Bruce Karhoff                                                                                                 

EDL 706:  Legal and Economic Issues and the Administration of Schools

26 June 2013

Leadership Experience:  S.AV.E. Action Plan

SMART Goal:  The number of reported OORS incidents at Bronx Lab School in the 2013-14 school year will decrease by 10% compared to the number of incidents in 2012-13.

This Action Plan will address the key components of the New York S.A.V.E. legislation.  In response to the findings of a 1999 task force appointed by Gov. George Pataki, the state legislature in 2000 passed Project S.A.V.E.—Safe Schools Against Violence in Education.  This legislation directed each school district to create a district-wide safety plan, and each school to create a building-level plan.  This Action Plan will address the needs of the Bronx Lab School.

Currently, Bronx Lab does not have a formal plan to meet all the mandates of the S.A.V.E. law.  In an interview with the principal, Christopher Lagares, he noted that the Evander Childs Campus, of which we are one of six schools, does have the NYC DOE-mandated Building-Level Emergency Response Plan.  Campus-wide procedures for dealing with emergency situations are part of this Response Plan, and several Bronx Lab staff members are part of the building’s emergency response team.  The campus does conduct several emergency drills every school year, including full and partial lock-down drills, as well as building evacuation drills, such as fire drills.  There are also protocols for reporting and communicating in an emergency situation with the other schools in the building as well as with outside safety and security organizations, such as the 47^th precinct of the NYPD.  The protocols include a chain of command within each school, and the chain of command for the building incorporating the School Safety Agents (SSAs).  The campus has shared floor plans and blueprints with local emergency response officials (police, fire), has in incident command system, and a plan for emergency notification to parents, as per the legislation.

The principal indicated, though, that while Bronx Lab had many procedures to deal with disruptive students as defined in the S.A.V.E. legislation, the school did not have a specific space for the removal of those students. Similar to many small schools, Bronx Lab has chosen to use its limited physical space for classroom instruction and for an Office of College Placement—essentially, our school counseling suite.  There was a designated “S.A.V.E. room” in the building through the 2010-11 school year, but it was located several floors below our school and in another wing of the building.  Bronx Lab, like many schools in a shared space, prefers to handle its discipline “in house,” and thus did not use the campus S.A.V.E. room.  Nor does Bronx Lab incorporate the SSAs into its plan to maintain student discipline.  Bronx Lab utilizes SSAs for scanning at the school entrances, for responding to incidents of violence, and for manning the building exits during the day to watch for students cutting.  We do not have SSAs in our space as part of their regular rotation throughout the day; this plan does not change the relationship between Bronx Lab and the campus SSAs.  In the past, disruptive students who have been removed from the classroom have had to stay in the dean’s office until they had been released back to the classroom  The dean’s office, however, is a small, busy space shared by the dean, a counselor or assistant dean, and an administrator.  There is space for two or three students to sit, but not for more than three students at a time, and there is no space for a desk or table for students to work at.  Furthermore, the office is the site for many meetings with parents, and at least once a day all the three staff members from the office are called out at the same time, leaving the students under the supervision of one of the school aides who monitor the hallways.  In short, this is not the ideal space for students who have been disruptive and need another space to continue their work.  This Action Plan addresses this concern.

I also consulted the U.F.T. chapter leader.  She said that while the building had a S.A.V.E. room, our school was technically in compliance with the law.  She noted, however, that the lack of a S.A.V.E. room in our school was an ongoing concern of many teachers, who felt that, because the dean’s office is very limited in the number of students it could handle at any one time, disruptive students were often returned to class before the underlying behavioral issues were addressed.  She said she made a request for a S.A.V.E. room each year in her meetings with the principal, and on behalf of the teaching staff, she welcomed any plan that could work under the limitations we face as a small school.

