With a therapeutic YMCA program for students who have been suspended, spaces for students to go when they experience conflict and internal data on disciplinary measures, Haverhill Public Schools administrators explained how the district approaches discipline to School Committee members last week.
The presentation comes in the wake of John Greenleaf Whittier School staff voting no confidence in their principals, which resulted in Principal Matthew Condon being reassigned to the high school. In part, they argued the head administrators had failed to rein in bad behavior.
“There has been a lack of consistent and structured response to discipline and enforcement of consequences,” a letter from the Haverhill Education Association reads. Superintendent Margaret Marotta said at last week’s meeting she has been working with the union to develop a standardized approach to discipline across the whole district.
Tracy Fuller, Haverhill YMCA’s regional executive director, explained how Positive Alternatives to School Suspension—or PASS—operates.
“A typical day is that there’s a group therapeutic session, an individual therapeutic session, two hours of tutoring, recreation time and then an opportunity for students to do a reentry plan, so they can go back to school and have success,” she said.
If students are misbehaving during school and need to be pulled out of a class, Dr. Paul C. Nettle School Principal Eileen Doherty said they go to a “reset room” manned by a student support coordinator. Schools across the district offer similar spaces, according to Marotta. In addition, Doherty said student support coordinators “push in” to a classroom if a teacher needs to step out for a one-on-one chat with a student.
When Committee Vice Chairman Paul A. Magliocchetti said he heard from teachers that students are removed for only 10 minutes, Doherty responded, “If you’re a teacher, it feels like it’s 10 minutes. It’s not always 10 minutes, but it does feel that way because they seem to come back quicker than you expect.”
After Committee members learned of the teacher union’s no confidence vote in the Whittier principals, member Jill Story requested disciplinary data. The district delivered at last week’s meeting, reporting 17,000 incidents——defined quite broadly—across all schools.
Of these “referrals,” which schools collect to track patterns in misconduct, 80% fell under five categories: truancy, refusal to follow directions, defiance and disrespect, disruption and misconduct and tardiness.
“Behavior is a form of communication, so if a student is not behaving it’s because their needs are not being met in some way,” Story said. “Some of it’s academic, maybe they are having challenges, maybe they have a learning disability, maybe they’re trying to deal with something that’s happening outside of their school in their personal life and they don’t know how to manage it.”
Calling for “structural change,” Story requested further data.