CHARLESTON, W.Va. –State senators are having important conversations with school administrators and their staff in order to help find a solution to the behavior issues in the classrooms.
The education committee met at Mary C. Snow Elementary School to hear from principal Destiny Spencer about the disciplinary actions they have in place to help combat the behavioral issues that are in the classrooms.
Senator and education chairwoman Amy Grady says that this meeting allowed lawmakers to hear what has worked and hasn’t worked for behavior management in real time.
“Was to get our committee members to hear from a school and it’s administrators and teachers who are utilizing positive behavior support interventions in the correct way and kind of give us an idea of how it can be improvised and how it can be utilized,” Grady said.
The first thing Spencer pointed out was that at the school they have two vice principals, one for education and one for behavior, however she said that they like to work together in order to help with those issues.
Another big thing that Spencer talked about was the help the school has received with Behavior Interventionist.
She said this is one thing she hopes the senator’s takeaway from the presentation is how vital the interventionist have been for the school.
“We hope for the legislators take into account is having behavior support interventionist in schools so that students can receive education and not be suspended, and the teachers feel supported as well,” Spencer said.
She also pointed out that their main goal, and the reason that they used their Title 1 funds to get the interventionist, was so they could keep kids in school.
She says so far, they have been a key element in achieving that goal.
“The behavior interventionist has been a key role into helping us having in-school suspension or a consequence and the child still be able to learn and the teacher still feel supported,” Spencer said.
She said that also having the interventionist they have gone from suspending over 300 students a school year to only suspending 20 students in a school year, with some of those students being the same ones.
She also told the senators that they have a PBIS, Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports, system to help with their discipline. The system consists of three tiers, which help to see which students need the most support.
The first tier is for 80% of the students who don’t need as much support, the second tier is for 10-15% of the students who made need more support, and the third tier are for 5% of the students and those are the ones that need extra support.
One thing that Grady loved that Spencer brought up was the shift in the mindset that everyone needs when looking at these issues.
“To understand that it is our responsibility as educators and as legislators to make sure that we have a mind shift change on how we’re going to deal with these types of things and make sure it’s not a one size fits all, make sure that we have that mindset of what’s good for this child may not be good for the other. So, let’s try to figure out what works for each one,” Grady said.
Another thing that Spencer talked about was building relationships, with her staff, the students and the parents so that everyone is on the same page with the behavioral issues certain kids may be having and what needs to be done about.
Spencer said she built the relationships with some key points.
“I just think consistency and fairness and transparency and just a true passion for wanting to help and be supportive and think of things like how can I help, rather than being negative, I try to be a problem solver,” she said.
And to Grady conversations like this needs to happen a lot more.
“I think the discussions have to continue, this is one elementary school and their situation and what their dealing with,” Grady said.
She also said that she understands the importance of a behavior interventionists, but legislators need to be creative when it comes to filling positions like this because there’s not many people with background in that discipline.