SPS principals tell school board about discipline strategies at McGregor, Glendale

McGregor Elementary Principal Rebekah Kirby did not sugarcoat the difficult work involved in addressing student behavior issues.

In a presentation Tuesday during a school board retreat, she explained that making progress takes the whole team — teachers, support staff, parents and students — learning and working together.

Springfield Public Schools launched a retooled approach to discipline a year ago and Kirby, as well as Glendale High School principal Josh Groves, offered insight on how the changes are going. The leaders said they have seen results in key areas by using incentives and interventions but still have a long way to go.

"The bigger picture is that this is a big work. It can be a complicated work to look at what's going on in a school and what is the resolution going to be in order to get a school into a different place, in order to shift culture," Kirby said.

Kirby acknowledged that when she stepped into the principal role at McGregor, her primary goal with discipline was keep employees and students safe.

She said there is a lot of training, practice and communication involved in implementing the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, or PBIS, program.

The framework is a proactive approach to improving student behavior that starts by explaining what is appropriate, reinforcing good behavior, identifying issues that are preventable, providing consequences and using data to make adjustments.

"The kids at McGregor can do a lot more than being safe. And so I want all of us to get to a place where we can shoot higher than being safe and really brand that idea across the building ...," she said. "That is part of evolving the system."

Kirby said McGregor logged 164 major discipline referrals so far this year compared to 383 the prior year and the number of students with a discipline issue went from nearly 30% a year ago to slightly less than 17% this year.

As a result, the school has been able to cut the number of lost instructional days by more than half. There were 226 days lost this year compared to 520 a year ago. A student might lose learning time if they are in the office, engaged in an intervention activity or suspended.

She said more work is needed to build trauma-informed practices, and educate the entire staff on special education accommodations and the use of high engagement teaching strategies.

Superintendent Grenita Lathan started the board retreat Tuesday with an update on her 15-step plan, which was unveiled a year ago. The initial steps are complete and the rest are in progress.

She said the steps are rooted in the strategic plan, which made addressing disruptive students a priority so they are safe at school and teaching and learning can happen. Student discipline is an ongoing issue but concerns intensified during and after the pandemic.

In the past year, the district has provided significant training on PBIS, how to implement interventions, and how to track and report the results. The district has tried different intervention strategies and will retool and refine some of the options before next school year, based on data.

Lathan emphasized two concepts, which may appear incongruous on the surface. One is that the district must have "common language and practices" in place when it comes to addressing discipline for consistency. The other is that the supports and interventions must be tailored based on student needs and so the approach will look slightly different from one building to the next.

She said school behavior and safety audits are being conducted and more updates will be provided.

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The district is requiring students who receive out-of-school suspension to have a re-entry meeting before returning to campus.

"That is still an area of needed growth for us across the district to ensure that is happening on every campus and happening in a more formalized process," she said.

At Glendale, Groves said the work started by setting clear expectations for staff and students.

"We deal with students who are not quite fully formed but close, so a lot of times their environment dictates that way that they behave or their reaction to certain circumstances that they encounter," he told the board. "So we want to make sure that every student in our building was taught the expectations clearly so they'd know what that looks like ... at the high school level."

He noted one of the reasons why students struggle academically is because they have "exhibited behaviors that have caused them not to learn the content that they should have."

To get the families more involved, Glendale created a communication plan so parents are "informed and understand what we are doing and why we are doing it."

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He said the data gathered on student behavior issues has also allowed the school to be more proactive.

"If I know that post-lunch, we have behavior incidents in the hallway, then my (administration) team is going to cover those halls every day post-lunch," he said. "We make sure that we spread out and cover those areas to help minimize those opportunities for poor behavior choices."

Groves said the school also "incentivizes positive behaviors" by creating a system that recognizes students who are making good choices. For example, students who meet behavior, attendance and grade expectations get to attend specific school assemblies or in-school activities.

This year, students who did not meet the minimum expectations were not allowed to go to the homecoming dance.

"I would be lying if I said it was easy to tell a student that you've had an office (discipline) referral and so you're not allowed to attend the homecoming dance. That happened a lot," Groves said. "... But I can tell you that leading up to that and (after) that first dance, it truly changed the way our students looked at those (activities) as it is a true incentive. They earned the right to be there."

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Groves said there is still more work to be done. Like Kirby at McGregor, he said Glendale must create the "entry and exit criteria" for when to use different intervention strategies with a student and for how long.

He said PBIS created a common language and process for addressing behavior issues so there are fewer distractions and students can spend more time learning.

"When you can name something, it gives it power," he said.

He also wants to help students build the skills needed to work with students who exhibit behavior issues.

"As population changes, you deal with different behaviors and students that maybe you have not in the past, especially if you are a veteran teacher," he said. "You may see things that you are not accustomed to in behavior. We have things that are changing citywide."

Going forward, Kirby said McGregor wants to spend more time addressing minor behavior issues that are repeated. She noted that when the staff focuses on an issue, it can see progress.

"My first day at McGregor, I think we may have had more than 20 kids elope the classroom and so it was needing to learn new habits and new habits and new behaviors," she said. "We did hard, hard work around elopement. The same thing with destruction in the classroom."

Kirby said the framework may look slightly different in each building. "The work is responsive to the students that you serve," she said.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Springfield principals share insight on discipline with school board