Brevard kicks off school year with new discipline plan

Caroline Glenn
Florida Today
Superintendent Desmond Blackburn talks with Jackie Small, a guidance counselor at Saturn Elementary in Cocoa, about the room she set up for students to calm themselves down.

You can hear a melodic gonging sound echo through the room as guidance counselor Jackie Small drags a wooden mallet around the rim of a wooden bowl.

Sitting on a plush pillow in the dimly lit room, you can push your hands into a pile of soft sand and watch sparkling glitter swirl back and forth in a jar. There's even a hint of jasmine in the air. 

You're inside the relaxation room at Saturn Elementary, a low-income school in West Cocoa.

Tibetan singing bowls and sandboxes are just some of the things Small uses to helps students calm down after an outburst in class. 

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It's a different approach to discipline, but Small says she's seen a "definite improvement" in behavior problems at Saturn since she started the room last year.

Providing those social emotional supports, whether through a relaxation room, daily check-ins with the school counselor or reflective assignments, is a big focus of the Brevard County school district's new discipline plan, which launches this school year.

"The relaxation room is probably the epitome of what an innovative approach could look like," Superintendent Desmond Blackburn said. 

The plan, which was developed over the past year with help from teachers, students, parents, administrators and law enforcement, rolls out this school year. It checks off a big goal for Blackburn, who right away noticed Brevard Public Schools was lacking a plan to dole out discipline. 

"A student could commit an infraction in Malabar, a student could commit the same infraction down in Mims and receive different discipline," Blackburn told parents back in September when the district was still operating without a formalized plan. 

The inconsistencies seemed to be happening with three groups of children: children living in poverty, children with disabilities and African-American children. Data from the school district shows those students are suspended and expelled at rates triple their enrollment.

"Every school was basically doing things differently," said Patricia Fontan, a director with the BPS Student Services department who alongside director Melissa Catechis helped develop the plan. They referenced plans from neighboring school districts and those of districts across the country.

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Now, if a child cheats on a test, violates the dress code, curses in class, is caught making out in the hall or brings a weapon to school, there are specific punishments, or corrective strategies, as the district is calling them.

The plan is divided into five levels, which vary for primary and secondary schools. The first is for relatively minor misbehavior, like being tardy, texting in class or plagiarizing an assignment.

"These incidents should never lead to out-of-school suspension," according to the plan, but instead could result in a quick seat change, losing skateboard privileges, doing a reflective assignment about the misbehavior, visiting the school counselor or a phone conference with Mom and Dad.

The second level includes leaving campus without permission, smoking cigarettes and bringing ammunition or porn to school. The third level includes cyberbullying, sexting, fighting and vandalism. These should be met with in-school or out-of-school suspension, detention or developing a "stay away" contract if the problem involved another student.

Levels four and five are for very serious actions, such as bringing drugs or alcohol to school, calling in a bomb threat and bringing weapons to campus. Those are usually met with suspension, reassignment to an alternative learning center, expulsion or reporting to the police. 

In developing the plan, the district tried to come up with as many specific types of misbehaviors as possible, and included reminders to communicate with parents and take disabilities into consideration.

"Going to the office 10 times is not going to change the behavior" of a disabled student who has random outbursts in class, Fontan explained. 

And so there's little confusion, every behavior and punishment have definitions.

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Fontan and Catechis emphasized that the plan is not for classroom management, but what happens after a student has misbehaved. The goal of the plan, they said, isn't to stop writing referrals or issuing suspensions, but to make sure consistent discipline is happening across the district. 

They expect it to change throughout the years as administrators figure out what works and what doesn't.

Under the plan, all schools will also use the same referral forms, which the district expects principals to use to identify trends at their schools. For example, a principal could find out what time of day yields the most referrals, if they're happening with the same class and what the most common offense is. 

The hope is to get to the root of why a student is misbehaving, so it doesn't happen again.

"That’s what we have to focus on, why is the child acting this way, and that could be a million different reasons," Fontan said. 

Jackie Small has the same goal for her relaxation room. 

"The best way to communicate with a child is through play. Sometimes it’s the only way," she said, adding that it's important to build a bond with students. "They're not just going to blurt out and say this."

At Saturn, where many students are raised by grandparents, single parents or guardians while their parents are in prison, she's already seen an improvement in some kids' test scores and, overall, much calmer students.

"They do come in angry," said Small. "Some of them, we have to realize they didn’t eat last night, they didn't get the newest pair of Jordans and everyone else has new stuff. These things affect them.

"That’s why you have a room like this."

Caroline Glenn is the Education Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact her at caglenn@floridatoday.com or 321-576-5933, or follow her on Twitter @bycarolineglenn and like "Education at Florida Today" on Facebook.

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