Every now and then, an elected official will suggest bringing in the National Guard to deal with violence that seems out of control.

A city council member in Washington suggested doing so in 2023 to . So did a Pennsylvania representative concerned about .

In February 2024, officials in Massachusetts be deployed to a more unexpected location – .

Brockton High School has been struggling with . One school staffer said she was rushing to see a fight. Many teachers , leaving the school understaffed.

As a , I know Brockton’s situation is part of a who have been struggling to deal with perceived in since the pandemic.

A review of how the National Guard has been deployed to schools in the past shows the guard can provide service to schools in cases of exceptional need. Yet, doing so does not always end well.

How have schools used the National Guard before?

In 1957, the National Guard . While the governor claimed this was for safety, the National Guard effectively delayed desegregation of the school – as did the mobs of white individuals outside. Ironically, weeks later, the National Guard and the U.S. Army would enforce integration and the safety of the “Little Rock Nine” on .

One of the most tragic cases of the National Guard in an educational setting came in 1970 at Kent State University. The to respond to protests over American involvement in the Vietnam War. The guardsmen fatally shot four students.

In 2012, then-Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, to use the National Guard to provide school security in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. The bill .

More recently, the National Guard in New Mexico’s K-12 schools during the quarantines and sickness of the pandemic. While the idea did not catch on nationally, teachers and school personnel in New Mexico generally reported positive experiences.

Can the National Guard address school discipline?

The includes responding to domestic emergencies. Members of the guard are part-time service members who maintain civilian lives. Some are students themselves in colleges and universities. Does this mission and training position the National Guard to respond to incidents of student misbehavior and school violence?

On the one hand, New Mexico’s pandemic experience shows the . Similarly, the guards’ eventual role in ensuring student safety in Arkansas demonstrates their potential to address exceptional cases in schools, such as racially motivated mob violence. And, of course, many schools have had military personnel teaching and mentoring through for years.

Those seeking to bring the National Guard to Brockton High School . They note that staffing shortages have contributed to behavior problems.

One school : “I know that the first thought that comes to mind when you hear ‘National Guard’ is uniform and arms, and that’s not the case. They’re people like us. They’re educated. They’re trained, and we just need their assistance right now. … We need more staff to support our staff and help the students learn (and) have a safe environment.”

Yet, there are reasons to question whether calls for the National Guard are the best way to address school misconduct and behavior. First, the National Guard is a temporary measure that does little to address the .

Research has shown that students , meaningful and sustained and . Such educative and supportive environments have been . National Guard members are not trained as educators or counselors and, as a temporary measure, would not remain in the school to establish durable relationships with students.

What is more, a military presence – particularly if uniformed or armed – may make students feel less welcome at school or escalate situations.

Schools have already seen an increase in militarization. For example, school police departments have gone so far as to acquire .

Research has found that school police make students more likely to and to be . Similarly, while a National Guard presence may address misbehavior temporarily, their presence could similarly result in students experiencing punitive or exclusionary responses to behavior.

Students deserve a solution other than the guard

School violence and disruptions are serious problems . Unfortunately, schools and educators have increasingly to be dealt with through suspensions and police involvement.

A number of people – from the NAACP to the local mayor and other members of the school board – Brockton’s request for the National Guard. Governor Maura Healey has said she will to the school.

However, the case of Brockton High School points to real needs. Educators there, like in other schools nationally, are and resources.

Many schools need more teachers and staff. Students need access to mentors and counselors. With these resources, schools can better ensure educators are able to do their jobs without military intervention.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

New Hampshire officials are seeking to set up a National Guard program to encourage children to pursue science and technology careers, in a move that would mirror programs in other states.

In a request to the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee this week, the state’s Department of Military Affairs and Veterans Services is seeking $179,461 in federal funds to help set up the program, known as STARBASE. The money is intended to go toward desks, chairs, computers, office supplies, and printed educational materials, according to a letter the department sent to the committee.

First started in Detroit in 1991, STARBASE is a U.S. Department of Defense program designed to provide children between fourth and sixth grade hand-on learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Lessons can include “robotics, rocketry, engineering, physics, FIRST LEGO League, solar cars, chemistry, technology, and aerospace,” according to the program’s website. Versions of the program currently exist in 40 states.

