Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 28

is proficient and every student graduates having met
the A-G requirements.

The staff was willing to create a new system to
address the issues in a structured and systemic way.

How did you know that SWPBIS would
work for Vallejo City to help reach the
goals that had been established?

After we created the matrixes which are centered
around three rules, “Be Safe, Be Respectful, and Be
Responsible” to address all of the difficult areas in the
school, we put in place the positive behavior rewards
system with tickets for the students and “Fun Fridays”
where students are rewarded publicly for their
positive behavior. Teachers and students could see
the benefits. We also saw that SWPBIS resulted in
additional parents engaging in the school and more
parent leaders joining us. One of the parents who
was on the team when I was Principal is still there
helping run that school.

Sup. Bishop: I had put SWPBIS in place, as a
principal, in Sacramento and saw that it worked for
all students. An Associate Superintendent colleague
told me about a training on PBIS. We were supposed
to bring a team with us – a strong special education
teacher, one of our classified staff members, several
teacher leaders, and an outspoken and involved
parent. Dr. Jeff Sprague from the University of
Oregon led the training. We spent one day with him
and another day planning. Our team that went to
the training got it right away and understood how it
could change the environment at the school. When
we got back to school, that team, shared what they
had learned with the entire staff and got their buy-in
and engagement. After implementation, we reduced
our office referrals and suspensions significantly. We
also went from a similar schools ranking of 4 to an 8.

Often school leaders are concerned that
they won’t get buy-in from teachers and
others and that SWPBIS will just be seen
as another thing they have to do. What are
your thoughts?
Sup Bishop: This is why it is critical to bring an
inclusive leadership team. At the training, they are
very clear that the Principal needs to be a leader for
this to work, but that it is the leadership team itself
that goes back and takes the initiative to present
what they learned to the rest of the staff and lead the
efforts around implementation. Our team got input
from the staff about where the problem areas in the
school were and we created a matrix and shifted
resources to address safety issues in the bathroom
and on the playground, for example. The leadership
team broke the work into pieces and everyone had
input and so there was buy in. Once the leadership
team presented the data and research on where we
were academically and with suspensions and office
discipline referrals, it was clear that something had to
be done to change the way the school was working.

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How we can fix school discipline

You have 22 schools in your District, so
how do you roll out SWPBIS so that every
school understands how to implement and
is implementing?
Sup. Bishop: First, I called Dr. Jeff Sprague, and I
said we need you to come out to partner with us and
train our schools. Then, we allocated a portion of
our Title I professional development dollars to send
a “Design team” from every school in the District to
three separate days of training over the first school
year. Because we are a Program Improvement
District and Title I is about closing the achievement
gap, the funding was the perfect match. After each
day of training, each team had assignments and
homework that they would bring back to the next
training day. Of course, some of the teams really took
on implementation with gusto and completed the
homework and others did not implement as well.
There will always be school leaders, teachers and
others who are skeptical about this kind of change
and resist a different model.

What tips do you have for other
administrators trying to implement a
different way of addressing discipline
problems?
Sup Bishop: Well, I think the brilliance of the
SWPBIS team model is that it develops accountability
on all sides and it includes a representative from
all of the key parties in the process of developing
what implementation looks like at each school
site. For example, at one of our training sessions, a