Here's Where I'd Start to Make Brockton High School Safe Again

So what should Brockton High School do to become safe and a place where learning can actually happen?

As you might have seen in my previous video, teachers and students testified at a Brockton, Massachusetts school board meeting talking about just the incredibly unsafe situations that are happening every day at the school.

And ambulances are being called and, you know, there's just fighting and drug use and sexual activity happening on campus.

And this is something that's got to be cleaned up.

So a couple of priorities if your school is in a similar situation, if things are unsafe.

I think the first is physical access.

One of the things teachers mentioned was they don't even have keys to their own rooms, so they can't lock rooms and keep students out of them when they're unoccupied.

And there seems to be no control over where students go.

A lot of times students are expected to wait around in the cafeteria for hours if testing is going on.

things like that.

So everybody has to be in the right place at the right time or they can't be there.

It just comes down to that when it comes to physical safety.

And one of the problems, one of the students, several of the students complained about were that there was a need to lock bathrooms to such an extent that you had 3,600 people using four bathrooms.

And that's just not gonna, you know, the math doesn't work there.

So I think making sure that everybody is in class, sweeping the halls, locking the doors, making sure that anyone who's in the hall has to have a hall pass at all times, you know, some sort of e-hall pass system to make sure that if somebody is in the hall, they have permission to be and you know where they're going and they're actually going to that place.

So physical, like making sure that people are in the right place, I think is one of the first things.

And trespassing kids who are not where they're supposed to be, getting them off campus, getting them out of there.

so that they're not selling drugs, they're not starting fights, they're not engaged in any kind of illegal activity.

That is just the very basic.

Do not bring people together in a building if you cannot do that.

That is, I think, the very first priority is just get everybody to where they need to be and make sure nobody is where they should not be.

Another thing that came up a lot was cell phones, that cell phones were how fights were being coordinated, you know, drama was being started on social media, you know, and of course very little learning can take place if kids are on their cell phones all the time.

So I think a strict cell phone policy, like it might not seem like the most serious thing, but teachers really emphasized and students really emphasized how much cell phones are making a negative difference.

So I think a really strict cell phone policy would go a long way.

The next thing I would look at is progressive discipline for the various behaviors.

To be clear, some of these behaviors are straight up criminal first offense.

If you are selling drugs out of your backpack, the police need to be called and you need to be hauled away.

You can't sell drugs in high school.

I don't know of anybody who wants to live in a society where kids can sell drugs in high school and just get away with it.

So I think law enforcement needs to be a part of it.

But even for lower level things, there need to be reasonable consequences that are consistent and predictable so that everybody knows if you go to school, it should be to learn.

And if you're not there to learn, you're not gonna just do that with impunity.

So physical safety, cell phones, consequences, I think that would go a long way to restoring some order and restoring some safety.

And if there are continued problems of some sort, I think a lot of this comes down to not being willing to face problems and not being willing to take responsibility for problems.

Like people didn't seem to know who the principal was or who was in charge of discipline like i don't know the answer to that question but it should be pretty clear that someone is responsible when a student gets sent to the office when there's a discipline referral and i think adults just have to take charge because again we cannot have responsibility we cannot take responsibility for young people if we cannot exercise adult responsibility and say go to class you're supposed to be in your class you can't be anywhere else and we've got to just guarantee people's safety if we're going to have them on campus.

So that's where I would start with Brockton High School.

You can read the transcripts of the interviews at principalcenter.com slash Brockton, or excuse me, not the interviews, but the testimony in front of the school board.

That was posted on YouTube, and I had it transcribed, and you can read that for yourself.

Really is some shocking stuff coming out of Brockton High School.

Let me know what you think.