The STARBASE course  is intended to “use the National Guard to raise the interest and improve the knowledge and skills of at-risk youth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which will provide for a highly educated and skilled American workforce that can meet the advanced technological requirements of the Department of Defense,” Adjutant General David Mikolaities wrote in his letter to the committee.

It is unclear whether New Hampshire’s version of the course will be run as an extracurricular after school program or a class that could lead to school credit. A program created by the New Hampshire Department of Education, Learn Everywhere, requires that public schools accept credits from external learning programs, provided that the programs are approved by the State Board of Education.

Funding for New Hampshire’s STARBASE will come from a “Federal-State Master Cooperative Agreement” set up between the department and the National Guard, department officials said.

The fiscal committee will take up the item Friday; it will then need approval from the Executive Council.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham gave him just that chance on Jan. 19 when she to alleviate personnel shortages on school campuses and inside child care facilities. More than 150 volunteers applied to participate and 94 substitute teacher licenses have been issued. On Feb. 1, 73 Guard members were serving in New Mexico classrooms.

Volunteers began their service the week of Jan. 23 in more than 20 school districts across the state, according to the governor’s office: Grisham is so devoted to the cause that she worked as a substitute for a group of kindergarteners at Salazar Elementary in Santa Fe in late January.

New Mexico was the only state to request Guard education support as of Feb. 1, according to a spokesperson for the organization who added the mission is currently funded until Feb. 18. Guard members have been called upon to in at least 11 states, but not to teach.  filled open classroom slots in Oklahoma. 

While Grisham’s request was unusual — the Guard more typically helps with domestic crises and in support of active-duty personnel abroad — her problem is not unique. Several and schools closed last month because of staff absences and at least one district in will end early every day in February at the middle and high school level because of substitute shortages. 

, which tracks school closures, reported 7,461 schools actively disrupted — meaning they were not offering in-person learning — on at least one day during the week of Jan. 10. The number went down to 2,103 two weeks later but the issue remains a concern. 

Some 60 New Mexico school districts and charter schools moved to remote learning since winter break, the governor’s office announced, and 75 child care centers have partially or completely closed because of staffing shortages since Jan. 1.

Allingham has spent much of the last two weeks working at a school district in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he grew up. He knew small communities like his were particularly hard hit and asked for the assignment, traveling some 90 minutes from his home in Rio Rancho, just north of Albuquerque, to fulfill the mission. He knows many of his students’ families, having gone to school with them years back. 

“It pains me to see kids getting a lack of education, to see them miss out on opportunities because of the pandemic,” he said. “I know it probably frustrates them as well when a favorite teacher has to go out for COVID.”

Allingham knows his knowledge of the classroom doesn’t stack up against former teachers or veteran substitutes, but he’s glad to fill the role, calling upon his own education and work experience whenever needed: His criminal justice degree and years in law enforcement proved helpful for a group of high school students studying Miranda rights.

“Based on my experience I asked, ‘Do you know what happens if you guys were to get arrested?” he said, adding he told students to be cooperative but to remember their own civil rights.

Allingham, like the rest of the state’s volunteers, had to adhere to the same standards as all other substitute teachers, submitting to a background check and completing an online workshop before setting foot in a classroom.

Not everyone around the country was thrilled at the prospect of outsiders entering schools for the first time. Critics from both parties on what they call a temporary fix, with one Democratic politician from Oklahoma saying they felt the call for volunteers devalued the teaching profession. But, in the face of widespread school closures, other educators have embraced the development. 

Adriana Cuen-Flavian, a teacher at Santa Teresa High School in the Gadsden Independent School District and a union representative for her campus, said she’s glad for the Guard’s help. Out sick with COVID in late January, she’s well aware of the absences caused by the pandemic. She said she prefers the Guard to some of the substitutes her district has hired to keep the doors open, including 19- and 20-year-olds.

“They don’t have the life experience or professionalism … to be a responsible teacher in the classroom, where a member of the National Guard probably does,” she said. 

Principal Jeff Hartog of Katherine Gallegos Elementary School, part of Los Lunas Public Schools, about a half hour south of Albuquerque, has been struggling for months to keep kids in school. Last week, between 180 and 220 children — of a total 620 students — were absent each day, in part because he reverted the sixth grade to remote learning after several teachers tested positive for COVID. 

