State educators get a lesson on discipline program

More than 80 educators from around the state walked the halls of Howard Middle School on Thursday morning.

Student ambassadors led the guests on tours to demonstrate how the Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports discipline program is being implemented there. The attendees also got in-depth explanations from school and district officials.

PBIS focuses on changing the culture and climate of a school and rewarding students for good behavior. Half of Georgia’s districts now use the program, and a thousand schools have been trained in it, said Mimi Gudenrath, with the Georgia Department of Education’s PBIS team.

Bibb County started with its middle and high schools and did the first training in 2014-15, said Curlandra Smith, the district’s PBIS coordinator. Now, it’s in all of the system’s public schools, except Northwoods Academy. Each school has a PBIS team and develops school expectations based on common discipline issues there.

Decreased discipline cases are evidence that PBIS is working and worthwhile, said Kevin Adams, an assistant principal at Howard Middle. The school had 825 referrals that resulted in in-school or out-of-school suspension in 2013-14. That number dropped to 673 in 2014-15 and 569 in 2015-16.

Rutland High recorded 2,728 total office discipline referrals in 2013-14 before PBIS. The number dropped to 933 in 2014-15, 793 in 2015-16 and 695 now, principal Kent Sparks said.

At Rutland, students can get school T-shirts, go to lunch fives minutes early and participate in quarterly and semester celebrations when they display good behavior, Sparks said. Howard students earn fake money that they can use to buy things such as drinks, snacks and raffle tickets. Classes can be rewarded with doughnut or pizza parties and indoor/outdoor breaks.

This story was originally published May 4, 2017 at 3:39 PM with the headline "State educators get a lesson on discipline program."