Brockton Enterprise reported.
In the short-term, Goan said school officials would be wise to seek outside help. Teachers didn’t sign up to be security consultants, he said.
“They’re there to teach our kids, so bringing in an outside resource to right the ship is really what [the district] should be doing,” Goan said.
Mandy McLaren can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @mandy_mclaren. Christopher Huffaker can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @huffakingit.