Physical Space:  One of our classrooms had been divided into two smaller rooms years before the existence of Bronx Lab.  Up through this year, one of the two smaller classrooms, 303B has been used for our smaller support classes: ESL classes and our SETSS support classes.  For the 2013-14 school year, Bronx Lab is becoming a multi-session school, in part to allow us to offer many of our 0-credit support classes during the new Zero Period.  This will free up Room 303B for other uses.  We do not have a computer lab for student use, so we will install eight desktop computers on one end of the room.  On the other end of the room, we will have space for a teacher desk, a bookcase, and six student desks.  This room will become our “S.A.V.E. room,” without additional budget allocation.  Room 303B is also in an ideal location; it is on a dead-end hallway, so there is less student traffic past its doors.  The current dean’s office was in the middle of the hallway, across from a stairwell, the busiest point of our school during changing periods.  Students removed from the classroom to the dean’s office often were able to socialize easily with other students as they passed the office; teachers noted that removal from the classroom did not seem like much of a consequence for many students.

Staffing of the S.A.V.E. Room:  Bronx Lab currently has a full-time dean and an assistant dean.  The school is set up with six blocks of classes, each four hours each, spread through the twenty-four academic periods of the week.  The principal indicated that both the dean and the assistant dean would each be assigned to the S.A.V.E. room for one of the six blocks.  There are also two teachers who currently do not have a full teaching load; each of them would be assigned to staff the S.A.V.E. room, one for four hours and the other for two hours a week, to complete their contractual teaching requirement.  The other blocks would be staffed by teachers on their professional period assignments, between two and four hours a week each (by teacher choice).  Ideally, we would prefer to have at least one teacher in each of the core subject areas, and one from each grade level, represented on the S.A.V.E. room staff.  This spring, the principal and dean will create a list of those teachers they believe would work best with the students likely to need the S.A.V.E. room, and speak to each of them individually about considering this as a professional period assignment.  By reassigning teachers to staff the S.A.V.E. room as part of their professional duties owed to the school as part of their UFT contract, the staffing will not have an impact on the school’s budget.

The dean would coordinate the staffing schedule of the S.A.V.E. room and consider the S.A.V.E. room staff as part of the Office of Student Affairs, which he heads.  The staffing schedule would be posted for the entire staff.  As the department head, the dean would establish guidelines and best practices for teachers staffing the S.A.V.E. room, and work with the school counselors the school social worker, and Ramapo for Children, an organization our school works with on student behavioral issues, to establish protocols for addressing the underlying behavioral issues.  

Removal Procedures:  Bronx Lab already has in place procedures for the removal of a disruptive or violent student from a classroom.  These procedures are published in both the Staff Handbook and the Student Handbook.  Students who display violent behavior may be removed immediately.  Our definition of violent behavior is modeled on the S.A.V.E. legislation guidelines: physical or threat of physical violence against another person, teacher or student; possession of a weapon; intentional destruction of property.  For continued disruptive behavior, students may be removed from a classroom only after a series of preventative measures have been taken by the classroom teacher.  After the first instance of disruptive behavior, the teacher will address the student one-on-one and make clear the school’s and the teacher’s expectations of students.  After the second instance, the teacher will again address the student behavior and contact the student’s family.  After each instance, the teacher will document the intervention either by email to the dean and student’s advisor or by an anecdotal note in Skedula, the school’s online gradebook and student database.  If the disruptive behavior occurs again after the first two interventions, the student may be removed from the classroom.  Each teacher has a supply of Removal Forms, a brief form the teacher must complete to have a student removed that indicate the reason for removal.  The teacher must also supply classwork for the student at the time of removal.

In each instance that a student is removed, the student will be assigned to the S.A.V.E. room for the remainder of the class period, at minimum.  The removal will be recorded in a document that will be shared with the entire staff on Google Drive, noting the student name, teacher, the period and class, and the reason for removal.  The student will complete a reflection piece to respond to the reasons for removal.  In cases that the student was removed for violent behavior, the dean will be called in to respond to the incident, following the guidelines established in the DOE Student Discipline Code.  The parent will be notified, and the student will not return to class for the remainder of the day, at minimum. 

