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Scrambling leadership, safety concerns, and a looming deficit: What is going on with Brockton Schools?
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be paying for a safety audit for the high school, Brockton Mayor Robert Sullivan said Wednesday.
While violence at Brockton High School is escalating in a high profile way — prompting some school committee members to ask for the National Guard — the city’s schools are also grappling with a looming budget deficit amid leadership turnover and a clashing school committee.
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will be paying for a safety audit for the high school, as part of the state’s aid since a $14 million budget deficit was revealed last fall.
“We are committed to making sure our schools provide safe and supportive environments for all students, educators, and staff,” a spokesperson from the state’s Executive Office of Education said. “The Healey-Driscoll administration is regularly engaging with Brockton Public Schools leadership through DESE to review the needs facing the district and to understand how the state can support the high school and greater Brockton community.”
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Brockton Mayor Robert Sullivan, who also chairs the school committee, announced the safety audit at a budget update meeting Wednesday, as Brockton School Committee members were briefed on a yet-unspecified deficit for fiscal year 2024.
“This is unbelievable,” he said. “(DESE Commissioner Jeffrey) Riley has also shared with me that they will consider and strongly support a school safety audit for the whole district, meaning all schools. That’s a lot of money and we’re very, very thankful for that.”
The audit comes as Brockton school leadership works to address serious financial struggles and growing safety concerns at the high school, which is the largest in the state.
Aiming to avoid a repeat of 2023’s massive budget deficit
Last year, the school committee were unaware of the district’s serious budget deficit until after the fiscal year ended, and then-Superintendent Mike Thomas went on extended medical leave. Then, the city bailed the school district out.
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“The city can’t bail us out again. We just can’t,” Sullivan said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We don’t have the funds to do it.”
This year, the school committee and Open Architects — the financial firm paid for by DESE to help Brockton through the deficit — have until June 30 to organize the budget to alleviate this year’s potential deficit. Open Architect’s TJ Plante told school committee members that while he didn’t want to give set estimates, the deficit could be more than $15 million.
Transportation and special education were discussed at the meeting as being overdrawn in the budget. Transportation alone carries a $3 million deficit, and special education wasn’t formally budgeted, resulting in millions spent the district didn’t have, Plante said.
“It’s significant,” he said after reluctantly naming the $15 million figure. “The key is, there’s numbers out there that can help bring the number down.”
Plante said the budget was disorganized; some payroll funds were being drawn on grants that had already depleted.
“The grant’s done, closed out, and report’s filed,” he said. “You literally just have an account on (accounting software) Munis that’s live and active that somebody wrote an account number that says this person should be charged to this account, and it goes through no matter what.”
Tangled leadership during a turbulent year
Before going on medical leave last fall, Thomas was set to be Brockton High’s principal in addition to his superintendent duties. James Cobb, previously Brockton’s deputy superintendent, took over for him as both acting superintendent and principal, which quickly proved too much.
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By October, Cobb announced that Jose Duarte, former South Middle School principal, would come out of retirement to be Brockton High’s acting principal.
“We have to make sure that we don’t make decisions like we made before. It’s crazy to me that we even thought that our previous superintendent could take on that task,” former School Committee Member Cynthia Rivera Mendes said in October.
The high school announced the selection of Kevin McCaskill as principal before students returned from winter break last month. However, his first few weeks on the job have been marked with unrest from the school committee and teachers.
School committee members have spent weeks at an impasse while attempting to vote in a vice chair, one of the three officer positions on the committee, but the only one that relies on a vote. Brockton’s mayor serves as the chair, and the school superintendent serves as secretary.
The vice chair role, held by last year’s Vice Chair Kathleen Ehlers, is also sought by Tony Rodrigues. In early January, the committee was unable to select a new vice chair, and at a special meeting at the end of the month, committee members were told co-vice chairs weren’t an option.
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After a stalemate vote, the 10-minute meeting was adjourned.
Violence at Brockton High
As school leadership works to tackle the deficit, teachers at the largest high school in the state say students are getting harder to control and violence is at a high.
Dozens of Brockton High teachers seemed desperate and frustrated for change at a special School Committee meeting at the end of last month to discuss violence at the school. Cheri Mazzoli, an administrative assistant at the high school, said she was trampled by a crowd rushing to see a fight.
“Unfortunately, staff now feels that it’s only a matter of time before someone dies in our hallway,” Mazzoli said. “Something needs to be done.”
Cliff Canavan, a coach and teacher for more than 20 years, told committee members that both bones in one of his arms were broken last year when he tried to stop students from kicking an unconscious girl in her head.
“We don’t have a school dispatch police number to call anymore, we don’t have an administrative office that we can call that will pick up the phone, most of the time during the day, but certainly not after 2:30,” he said. “I was helpless.”
The four committee members steadfastly backing Rodrigues for vice chair are the same four members who called for the National Guard to assist at Brockton High. Rodrigues, along with Claudio Gomes, Ana Oliver, and Joyce Asack, spoke to reporters this week explaining their call for militarized support.
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“Where we are in the City of Brockton, with the deficit that created this mess, we’re looking for support for the National Guard to come in and act as substitute teachers, hall monitors to make sure the high school is safe,” Rodrigues said.
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