A year after a 15-step plan for improving behavior was introduced, members of the Springfield Board of Education got an update on the district’s changes.
Board members met Tuesday at Kraft Education Center for a meeting about discipline and behavior. They heard from principals and other educators about how a new behavior management structure was working, and addressed questions and concerns about it.
About three weeks remain in the 2023-24 school year, but Rebekah Kirby, principal of McGregor Elementary, said the new system led to a reduction in behavior issues.
“We have been able to shift the numbers,” Kirby said. “To salvage 300 lost instructional days, and to reduce the percentage of students with discipline problems by 50%.”
The introduction of a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports structure across all SPS schools was a major change. The structure is a behavior improvement system that emphasizes prevention of disruptive behaviors through establishing clear rules and rewarding students for following them.
Educators say the system is also working for older students — Glendale High School Principal Josh Groves said the work put in by teachers and other staff members has been worth the effort.
“When the knowledge came to our high school admin team that we were going to implement PBIS, I was like, what in the world is happening,” Groves said. “We embraced the processes and the work, and it has truly made a difference in our building.”
Classroom behavior in the spotlight
In 2023, Superintendent Grenita Lathan introduced a 15-step plan to improve behavior and discipline across the Springfield school district. While some of the steps were refinements, others were more transformative.
Springfield Public Schools is wrapping up its first year of using PBIS, and it drew mixed reviews throughout the 2023-2024 year.
Discipline was the subject of a December demonstration orchestrated by the Springfield NEA, and the topic was one of the key issues discussed by candidates in April’s Board of Education race.
During the April 30 meeting, Lathan walked through the plan’s steps with progress updates and completed tasks, including how 20,921 families acknowledged with signatures that they received a student handbook and codes of conduct.
Every K-8 and middle school now has a focus room separated from another room dedicated for in-school suspensions. The focus room offers students a place to self-regulate stress and emotional reactions before their emotions make them disruptive. Each elementary school’s focus room is now staffed with a paraprofessional employee.
In addition to teachers, 185 substitutes received PBIS training through a collaboration with Penmac Staffing. SPS brought in John Hannigan, a national expert on the system, for a training session.
Each building tracks its “big five” behavior data points — who was involved, what they did, what time of day, where it happened and what type of incident it was. That data is compiled regularly to identify patterns.
Principal perspectives on PBIS model
In talking about how the PBIS system was implemented, both Kirby and Groves credited their teachers for taking on the work. The principals outlined extra training steps and efforts to get student buy-in with school board members.
Kirby said an extra day of professional development was scheduled before the year started. Teachers worked to ensure they had their system set up, and the school appointed a first-responder to help with more drastic instances of disruptive behavior.
“When you’re working with students who have high levels of trauma — and we experience a lot of that at McGregor — there are trauma-informed ways to interact with those students,” Kirby said. “Even when the student is out of control.”
Kirby said the school has several strategies in place for misbehaving students, including a focus room, a student support room and an alternative classroom.
The system led to improved behavior all around, Kirby said. Major discipline referrals are down from 436 in 2022 to 164 in 2024. Lost instructional days were also down, from 520 in 2023 to 226 in 2024. Behavioral statistics from other schools were not presented during the meeting April 30.
Safety first, then a graduation into higher expectations
Kirby said next school year she and her staff hope to expand on the system.
“Right now, our primary goal is to be safe,” Kirby said. “But the kids in McGregor can do a lot more than be safe. So I want us to get to a place where we can shoot higher than being safe, and really brand that idea across the building.”
Groves said Glendale teachers helped develop a behavior matrix that outlines expected behaviors for when students are in classrooms, hallways, restrooms, the cafeteria and in assemblies. That matrix was heavily emphasized at the beginning of the year, then reinforced as weeks and months passed.
“I was blessed to have teachers that have worked in a PBIS school prior to working at Glendale,” Groves said. “They brought prior knowledge that all of us didn’t have.”
Students can influence each other
The school also involves students — clubs can adopt weeks throughout the year, and incentivize good behavior. Groves said that students also responded to getting banned from events such as homecoming for behavior problems.
“I would be lying if I said it was easy to tell a student they had an office referral and weren’t allowed to go to homecoming,” Groves said. “Leading up to that, and after that first dance, it truly changed the way our students looked at them, like a true incentive. They earned the right to be there.”
One of the criticisms Springfield administrators faced happened when teachers said they were encouraged not to report some referral-worthy instances. Both principals said plenty of work went into identifying which types of instances could be handled in the classroom, and which required intervention from the principal’s office — but also that teachers could escalate anything to the office if they felt it necessary.
Both Kirby and Groves emphasized the need for punishments and consequences along with positive reinforcements, especially when dealing with students who act with violence.
“They go hand in hand,” Kirby said. “The positive reinforcement teaches students what you want them to do, and corrective consequence teaches them what you don’t want them to do. You have to have both pieces in play at the same time.”
Lathan said plenty of work remains as Springfield Public Schools continues to bolster its plan. Future steps include more training, appointing a district PBIS coach, presenting site-based lessons from the district and more classroom strategies.
