How Milpitas High School has reduced student fights by nearly 90%

It was early in one school year at Milpitas High School (MHS) – around September-October 2023 – when Principal Greg Wohlman flagged a troubling pattern… 

It felt like students were fighting every other day.

Said Wohlman in an interview with The Beat, “For our students to either be in a physical conflict or see one is concerning.”

Moreover, every fight spurs a flurry of administrative activity, with teachers, other staff members, and campus supervisors initially ushering the kids to a safe space, then proceeding to unpack the backstory behind the incident. Wohlman explained, “Sometimes it goes back months…It takes scores of hours to unpack it all. Sometimes medical is involved, sometimes police are involved.” Later on will come disciplinary consequences, along with restorative justice conversations. Wohlman emphasized, “And that’s just one fight.” 

Worse yet, come 36 hours later, you might see another fight occurring without having finished unpacking the last one.

Usually, fights take place outside of class time. “I would say,” Wohlman reflected, “it has a tendency to be boys, but we’ve had girl conflict also.”

Back in 2023, the school was functioning in a reactive mode, always dealing with fights after the fact rather than proactively working to curb them. 

“Back in 2023,” shared Wohlman, “I said, ‘You know what? This isn’t gonna work.’”

So he scheduled a meeting with every student in the school, from Grade 9 through Grade 12. He delivered 24 in-person presentations, 60 minutes apiece, with between 100 and 150 MHS students at a time. He would speak, show them a slideshow, then welcome a back-and-forth discussion. 

The consequences of fighting were explained, but Wohlman’s overall focus was more on student choice and autonomy:

“Once you engage in a fight,” he told The Beat, “you don’t get to choose how it ends. We don’t have a crystal ball on that.” So he wants students to know that when they engage in a conflict, they’re giving away control. Because after a fight comes a string of P’s: Principals, Parents, Police, and Paramedics. All these parties can lessen the kids’ choices as to what happens to their futures.

Every other month or so, Wohlman has an online meeting with the entire MHS student body, where he takes the opportunity to reinforce his anti-fighting message. He’s also been diligent about delivering his presentation annually to all the incoming freshman students. 

Meanwhile, he does cite the consequences, too. Combat between two students equals automatic suspension, and can even lead to expulsion, depending on the severity of the fight. Assault, he makes clear, is a different matter: when one student attacks another, the consequences are more serious. In all cases, an investigation is carried out to figure out what happened.

Wohlman has come to understand that part of reducing the amount of fighting at MHS is reducing the mindset that fighting is inevitable at school. In his mind, school should not be seen that way. “I don’t go to Safeway to get a Subaru; I don’t go to high school to get in a fight.”

In the early part of 2023-2024 school year, by mid-October, MHS had seen 14 fights. The following year, the amount of fights came down by 70%. This year, in the early part of the year, the number of student fights had gone down to 3 – meaning the overall drop from the start of the measurement period is closing in on 90%. Wohlman is hopeful that come this June, by the end of the school year, MHS will have seen the 90% mark reached. Assaults, meanwhile, are also in sharp decline. 

High school students fight for all different kinds of reasons, from relationship issues to money conflicts to trash talk on social media. Sometimes kids are still hanging onto an old conflict stemming from elementary or middle school. 

Wohlman’s goal is for MHS students in the future to turn around and say to each other, “You know what? I don’t remember seeing a fight here in a long time.” He added, “We had a fight here the other day, and there was already chatter with people saying, ‘That was weird…’”

Whereas MHS’s practice of discouraging fights is helping to reduce physical clashes on the front end, conflict resolution and restorative justice sessions can help students to find peace on the back end. During a conflict resolution session, the students who fought will hear each other’s point-of-view without being interrupted or being allowed room to escalate. Principal Wohlman noted, “That takes a lot of courage.” Fighting is easy; looking somebody in the eye and saying they hurt your feelings is hard. 

Said Wohlman, “We have people [who fought with each other] that have come full circle. It’s exciting to see that. It doesn’t mean that they’re gonna turn out to be besties, but they can go to school shoulder-to-shoulder.” 

He added, “In our country as a whole, conflict seems to be the kneejerk reaction. Our kids in Milpitas are better than that, and they’re showing it already. It’s an amazing turnaround.”