Randy Sprick's Safe & Civil Schools – Practical Solutions, Positive Results!

Foundations – Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support (PBS)

Research shows that the most effective way to transform an unruly school climate into a civil and respectful one is to implement a schoolwide behavioral plan that stresses proactive and positive corrective responses toward misbehavior. With such a program in place, a school (or an entire district) will:

• Improve school climate
• Enhance school safety
• Reduce unneccessary discipline referrals
• Improve academic engagement
• Increase average daily attendance
• Reduce tardiness by up to 95%
• Strengthen student connectedness and school pride
• Expand staff skill in effective supervision and positive behavior support
• Transform staff into active problem solvers
• Promote job satisfaction and collegiality among staff

Safe & Civil Schools can help you achieve these benefits for your school or district with our Foundations program coupled with our comprehensive multiyear training sequence.

•••Implementing Foundations

At ongoing, multiyear staff development sessions, Leadership Teams from each participating school will learn:

• Efficient data-collecting methods
• How to analyse the data staff collects
• How to build a uniform referral system
• How to improve staff communication and coordination
• How to expand staff skills in effective supervision and positive behavior support
• How to implement and maintain the Foundations Improvement Cycle

In addition, our associates will conduct site visits to each school during the first two years to offer support and guidance to the school’s Leadership Team.

•••Sustaining Momentum

We have found that schools are much more successful at making lasting, effective changes in school climate and culture when they are involved in a multi-year, multi-level school improvement project. In order to maintain positive changes in schools, proactive and positive policies must be put in place and consistently reinforced over time.

We can offer you a cost-effective way to do this — our districtwide “cohort” approach.

We begin training with a cohort of 10-15 schools. For large districts, we add a new cohort each year. Each cohort receives three full years of training. By the end of the third year, we have prepared your district personnel to conduct all planning, training, and coaching on their own. During the fourth year, trainers already on your staff can be conducting training without any involvement from us.

If you implement a cohort model as described above, you can sustain school change and continually improve the culture and climate of schools throughout your district using your own program with a Safe & Civil Schools foundation.

Our experience (and the research on systems change) suggests that this model results in long-lasting potential for the district, beyond the tenure of any specific individual.

If you're interested in one of our programs, call our office at 1-800-323-8819 and speak with one of our positive behavior support specialists!