Hartog is hard pressed to find substitutes: He recently filled in for a music class though his training is in mathematics. He’s already called upon Lt. Col Aysha Armijo to assist when staff was too thin. Armijo, the task force commander for the substitute teacher initiative, had worked as a sub for several years and also as a cheer coach for the high school. 

“Having her in the building was no issue at all,” he said. “My teachers do a good job with sub plans and I know our personnel department vets people pretty well.”

Staff Sgt. Armando Heras, 39 and who works at a juvenile detention center, was compelled to volunteer in the state’s public schools because he was worried about those children who might get into trouble if left home alone. At 6 feet 3 inches tall and 250 pounds, this Guard member is a commanding figure inside the classroom. 

“The kids see me and think I’m a giant,” said Heras, who is working at Koogler Middle School in Aztec, New Mexico, nearly three hours northwest of Albuquerque. “Last week, they attempted to run all over me, but this week they know who I am. They feel my presence … and they are on their best behavior.”

Heras subbed for a physical education teacher last week and is overseeing art classes this week: one class is sketching the human eye. Their new substitute isn’t a trained artist but helps wherever he can. Mostly, he’s just glad to keep kids in school and to prevent overcrowding when students are added to other teachers’ classrooms. 

“If I can be here to relieve that pressure, I’m doing my part,” he said. “We are supporting our state, our teachers, our communities. We were called upon by the governor to volunteer. If we can support the teachers and help keep the school doors open, we are fulfilling the mission.”

As the school’s COVID liaison — one of 76 based at each of the San Bernardino City district’s schools — Kaur sometimes handles 20 tests a day, but she’s expecting to get a lot busier. California’s mandate that all school employees be vaccinated or get tested weekly went into effect Oct. 15. San Bernardino County includes the zip code in Southern California, and its overall is lower than that of many counties in the state. Kaur said some residents think “COVID isn’t real.”

Fearing that testing and contact tracing would take staff members’ time away from instruction, the district is spending $12.6 million in federal funds on a contract with a public health staffing agency, AM LLC, to place a liaison in each school.

“We’re trying to stay in the business of education and not dabble in the business of public health,” said Eric Verete, the district’s safety and emergency manager. He frequently hears from administrators in other districts who are struggling to manage the process on their own. “We were well ahead of the game,” he said.

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But many districts across the country are behind. As the Biden administration to increase testing in schools — and take advantage of $10 billion in federal funding earmarked for that purpose — and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promotes programs as a way for students exposed to COVID-19 to avoid quarantine, schools are under pressure to ramp up testing. Some have reassigned staff members and specifically to manage the testing process, while others are pushing back against the additional burden. And though a vaccine for elementary school students is expected soon, some experts say the need for testing won’t disappear.

“Some sort of testing will be part of our lexicon going forward,” said Mara Aspinall, a professor at Arizona State University. Especially in districts without mask mandates, she added, weekly surveillance testing — swabbing a random sample of a school’s population — could be an effective way to minimize outbreaks.

‘Caught flat-footed’

Districts that started testing programs last school year, such as Baltimore, Los Angeles and San Antonio, were able to resume or expand them this fall.

Shari Camhi, superintendent of the 4,500-student Baldwin Union Free School District, near New York City, decided to implement testing because of her own frustration in December, when there was an uptick in positive cases.

She found herself “going to five different places … and couldn’t get tested anywhere,” she said. “We just needed to make it easier for people.”

Mastery Schools, a network of charters in Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, began offering surveillance testing in February, through a federal program that preceded the $10 billion allocation. That’s what local private schools were doing, said Laura Clancy, Mastery’s senior adviser of health and safety. Adding that it’s hard to find free testing in the community, she called the program “an additional layer of assurance for staff and parents.”

But districts that didn’t test last school year — and maybe thought the virus was going to be mostly under control this fall — were “caught flat-footed, with no time to prepare” when school reopened, said Leah Perkinson, pandemics manager at the Rockefeller Foundation. She described testing in school for the first time as “taking your entire school on a field trip to a place that no one has ever been to before.”

The foundation launched a program this year to match schools with testing vendors. But Aspinall, who advises Rockefeller, said obstacles remained in many communities despite the availability of federal funds. And now, increased demand is straining both districts and vendors.

