Putnam Schools working to refine the way the system handles discipline to provide better and more reliable support for students.
RTI Supervisor Melanie Bussell said the program screens children based on their social-emotional abilities to determine how much support they need. Bussell said the program started about six months ago but school officials have quite a ways to go to get where they would like to be.
“I think it’s just so hard to teach all of the information to all of the teachers and get the consistency across the district that we need,” Bussell said. “I think that’s just going to take a little bit of time because we’re trying to train on so many new processes.”
Bussell said the program has allowed the district to be more proactive and deal with negative behaviors as they arise instead of disciplining them when things go too far. Bussell said being able to identify misbehaving students quicker and remove them from a large classroom setting can be greatly beneficial instead of a punishment.
“We’ve also put a lot of great interventions in place for some kids that others thought they might need to be moved to alternative placements but they’ve responded very well to the intervention,” Bussell said. “So I just think we’re being more intentional about really looking at the reasons why kids are doing what they’re doing and looking at their backgrounds and seeing what type of support they need.”
Bussell said students who still struggle after receiving additional support can be referred by teachers to tier two of the program, where they will get a written plan meant to address their behavior. Bussell said that plan is tracked for ten to fifteen days and students who continue to misbehave can be moved to tier three for more intense intervention methods.
“Sometimes at the tier two level we have a plan, it’s called an erase plan, where we try to come together with the teachers and the family and we’re looking at the behaviors that the student is doing,” Bussell said. “And then we kind of write a plan about what do we think is causing that behavior, how often is it happening, where is it happening, and then what more intense interventions we can put in place.”
Bussell said each school has its own behavior lead for the program which could be a counselor, teacher, or assistant principal. Bussell said her team trains those behavior leads so they can go back to each school and provide hands-on guidance.
“We’re giving the behavior leads the interventions to try at the schools to give the teachers suggestions,” Bussell said. “We’ve trained them on how to write a plan, how to utilize the data, we call it a daily progress report, so we’ve taught them how to identify the behaviors to put on that daily progress report, how teachers are to rate those.”
Bussell said the program also includes universal support programs for all students that teach behavioral expectations such as rules for restrooms, cafeterias, or parking lots at the high school.
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