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“The only things to do at Kealakehe High School is drugs, sex, and fighting.” — 19 year-old high school graduate and former Kealakehe High School student

Recent frays at Kealakehe High School on the Big Island, resulting in eight arrests, is just one example of a complex set of problems teachers cannot be expected to solve alone.

Program after program has been axed at schools, the school day extended, and efforts to standardize and then test any drop of learning that might actually happen at school has pushed them beyond the point of no return. While focus on testing data has become first and foremost on every school’s agenda, bullying continues to escalate out of hand.

Students complain about bullying or teachers watch it happen in front of them. Teachers work all day long to stop bullying. It is what they do. Discussions, reminders, awareness, mediation, suspensions, extended learning time activities, films, posters, and more are not enough to stop bullying that has escalated into battles.

Obviously, students need intense support by additional professionals in place at schools. They need them yesterday. Now will do.

Additional counselors, alternative programs, social workers, and psychiatrists are desperately needed. Libraries and study centers need to be made available to students during school. After-school study centers need to get a lot of funding and be staffed by dynamic, energetic, healthy people from the community and serve as a contrast to school, teachers, and “the same old same old.”

Policing teachers will not bring change. It only delivers resentment, anger, fear, anxiety, illness, and ultimately, cheating. Policing teachers invites false behavior, deeds, and words just to play the game. Just to survive. Just to fearfully survive.

Students sense this, ultimately. They are ready to fight a war over words, not for a grade, but for “turf” at school.

Lockdowns and arrests at Kealakehe High School were said to be a result of Chuukese students being bullied by local students. Samoan and Tongan students jumped in to help. There were knives and also other weapons at hand in this latest incident that illustrates the need for more social services, programs, and support at Hawaii schools.

Micronesian students and their families are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder on the Big Island, willing to do the work nobody else desires, for less pay. Unique gang mentality exacerbates an already xenophobic population in the archipelago.

I spoke to a 19 year-old who had attended Kealakehe High School. He shared his views about his former school and about Hawaii’s newest immigrants:

Kealekehe is a Micronesian school. The groups are: Micronesians, Asians, and Stoners, some Freaks. A lot of locals fall into the Stoner and Freak categories. Athletes and Band People fit into some of these groups. If you’re a fighter, you’ll fit in with the Micros. If you’re a Nerd, you can fit in with certain Stoners.

It is so big that there are 10 or 15 different groups set up in different spots at the school. The freaks don’t have a set spot. Micronesians will set up territories in the upper balconies of the school buildings. All the upper balconies have bridges that connect the buildings. They see Kealakehe as their school; they are like a gang without “strict morals.” They will fight as a group, as a gang, if someone else persuades them to fight for them or carry out a revenge.

There was this girl I was going out with, she had a kid from some other guy. I was holding her baby. She said, just walk away with my son. She wanted me to walk away because even if I wanted to step in they would still find another way to get her anyway. So she wanted to take a beating from three girls rather than get it later. They want to beat someone to leave a mark. I got beaten five times by five Micronesians. Honolulu is the worst. They will brand you each time they beat you. They’ll beat you unconscious, take anything of value, and leave you after branding you. They took my glasses.

One teacher out sign-waving along the highway before winter break to rally support for teachers said that it is silly to be afraid. Have no fear, he said. We have such a short life, he said. It is better to do something than not do anything. He said to live fearlessly, we will die anyway.

This is a little too poignant, considering the recent school slaughter in Connecticut. Teachers cannot be expected to defend the empire of learning all by themselves.

Susan Kay Anderson teaches English at Pahoa High School and Hawaii Community College on the Big Island. She has taught in island schools for nearly two decades.