Two representatives from the Saugus Union School District’s behavior council on Tuesday updated the governing board on their efforts to help address the behavior issue and said they needed more time to make their recommendations.
Samantha Macaluso, a school social worker from North Park Elementary School, and Amanda Howard, a sixth-grade teacher at James Foster Elementary School, spoke about how there have been challenges trying to navigate what proper consequences can be given when a student exhibits bad behavior.
Macaluso said the council has to consider the laws in place to protect students and regulate what consequences can be given. Howard added that they had to also take into consideration the different school cultures.
“As a sixth-grade teacher, what works for my students won’t work for kindergarteners and vice versa,” said Howard.
She said the ultimate goal for the council was to come up with a list of consequences that can be determined by board policy and can be used at school sites.
“It quickly became apparent that the time allotted wouldn’t be enough,” said Howard.
She added that Superintendent Colleen Hawkins was able to arrange for the next behavior council meeting on March 13 to be a full-day meeting to allow the council enough time to review all behaviors and consequences that have been mentioned.
The behavior council is made up of teachers from each school site, behavior analysts, and school social workers. It was formed to help address student behaviors and their impact on the classroom.
After Howard and Macaluso finished updating the board, board member Anna Griese said she was looking for “something a little more actionable because we’ve been talking about it for so long.”
She said she felt the district is prolonging the issue month after month and it can be frustrating for families whose children are being impacted by these bad behaviors.
“I’m not going to let it go, but I really think that we need to have some sort of recap after each (behavior council) meeting so that the board members know what’s being discussed, so that we can either action on it at the next board meeting or not,” said Griese.
Board President Patti Garibay said that, at the last meeting, she felt the board members made it clear they were not OK with the bad behaviors continuing without being addressed, and that if there were consequences they could implement right now, then they should.
“An example is, I think we were all pretty clear about suspension, right? We said, look, if we need to do a suspension and it is warranted, then do it,” said Garibay.
She added that fixing this issue is going to take time and they are not by any means stopping the conversation on it. She said if the issue was going to be solved right then the right people had to be at the table to talk about it and provide the information to the board.
Griese asked when the council would be done reviewing the issue and Garibay said that she shared the sense of urgency Griese has but she didn’t think this was an issue to put a deadline on.
Griese reiterated that she wanted to know what has been done in the time between the board meetings to solve the issue and she would like to attend a behavior council meeting. Garibay said that the council was intended to have the discussions without the board present because they are the specialists on the issues, and she trusts the work they are doing to help address the issue and report back to the board.
Howard said that, for a future meeting, the behavior council is looking to invite parents and more school staff to attend the meetings to get their feedback on the issue and include them in the conversation more.