Some resistant officials had a change of heart after it became clear the Delta variant would continue to interfere with in-person learning. Idaho lawmakers turned down the state’s portion of the $10 billion in the spring, but Gov. Brad Little later made to school districts. In New Hampshire, the Conway School District initially opted out of the state’s Safer at School Screening program, but this month after several student athletes tested positive.

In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker has asked for the National Guard’s help because the state’s testing vendor is short-staffed and schools were using their own employees to test and contact-trace.

“Nurses were becoming overwhelmed because of the demands on their time,” said Thomas Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. The state considered bringing in more vendors, he added, but said other companies were having the same challenges. 

In New Mexico, Joshua Landry, a nurse at Chaparral Middle School in Alamogordo, said COVID testing and tracing now “consumes the majority of my day.” He has less time to work on individualized education plans for students with disabilities or to follow up with children who have asthma, diabetes or other health conditions that require medication and monitoring.

He’s had to call an ambulance three times this school year for emergencies, such as a student with asthma who didn’t have an inhaler at school.

In other states and districts, leaders have decided they can’t spare staff members for testing-related responsibilities when they’re still adjusting to having all students back at school. In Pennsylvania, less than 400 of the state’s 5,000 public and private schools have opted into the testing program. And in Colorado’s Poudre School District, Superintendent Brian Kingsley said this month that participating in the state’s program would divert staff members’ time away from their “” of educating students. 

While the state health department “provides a lot of resources to stand up these programs in public schools across the state of Colorado, it’s not enough to do it without having a significant impact on schools, on staffing,” he said at a board meeting. “Students don’t walk themselves to a testing center.”

In the Mastery network, Clancy said parents with younger students are more comfortable participating if they already know the school nurses and health aides conducting the testing. Older students swab their own nostrils in class, overseen by their teachers, because it wasn’t feasible to test students at lunch or as they entered school in the morning.

But getting permission is a challenge for schools serving populations where “huge chunks of our parents don’t have an email address,” Clancy said, adding that lack of internet access is especially problematic when a child has symptoms. “If you can’t get that person on the phone, you’re not going to be able to get consent.”

Lingering misconceptions about the role of testing are another ongoing challenge, she said. Some parents think that if they consent to their child being tested, they’re also agreeing to a vaccine. Older students have said they feel they can put off vaccination until college because they’re participating in their school’s testing program.

‘Highly complex environment’

Balancing the interests of parents, school board members, children and school staff has been a challenge for vendors as well, Aspinall said, calling a school a “highly complex environment.” 

“Working with schools is not the same as working with businesses or retail pharmacies,” she said. “You have to have a lot of patience because you’re dealing with an institution that was not built to be a health care provider.”

David Savitsky, CEO of ATC Healthcare Services, which provides testing in the Baldwin district and hundreds across the country, said his teams try to set up outside, weather permitting, to minimize the impact on schools. Currently, his sites are testing more unvaccinated employees than students, but he expects that to change with the Thanksgiving and winter holidays approaching, because students could be exposed to more people.

He added that the availability of vaccines for younger students, expected within days, could prompt more districts to add surveillance testing for families who choose not to get their children inoculated.

“We’re not going to be part of that discussion, but hopefully we’re part of the solution,” he said.

In San Bernardino, Verete said he wasn’t even sure what he needed when he first reached out to AM LLC. He just knew contract tracing was going to eat up a lot of time. At the high school, it can take Kaur at least an hour to confer with a student’s teachers, advisers and — if the student is an athlete — coaches. Then she has to reach the students’ families. 

Kaur, who works for AM LLC, earned her undergraduate degree in public health and, as a former intern at the Los Angeles County Department of Health, learned to stand up to vaccine opponents.

“I’ve had my fair share of people fighting back,” she said. 

Opposed to vaccines or not, parents were concerned about sending their children back to school this fall, and she was bombarded with questions about active cases on campus until the district launched its COVID-19 .

She handles required testing for student athletes and unvaccinated employees, but also sees walk-ins wondering whether their sore throat or headache is COVID-related. 

The district’s original contract with AM LLC was for six months. But Verete extended it for the rest of the school year. 

“It’s beneficial to have someone there, knowing their job is to deal with COVID,” he said. “It’s not going away like we wanted it to.”