District officials at Jefferson City Public Schools have spent the last couple of months creating districtwide behavior policies and are implementing a whole gamut of psychology and behavior analyst supports at the elementary and middle schools for next year.
The district has created a Behavior Task Force made up of 61 faculty - made up of staff from every school - to determine districtwide what is acceptable in the classroom and how behavior issues should be addressed with discipline, said Sheila Logan, assistant superintendent for special services.
An idea for a task force came from staff surveys the superintendent devised earlier this year. Behavior issues at the schools were a common theme from the survey, and the district decided it ought to have an alignment between all the schools.
Individual buildings have their own behavior policies, but there were inconsistencies with how behavior was handled across the district. Transient students who move from building to building will now have the same expectations and consequences, making the transition easier, she said.
Logan said the group was surprised to hear the most common office referrals are for second- and third-graders, and most often for disrespectful behavior toward staff or misconduct.
This year, there were a total of 8,762 students reported for misbehaving. There were 810 counts in second grade and 813 in third grade.
Most would assume discipline issues bubble most commonly at the high school, but that wasn't the case - 1,611 counts occurred in ninth through 12th grade, the majority of which occurred at Simonsen 9th Grade Center.
The district's demographics have changed, and more young students enter school without any educational structure, Logan said. They don't know how to sit with their hands and feet to themselves or communicate respectfully.
Logan said the task force is meant to help the 80 percent of students who can easily follow the school rules once they're taught.
For the last several weeks, members of the task force have met to determine what behavior is appropriate - what does inappropriate language actually mean, and how can staff connect with students to deter bad behavior, she said.
"When we have really young students that come to school with inappropriate language, it's because it's acceptable at home," Logan said. "And they don't understand that it's not acceptable at school."
Tammy Ridgeway, assistant superintendent for secondary education, said the idea is similar for high school. Students need to learn there are different norms for behavior in different environments, much like the workplace. What's acceptable at home may not be acceptable at work.
The schools will teach classroom and building expectations to students at the beginning of the school year. Logan said sometimes faculty assume the students already know the expectations. Instead of punishing the student over and over again, teachers and administrators have to teach the student their expectations.
Specific expectations are still being worked out. At the beginning of the school year, the district will have worked out specific plans of action for consequences depending on the behavior. Teachers and administrators can pick from a range of discipline that best fits the specific incident.
Like Logan said, the implementation of new expectations will work for the majority of the students.
For the 20 percent of students who need additional supports, the district has created specialized staff positions to work with those students and get to the root of behavioral problems. The specialized staff will observe and work with children to determine why they are acting out, be it environmental, physical, mental or emotional.
Sometimes negative behavior is caused by something as simple as hunger or a toothache, Ridgeway said. The specialists will be there to identify the cause of the problem and work with the student possibly the families to resolve the issue.
Starting next year the elementary schools will have new support staff:
Five school psychologists will be shared between 11 buildings, focusing on academic and behavior interventions.
The eight Title 1 buildings will have six behavior interventionists shared between the buildings to work with individual and small groups of students inside and outside the classroom.
Two board-certified behavior analysts will be shared among the 11 schools to pinpoint why certain bad behaviors are occurring and help extinguish them. Very few schools have board-certified behavior analysts, Ridgeway said.
At the two middle schools:
Each school will have a school psychological examiner who will work with teachers and students.
A board-certified behavior analyst will be shared between the two schools.
A behavior interventionist will be shared between the two schools.
Ridgeway said they're also launching an alternative middle school program to house about 20 students at a time at the Miller Center where the high school alternative setting is. Next school year will be the first time it's offered for students who have drug and alcohol offenses or behavior issues.
"It's not a permanent placement," she said. "If we can't find some solutions for behavior before high school it's very difficult (to correct student behavior)."
So far they have hired one new staff member and plan to hire three more.
In terms of districtwide behavior supports, the plan is to start the new support systems at the elementary and middle schools and expand them into Southwest Early Childhood Center and the high school.
Logan said the district is only hiring a couple new staff members to fill these positions, current staff members have been training to fill the new positions and will take on a new job title in the fall.
Several of the schools already have social workers, and the transitional classroom - which pulls students out of their regular classroom for part of the day for individual attention - is still being used.
Logan and Ridgeway said the added supports are meant to help identify why individual students are misbehaving.
"I really don't think our second- and third-grade students wake up in the morning and say to themselves, 'I want to disrupt class today.'" Logan said.
There's usually an underlying problem.
The district also offers community resources, including licensed counseling and even dental services, Ridgeway said. Students act out for a number of reasons. If a student is being disrespectful because she has a toothache, or has been skipping school because he doesn't have clean clothes, the district steps in and offers services.
Another important component of the behavior roll-out is the parents, Logan said.
"We want to over-communicate to parents what we expect from kids through email or social media," she said. "We want to give them every opportunity to be part of the team."
Discipline recorded at Jefferson City Public Schools during the 2015-16 school year:
8,762 discipline counts during the year
2,277 students had one or more discipline events
1,013 students had one count of discipline
One student had 38 counts of discipline
Discipline broken down by grade level as of April 22:
Kindergarten: 491
First grade: 640
Second grade: 810
Third grade: 813
Fourth grade: 536
Fifth grade: 709
Sixth grade: 598
Seventh grade: 779
Eighth grade: 779
Ninth grade: 781
10th grade: 322
11th grade: 342
12th grade: 166
Top 10 acts of misbehavior from 2015-16 as of Feb. 5, 2016:
1. Disruptive conduct or speech: 1,745
2. Physical contact or aggression: 827
3. Bus or transportation misconduct: 823
4. Disrespect to staff: 500
5. Technology misconduct: 192
6. Fighting: 186
7. Tobacco: 136
8. Threats or verbal assault: 107
9. Failure to meet condition of suspension: 89
10. "Other": 87