01/17/2026
**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...
..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...
Read the article for the full story!
https://milpitasbeat.com/how-milpitas-high-school-has-reduced-student-fights-by-nearly-90/