For each case that a student is removed, within 24 hours the dean will follow up with the teacher requesting the removal to clarify the facts of the incident and determine the school’s response.  After considering the severity and the frequency of the disruption, the teacher’s input, and the DOE’s guidelines in the Discipline Code, the dean may grant further detention from that particular class on subsequent days.  For instances that may warrant a suspension, the dean will consult the principal or assistant principal.  In each case, the resulting disciplinary decision will be added to the online removal log.  Every case in which the student is assigned a detention or a suspension of a full day or more (i.e. the disciplinary action extends beyond the day the student is removed from class), the parent will be notified by the Office of Student Affairs.  In each case in which a teacher has a student removed, the teacher is expected to also contact the home.  Finally, in all cases of suspension, the administration will contact the parent and offer a parental meeting before the suspension, and request/demand a parent meeting before the student returns to classes.  If the student has an IEP, the student’s case manager will also be consulted, and the parents will be informed of their rights as set forth by law.  We see this communication with the parents as integral to our joint effort to educate the child.

Students will be expected to continue working on their classwork while in the S.A.V.E. room.  In each case of removal, the teacher will send work with the student.  Additionally, the department chairs will be asked to supply the Office of Student Affairs with three assignments in the subject area for each grade level that cover basic skills to be kept in the S.A.V.E. room.  The goal is to have meaningful work for the student in the S.A.V.E. room that the student can access, whether or not s/he is prepared to complete the assignment sent by the teacher.  The teachers staffing the S.A.V.E. room will also be expected to actively support the students in their work.  For students assigned the S.A.V.E. room for multiple periods, we hope that the teachers staffing the room will come from multiple disciplines, and thus be able to provide varied support across the curriculum.  Furthermore, the S.A.V.E. room will have general academic resources—dictionaries, textbooks, maps, paper, pens, etc.—so students will not have the excuse that they “can’t do the assignment” because they do not have all the necessary materials.  Finally, because the S.A.V.E. room will double as a mini computer lab, students will have access to online resources when part of the assigned work.   

Systems:  A separate log will be kept on Google Drive that will indicate the students assigned to the S.A.V.E. room for each period of the week.  For instance, if a student is assigned a detention for the next three meetings of Ms. B’s math class for repeated disruptive behavior, or if a student was assigned to the S.A.V.E. room for entire day, all staff could know this by accessing the S.A.V.E. room assignments.  This will be necessary for the S.A.V.E. room staff, who will be assigned for only a few periods each week, to know which students to expect each period, and helpful to the hallway school aides and classroom teachers who may not otherwise be aware of these detentions.  Actual student attendance can then be recorded on this same document.  As a Google Doc, this log can be updated in real time.

The log of students removed from class to the S.A.V.E. room, also a shared online document updated in real time, will be a helpful resource for the school counselors, social worker, advisors, and teachers working with students with special needs.  This log will help them identify patterns of behavior more quickly than in our current system, and thus allow them to design targeted interventions and supports before the behavior has a detrimental effect on the student learning and achievement.  The documentation in this log can be a tool for disciplinary hearings, meetings with parents, and discussions with the student.  Furthermore, this log will help administrators and coaches to identify teachers who may need support with classroom management.

Evaluation:  Because this is a new system, we will begin our initial evaluation at the end of the first quarter (early November).  The dean will lead the evaluation.  At minimum, he will evaluate the staffing of the S.A.V.E. room (both logistical and personnel), the competing demands of his office’s other functions and the operation of the S.A.V.E. room, the documentation systems, the support of the S.A.V.E. room from other staff members, and the behavioral interventions and their impact on students.  The dean will report on these five aspects of the S.A.V.E. removal processes to the administration, and offer recommendations for improvement of the program.  After mid-year adjustments are made, another similar evaluation will be made at the end of the school year.  Administration will also look at year-end student achievement data in their consideration about the effectiveness of this Action Plan.

We recognize that having proper systems in place for removing disruptive students is just one aspect of improving the learning environment in the classroom, and that every staff member has a role to play in this improvement.  In short, the purpose of this Action Plan to address the NY S.A.V.E. legislation at Bronx Lab is to positively impact the learning opportunities of all students.