City School Board Discusses New Student Discipline Program
The division implemented Responsibility Centered Discipline this school year.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Members of the Fredericksburg City School Board had questions Monday about Responsibility Centered Discipline, a model for addressing student behavior that the school division implemented this year.
“This is a shift for staff. Are we phasing this in? I worry that it is overwhelming for teachers,” said Jennifer Boyd, Ward 3 representative to the School Board, during Monday’s regular meeting.
Felicia Burkhalter, director of school quality, provided an overview of RCD during the instructional update portion of the meeting.
“[RCD] focuses on building a culture of student responsibility,” Burkhalter said. “We are equipping teachers to talk to students so they can solve problems themselves,” instead of adults being the problem solvers.
She said the approach is about “empowering students and equipping them with what they need.”
Burkhalter said city schools received training in RCD in January and throughout the summer in preparation for full implementation at the start of this school year.
According to the RCD website, the program divides student behaviors into three levels. Level three behaviors, which Burkhalter said include “fighting and stealing,” trigger an automatic referral to administration, but with levels below that, the program aims to provide teachers with the skills to help the student take responsibility for the behavior.
Burkhalter said teachers can still choose to call administration for level one and two behaviors, which might include “cussing.”
“Admin will coach the teacher through it,” she explained.
Burkhalter said staff anticipated that behavior challenges would increase this year as a result of implementing and acclimating to the new system. She said that this year, incidents of physical violence are up throughout the division, and parent Holly Clark addressed this during her public comment earlier in the meeting.
“I want to talk about behavior and how it affects my children,” Clark said.
She said it’s her understanding that under RCD, administration only gets involved in discipline issues when there is “actual violence”—which she said her daughter, a second grader, has experienced in her classroom. But that leaves other disruptive behaviors up to the teachers, who become the “bad cops,” Clark said.
“We’re losing a lot of teachers. I’m telling you that I’m worried. I want to make sure that you all understand the practicality of the programs you implement,” she said. “Read the exit interviews with teachers who are leaving.”
At-large School Board members Molly McFadden and Jarvis Bailey, Chair, also suggested that they are hearing concerns about discipline in the schools.
Bailey said the division’s student-teacher ratios, which staff presented earlier and which are in the normal range compared to other school divisions, don’t “jive with what I’m hearing.”
McFadden asked Burkhalter to provide the Board with more information about RCD.
Superintendent Marci Catlett said RCD was implemented “to standardize classroom management.”
“We wanted to initiate and adopt a division-wide program to help our children consistently,” she said. “As with everything, there are lots of complexities.”
Catlett reminded the Board and audience that Fredericksburg is the sixth most diverse school division in the state and that more than half of students are economically disadvantaged.
“We are dealing with what our children bring to the schoolhouse,” she said.
She said that both elementary schools are overcrowded by about 200 students and that next year, when Gladys West Elementary opens, enrollment at each school will be at about 550 students, which research says is the most effective learning environment for children.
“We are trying to live through this school year” to get to that place, Catlett said.
The Advance has asked the school division for more information about RCD and what behaviors constitute each of the three levels, as well as for discipline data collected so far this year.
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