The Saugus Union School District’s governing board accepted a draft of recommendations from the behavioral council during Tuesday’s meeting following a nearly two-hour discussion with district officials.
Many of the board members requested more presentations, questioned which programs would be the most effective and not costly, and asked why only Tier 1 students were being focused on under the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports system. Tier 3 is where many students have shown behavior challenges, according to governing board members.
According to the district’s PBIS page online, PBIS is a multi-tiered support system developed by the United States Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs aimed to promote positive and safe school climates by clearly identifying positive behavior expectations and teaching desired behaviors to students.
The system has three tiers of support to meet the needs of students and the tiers are identified as Tier 1, universal intervention, Tier 2, targeted intervention, and Tier 3, intensive intervention.
The recommendations given to the board were a set of tools and strategies aimed at alleviating ongoing behavior challenges at school sites and developed by district staff including teachers, school social workers and behavior specialists.
According to the agenda item, the behavior council researched and collaborated to identify evidence-based behavior management strategies and developed five key focuses which were: support positive behavior, promote inclusive and equitable practices, create a consistent framework, provide professional development and support for staff, and foster a safe and positive learning environment.
Strategies the behavior council proposed in the draft include district staff receiving at least 15 different trainings under PBIS and Capturing Kids Hearts, but another 14 needed established procedures before the training could move forward, according to an attachment on the agenda item. Six other topics indicated that more understanding was required to move forward before any training occurred.
“I don’t think it is financially feasible to cobble together, to where we have to train all of our staff on all these different programs,” governing board member Matthew Watson said in response to all the recommendations of strategies. “I know that no one program is perfect but I would encourage the council to explore the idea of picking something that’s research-based that works and go with that.”
Governing board member Christopher Trunkey added that PBIS is a three-year implementation of rotation across all schools and took five to six years to incorporate across sites when it was first introduced.
SUSD Superintendent Colleen Hawkins responded to Watson’s and Trunkey’s concerns and said that the district doesn’t want to dictate teachers and order them to take on only one program, because in the past teachers have said they’re not comfortable with that approach. She also acknowledged the trainings are costly.
Hawkins also added that all trainings are area-specific and important when helping children to understand behavior.
Watson also asked what the district is doing to address extreme issues while the strategies continue to be developed, which should be treated with a sense of urgency, he said.
Hawkins said behavior support plans are developed for each unique case and it must be done one student at a time because “while we could provide teachers’ specific strategies for dealing with a particular child through a training model. If they don’t have that kind of child that year, they’re not working with that kind of situation that year, they probably won’t apply those strategies,” she said.
Governing board President Patti Garibay added that there should be procedures in place to tell children certain behavior isn’t acceptable, including specific cases with big behaviors.
Bridgeport Elementary School recently held a principal-parent meeting, focused on behavior, and it is something that “we need to do that more regularly, like not just once in the beginning of the year, but like all the time,” she said.
“What are the things we allow and don’t allow? When you do have a kid that’s kicking and biting … We’re going to call the parents and we’re going to tell you, ‘It’s not OK and you could be suspended’ because you should,” Garibay added.
Garibay also mentioned that teachers consistently have said each school site has different regulations where some allow certain behaviors while others don’t, but she things the district should implement a districtwide criterion so it’s consistent across all sites.
“I think to address the immediate need, and for people to feel like there’s something happening, those are the things that we need to see. When the kids come back to school in January, we need to have a meeting that that parents sit, they come out, hear about what the behavior expectations are,” and be transparent with the consequences, she added.
Governing board member Anna Griese didn’t hide her frustration during the meeting, questioning why it’s taken over a year to implement a more urgent approach to the issue with a behavior council of 68 members, that are also now planning on creating subcommittees.
She also requested to have a report on the finances of how much the behavior council has cost the district if moving forward it will continue to be an entity in the district and see if it’s feasible.
A story in Saturday’s edition of The Signal incorrectly reported on the Saugus Union School District governing board’s discussion of recommendations regarding ways to address student behavior issues.
The board did not take any formal action on the recommendations from the Behavior Council, which were discussed at the district’s Nov. 19 governing board meeting and were covered in The Signal’s Saturday edition story under the headline, “SUSD rejects behavior council recommendations.”
No vote was required to accept the recommendations, SUSD governing board President Patti Garibay said during the meeting.
