Prioritize student mental health

After more than a year of being home due to COVID19, many students are struggling as they return to full-time, in-person learning.

The struggle, it seems, is being acted out by some students who have turned to violence to resolve their differences. Fights have broken out in Lawrence, Haverhill and many other communities across the state and the country. Students have been arrested. Summonses have been issued by police. A teacher in Lawrence was injured breaking up a fight. A teacher in Texas was shot trying to break up a fight between two students there.

In two stories in today’s Sunday Eagle-Tribune, experts, political leaders, educators and others weigh in on the problem and what they see as some of the solutions.

Fortunately, the problem can be solved, according Dr. David Rainen, a psychologist at Merrimack Valley Psychological Associates.

The good thing is, he told reporter Madeline Hughes, “everything that we are witnessing is treatable. Kids are resilient and if we play to that strength and show that we can get out of this, they will realize it too.”

The question, of course, is how do we get out of this? The first step on the road to recovery, as the saying goes, is to admit you have a problem. Lawrence educators have been forthright about that, admitting there is a problem that needs to be resolved.

In the 2018-2019 school year, 195 students were disciplined for violence, according to state data. Now, just two months into the school year, officials have already reported 78 students facing discipline with 26 fights at the high school, said Christopher Markuns, spokesman for Lawrence Public Schools.

Haverhill wouldn’t provide an exact number of violent incidents this year, however, fights reported at the high school have gotten the attention of parents after incidents were recorded and shared on social media.

“It is fair to say that the numbers are up this year across all of our schools and in schools across the nation,” said Haverhill Superintendent Margaret Marotta in an email.

Officials from Andover, North Andover and Methuen schools did not respond to requests for comment about student disciplinary incidents.

So while it appears Lawrence and Haverhill have taken that first step toward recovery, other districts seem to either have their heads in the sand about the issue or their schools don’t have a problem, which is hard to believe. In any case, school districts across the region and the country are taking steps to deal with the outbreak in violence.

Lawrence and Haverhill have added more security guards and resource officers in the schools. That seems like an obvious solution but that move also has its critics, who claim that more police presence simply makes students feel like they are at fault, when really the problem is much larger than that.

Hughes reports that “across the Merrimack Valley, including in Lawrence and Haverhill, districts are trying to instill wellness routines that can preemptively address mental health issues before they get to a crisis point.”

Lawrence is using federal pandemic funding to hire more counselors. A Restorative Justice Center has been established to give students facing suspension social and emotional support.

Andover, while not admitting whether it has a problem or not, similarly has a program that supports students with emotional and behavioral problems.

In Methuen, even before the pandemic the schools had implemented mental health screenings while also offering individual and group therapy sessions for students. Presumably those programs will continue and be beefed up.

Parents also play a role in getting their kids to talk about issues that might be bothering them.

These approaches are important for all students, but especially, it turns out, for those in transition from elementary to middle school and middle to high school. According to Markuns, 9th and 10th graders represent the majority of the violent incidents being reported.

Methuen state Rep. Linda Dean Campbell is working on a bill that would pave the way for more mental health counselors working in schools.

“It (the mental health crisis) is something the (pandemic) laid bare, and because it was laid bare we can put an emphasis on fixing a broken system,” Campbell said.

Let’s hope they can work fast to fix the broken system. The safety of our children and our educators depends on it.