A Brockton mother says she has spent five years fighting for her 13-year-old son to get the education and mental health care she believes he needs, and the wait for an updated school plan has now stretched past a year. Brandie-Jo MacLaughlin says her son Anthony, an eighth grader who loves sports and especially soccer, has struggled with his mental health and with regulating his emotions since he was first diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder and stress-induced anxiety.
MacLaughlin began advocating for Anthony when he was in third grade, according to Boston 25 News. Since then, she says Anthony has been sectioned six times and police have been called to numerous incidents involving him at both home and school. Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 123, Section 12, a licensed clinician or police officer can order the involuntary transport and up to 72-hour emergency psychiatric hospitalization of a person deemed to present a likelihood of serious harm due to mental illness, according to guidance published by Mass.gov. Those applications, often called pink papers, require clinical evidence of violent behavior, self-harm, or severe psychiatric impairment.
MacLaughlin keeps a stack of records documenting Anthony's case, including Brockton Public Schools files, doctors' evaluations, medication lists and court paperwork, the station's report notes. A neuropsychological evaluation from Massachusetts General Hospital recommended that Anthony have access to a more therapeutic learning structure, and MacLaughlin says she submitted that documentation to the district. Still, she says she has waited for an update to his education plan since May of 2025.
A Timeline That Outpaces State Rules
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education regulations under 603 CMR 28.05 require school districts to complete evaluations, hold a team meeting, and provide a proposed Individualized Education Program or eligibility determination within 45 school working days of receiving parental consent, per the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. State guidance further specifies that proposed IEPs should be delivered within 5 school days of that team meeting. MacLaughlin's wait, which has stretched well beyond those windows since last spring, highlights how far her son's case has drifted from the timeline the state sets for every family.
Part of the friction, per MacLaughlin, is that Anthony tests well academically, which she says has made it difficult to obtain the IEP she believes is appropriate for him. Massachusetts special education law under 603 CMR 28.02 defines effective progress to include documented growth in social and emotional development, meaning a student with strong test scores can still legally qualify for an IEP if a mental health condition impairs emotional regulation, according to KCS Legal. School districts frequently debate whether high-achieving students meet that eligibility threshold even when clinical recommendations point toward a therapeutic placement.
Court Floated a Group-Home Placement
MacLaughlin says the court system offered her the option of voluntarily opening a Department of Children and Families case, signing Anthony over and placing him in a group home, with the court indicating that therapeutic schooling would have to be implemented if that arrangement did not work within 30 days. Under Massachusetts Juvenile Court procedure, Child Requiring Assistance cases allow parents, school officials, or police to seek court-ordered supervision for youth exhibiting severe behavioral issues, which can include temporary 15-to-45-day transfers of custody to DCF, according to the Commonwealth's Mass.gov guidance on the process. Those petitions replaced the former CHINS system to connect struggling families with state services without criminalizing minors.
DCF regulations under 110 CMR 7.000 allow parents to enter into Voluntary Placement Agreements to place a child in a state-monitored group home while typically retaining their rights as special education decision-makers, per the same state guidance. Voluntary placement is designed as temporary support rather than a permanent termination of parental custody. MacLaughlin says she hopes the school district will work with her to find an educational setting that meets Anthony's needs, and she fears her ability to advocate for him may become more limited as he ages out of public school.
A District Still Reeling From an $18 Million Deficit
Brockton's struggles with specialized placements come against the backdrop of a budget crisis documented by state auditors. A watchdog report by the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General and an independent audit revealed that Brockton Public Schools incurred an $18 million budget deficit in fiscal year 2023, largely driven by over $4 million in unbudgeted out-of-district special education tuition after the district downsized its internal therapeutic day school, according to Boston 25 News's reporting on the audit. The report cited severe administrative mismanagement and a lack of budget oversight by district leadership.
State lawmakers have tried to ease some of that pressure. Governor Maura Healey signed a $1.3 billion budget in June 2025 that allocated $190 million to help local school districts with escalating special education costs, including full state funding for the special education circuit breaker program, as Hoodline previously reported. Massachusetts also earned the U.S. Department of Education's highest compliance rating of Meets Requirements in July 2025 for its implementation of federal special education law under IDEA. Even so, a statewide staffing crisis tied to special education teacher turnover has left many districts leaning on emergency teaching licenses to fill classrooms, a strain documented across Massachusetts public schools this year.
Brockton itself received $264,755 in state English Learner Education Support grants in January 2026 from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to bolster district-wide programs. None of that funding is earmarked specifically for the kind of therapeutic placement MacLaughlin says her son's evaluators recommended. For now, MacLaughlin says she plans to keep advocating for the support she believes Anthony needs, and Boston 25 News describes the story as developing and likely to be updated as more information becomes available.
