Jefferson City Public Schools' Chief of Learning Brian Shindorf told the district's Board of Education on Monday night that he agreed with the motivational speaker earlier in the day that "we need an all-in approach where everyone is willing to re-think the way that we are addressing our students."
Shindorf also highlighted steps the district is taking to further address students' mental and behavioral health needs.
A different Brian - motivational speaker Brian Mendler - spoke at Monday morning's opening session rally for JCPS teachers and staff ahead of the start of the upcoming school year. He passionately advocated for, among other approaches, not removing disruptive students from classrooms on a full-time basis, as he was as a student.
"We still deal with a lot of student management issues in our buildings. I think we always will," given the hundreds or thousands of students in the district's buildings, Shindorf said, but he added, "What we want to do is make sure that we are treating our students fairly, and that as Brian (Mendler) said, we're using these as educational opportunities."
"What we don't need is more rules, more policies and more paperwork. What we need is to reflect on adult behaviors, and how we are responding and reacting," Shindorf said.
Shindorf described to the board work that's being done to better utilize and expand the district's offerings of mental and behavioral health support for students.
He said the district's behavior interventionists haven't really been utilized to the full potential of what they were intended for.
"What we found is that our behavior interventionists in the buildings were spending a lot of time being reactive. They were being called into classrooms, dealing with kids having outbursts, and that wasn't the sole intent that was part of it. What we wanted was for interventionists to support classroom teachers for getting into the room, working in the classroom, working with students, modeling for teachers how to provide a support structure. We just didn't see much of that happening. We still believe that is the model that it's going to take," he said.
He told the board that building principals and behavior interventionists met a couple weeks ago, and "they started talking about ways that we can get back to our initial model of 'how do we support classroom teachers,' as opposed to just being reactive."
He added that "principals and behavior interventionists have a plan to re-implement that this year."
"We don't want kids gone, and suspended, and out for long periods of time, because we don't educate, we don't grow, we don't get better if they're sitting at home. We believe our model of getting into the classrooms and supporting teachers and students is a much more effective model," he said.
Shindorf also said the district is expanding its relationship with Pathways Community Behavioral Children's Center. "Historically, they've provided us two therapists that have worked in the secondary schools. They've gone in and helped provide some mental health therapy to some of our students that need it. But, two wasn't enough, and so they are providing us eight therapists. Those eight therapists this year are going to be able to cover, have time in every one of our elementary, middle and high schools this year.
"These are individuals who have the capacity to go in and not just counsel, but to go in and provide the therapy that these students wouldn't otherwise have, for many reasons. Sometimes, parents can't get them to the therapy, sometimes scheduling doesn't work, but now we have the capacity for our partnership to bring that therapy into the building and provide it right there in the school building," Shindorf said.
He explained the process that students are identified by school counselors as maybe in need of the services, then parents are contacted to get permission to be able to provide the therapy, and then the students are evaluated and a plan is developed for how those services would be provided.
Shindorf also told the board the middle school program at Jefferson City Academic Center has been expanded.
"We don't believe that the best method is to have students removed from the mainstream and put into special programming, but we also know that when that happens at JCAC, we have very successful students, so we have expanded by two teachers in JCAC middle, which means we'll have more capacity for more middle school students with severe behaviors that need counseling and therapy, to get them out of the mainstream and get them into a smaller setting and to work with them," he said.