Give the teachers credit. After their stunning “sick out” two Fridays ago, they regrouped and changed the narrative.

In an impressive showing before the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee on Feb. 6, 12 separate educators approached the microphone and outlined the symptoms, problems and potential solutions for Kickemuit Middle School. They were organized, emotional, articulate and persuasive — in other words, they were everything their “sick out” wasn’t.

Teachers talked about staffing and programming changes that have depleted resources once devoted to the school’s most challenged, or challenging, students. They described how there are fewer behavior specialists, fewer team leaders, fewer teaching assistants, and no Alternative Learning Program, which once supported students with special or emotional needs in a separate setting.

They described how losses in staffing and programing have led to larger class sizes, with fewer specialists and educators to address the soaring needs of a student body in crisis. That “crisis” is being felt not only in Kickemuit Middle School, but in every middle school in America.

Mental health problems are soaring among this generation of technology-addicted, socially-alienated young teens. Our society should not expect schools to cure all the social and emotional problems within the young teen population, but unfortunately, they have no choice but to try. If they do not respond, then the ripples of increasing teen suicide, bullying, violence and confrontation — not to mention the “normal” teen vices of experimenting with sex and illicit substances — threaten to undermine every teacher in every classroom in America.

Naysayers will simplify the problems with a “back in my day” speech about what really needs to be done, as if a stern hand and some good, old-fashioned “discipline” can fix everything — just like it used to! It’s a ludicrous belief in 2019.

Today’s teen is not like the teen of the 1960 or ’70s, or even ’80s or ’90s. The smart phone generation is showing troubling signs on many fronts, as evidenced by these problems within the middle school, increases in suicide, and soaring rates of “mental health” calls to emergency first-responders.

Back inside Kickemuit, the teachers are trying to talk about math and writing and science, while a significant portion of their students are spinning in bad directions.

What began ugly, with a confrontational closure of school, may lead to positive changes. Give the teachers credit. They got everyone’s attention.