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On One Side of the Freeway, We Save Children. On the Other, We Fail Them.
- Dr. Adriana Chavarín-López
- Apr 9
- 4 min read
As I drive home along a major highway in my hometown, there’s a moment, easy to miss, where two buildings sit side by side on a hillside.
One is a children’s hospital.The other is a juvenile detention facility.
From the highway, they almost blur together.Concrete. Structure. Containment.
And yet inside, two entirely different stories are unfolding.
In one building, children are fighting for their lives, and teams of adults are organized, trained, and relentless in trying to save them.
In the other building, children are also fighting for their lives.
But we don’t talk about it that way.
I drive by and wonder:
How many of us notice this juxtaposition?How many educators, policymakers, and community members pass by without asking what it means that these two systems sit side by side?
Two Buildings. Two Definitions of Emergency.
Inside a hospital, a child arrives in distress and everything begins immediately:
What are the symptoms?
What is the underlying cause?
What protocol do we follow?
Who is responsible?
What happens next?
No one debates whether the child is deserving.
There is only one question:
How do we save this child?
Now, go to the building next door.
A child arrives.
And the questions change.
What did you do?
How long should you stay?
What is your risk level?
But rarely:
What happened to you?
What did school miss?
What failed before this moment?
Here’s the part we don’t say out loud:
As an educator, I cannot look at that building without also seeing the schools those children came from.
Because long before a young person enters a detention facility, they have already moved through classrooms, hallways, and systems
They have already told us something,
through their behavior, their disengagement, their absence, and their silence
The question is not just what happened there.
The question is: what happened here?
If This Were Medicine, We Would Call It Malpractice
The data tells a story we should not ignore.
Most youth released from detention are rearrested within a few years.Only a small fraction reach stable adulthood.
If a hospital discharged patients and most returned in worse condition…
We wouldn’t debate philosophy.
We would demand a new system.
If this were medicine, we would call it malpractice.
The Missing Diagnosis
Research from UCLA shows that many young people in the juvenile system arrive with:
significant unmet learning needs
histories of trauma
disconnection from school
major gaps in literacy
These are not surprises.
They are signals.
And schools are often the last universal system to see children before they fall into a deeper crisis.
So What Are We Going to Do Differently?
If we believe children in both buildings are in crisis, then education cannot remain passive.
We have to become what medicine already is:
proactive
preventative
coordinated
1. Build Schools Where Children Feel They Belong
Before achievement comes belonging.
Do students feel seen?Do they have a trusted adult?Do they experience dignity or surveillance?
Belonging is not extra.
It is a protective infrastructure.
2. Treat Early Warning Signs Like Medical Symptoms
In medicine, symptoms trigger action.
In schools, they often trigger discipline.
chronic absenteeism
behavior shifts
academic decline
withdrawal
These are not problems to manage.
They are signals to investigate.
3. Support Families Like They’re Part of the Care Team
No child exists in isolation.
Behind every struggling student is often a family navigating:
housing instability
economic pressure
health challenges
What if schools didn’t wait for a crisis?
What if support came early, and together?
4. Train Educators Like They Are Part of a Care System
We would never send a doctor into an ICU untrained.
And yet educators are expected to respond to:
trauma
mental health
complex social needs
We need a shift:
from classroom management → pattern recognition
from compliance → root cause analysis
from isolation → coordinated response
We need educators who think like system designers of care.
And we need to compensate them like it matters.
5. Build Continuity of Care
Hospitals don’t discharge without a plan.
But too often, children leave systems with:
no follow-up
no coordination
no continuity
Imagine that in medicine?
That is what we accept in education.
The Silence Around Survivors
Hospitals celebrate survivorship.
We see the stories everywhere.
But where are the stories of young people who:
left detention
re-engaged with school
built stable lives?
They exist.
But they are not amplified.
Because we have not built a system designed for that outcome.
A Different Question
During rush hour, as traffic crawls past these two buildings, I find myself asking:
Not just what is happening over there,but what we failed to do over here.
Because if schools are where children spend most of their lives, then schools must become:
places of early interventionhubs of coordinated supportsystems that respond before crisis
Closing
We know how to build systems that save lives.
We have done it in medicine.
The question is whether we are willing to do it in education.
Because right now, too many children move from classrooms to confinement.
Not because we didn’t care.
But because we didn’t build systems strong enough to catch them.
Some children get care plans.Others get case numbers.
And the line between them runs straight through our schools.
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