At Concord High School this week, students were told to keep moving along during the seven-minute passing time between classes.
Even in the second-floor hallway known as “Main Street,” a crossroads where backpack-bearing friends often gather to socialize, students kept it moving under the watchful eye of Principal Michael Reardon and Assistant Principal Jim Corkum, who stood in the hallway to make sure everyone maintained a smooth flow of traffic.
On Monday, Reardon announced in a message to the school community that students will no longer be allowed to congregate in the Main Street hallway area for the foreseeable future due to student behavior issues that have been escalating in recent months, including harassment and intimidation of other students, loud, profane language, pushing and shoving and “territorial behavior.”
“The key factor was other kids feeling uncomfortable passing through that area,” Reardon said Wednesday. “When you hear that, you know you’ve got to take action.”
Schools across the state are reporting an increase in incidents of inappropriate student behavior and violence within the last year, and Concord is no exception. Reardon and Assistant Principal Tim Herbert said Concord High has experienced vandalism, use of vape devices and fighting this year, mainly concentrated among a group of about 30 freshmen students. Reardon said the transition from middle school to high school, where there is more freedom as well as more stringent academic expectations, is always tough, but freshmen seem to be struggling more than usual this year.
“I do not want to lay this at the feet of COVID,” Reardon said. “But the fact that kids have been out of school for basically for a couple of years has not helped that transition at all.”
In Reardon’s announcement to students, which he forwarded to parents, he said students are failing to learn the life lessons taught at school.
“I would suggest the most important skill schools teach is how any individual conducts her or himself in society,” Reardon said. “How we learn to maneuver through the countless interactions we have each day while balancing our dignity with respect for the rights and dignity of others. This is a test we all face every day in school or out, and that’s never going to change.”
He said in a few weeks, student privileges may be restored.
“No one – certainly not me – wants a school where bathrooms have to be shut down or to have open places in our school where students can’t talk with their friends but the foundation of our school is the emotional and physical safety of every student,” Reardon said. “While that standard’s not being met, things are not going to be normal.”
This year Concord High has also begun piloting new restorative methods of discipline, and administrators hope the new model will be able to address the root of students’ problems beyond simply punishing the behavior.
“The more you learn about kids who struggle, the more you understand cause and effect,” Reardon said. “This isn’t just some random young person giving us a hard time in school. They’re responding with their limited repertoire of tools to some pretty difficult situations.”
Herbert, who has been leading the restorative justice efforts at the high school, gave a presentation to the community Tuesday night where he outlined the school’s discipline goals and how they’re adding restorative practices to the methods they’ve been using to address students’ individual needs since 2016. The school started training employees in restorative justice back in May 2020 and now have about 15 staff members who are incorporating restorative practices into the school day.
Restorative justice methods offer an alternative to exclusionary discipline practices such as in-school and out-of-school suspension that take students out of the learning environment to punish the behavior, but may not address the underlying causes behind the behavior. Restorative practices tend to focus on the harm that was done, Herbert said, rather than on what specific rule was broken.
Proponents of restorative justice say it cuts down on dropout rates, and involvement with the juvenile justice system. It can also help address the problem of students of color and students with disabilities being disciplined at a disproportionately higher rate than their white and non-disabled peers.
“After people have taken accountability for what they’ve done in a traditional system, we would issue a suspension, we would maybe have some community service and it’s done,” Herbert said. “Whereas with a restorative system and the direction we’re going, we drill down to a student’s need.”
Concord High School data from the last four years shows the majority of suspensions were issued for non-violent infractions such as truancy, foul language, defiance and disrespect. The school still uses in- and out-of-school suspensions depending on the behavior and circumstance. So far this year, the school has issued 577 out-of-school suspensions in connection with 152 behavior events that involved 92 students, and 22.5 in-school suspensions in connection with 48 discipline events that involved 25 students.
Under the restorative model, Concord High has started using small conversation circles as a tool to bring student offenders together with school administrators, counselors, parents and people who were harmed by their actions. For example, a restorative circle could bring together a student who committed an act of vandalism and a representative from the school custodial staff to discuss the harm that was done and find a solution to repair the situation. In the circles, participants are asked to show respect and an openness to listen to others, and to take turns speaking.
In the case of the behavior issues in the Main Street hallway, Herbert said he recently facilitated a mediation session between two students who had gotten into a physical altercation.
“I don’t suspect those kids are best of friends, but I do really believe that their plan for ‘we can be safe in the schools’ is legitimate,” Herbert said. “And I don’t think a ten-day suspension would have served either those students well.”
Herbert said the goal is to launch the restorative model in earnest next year and get more people trained.
“We’ve got to think about all of our kids,” Reardon said. “No learning is taking place until everybody feels physically and emotionally safe. But we’re not going to give up or throw away students who struggle. We’re going to try to find programs and approaches that will make a difference so they can acclimate themselves to the school and start on a pathway of success over the four years.”