"We need programs and interventions that teach and model skills that will change behavior. Restorative practices are what can transform and guide the prosocial behaviors we want for our children and our communities."

Over the last school year, Bridger Middle School leaders decided to take a different approach to deal with the fighting and students acting out.

This model of social and emotional learning emphasizes mutual aid, restorative justice and safety by design.

Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden is piloting a restorative justice program in Chelsea District Court and the Charlestown and Roxbury divisions of Municipal Court.

Incarcerated people at two prisons in the Delta will be able to start earning four-year degrees from Mississippi Valley State University this fall for the first time in more than two decades.