What makes your team work so well?  Please discuss in detail (e.g., what is your administrator’s role on the team, how is staff represented, etc.)?  Our team is very committed.  We have diverse representation on the team, which includes: classroom teachers, ESE, guidance counselor, special area teacher, and both our principal and assistant principal.  Each and every team member plays a vital role in the success of our team.   Our jobs are well-defined and each team member contributes to each monthly event.  It has definitely helped that both administrators believe so strongly in PBS and makes sure the staff participates as well.  It shows how strongly our school and community believe in PBS, as our expectations are a part of our vision and mission statement. 

How does your team use data to make decisions on campus? We look at data each month at our team meetings.  It is used to plan our school-wide incentives and our Cardinal Cash-In monthly activity.  We also use our data to plan for the year ahead.  For example, February and April are our months with the most office referrals, so we know that next year we really need to do more during those times.  This year, we knew that December would be difficult, so we had a big Santa event where those with no ODR’s could attend (please see pictures).  Also, we look at those with the most office referrals (our tiers 2 and 3) and target those individuals.  We offer additional support to them, such as small groups led by the guidance counselor and our mental health counselor.  The administrators and guidance counselor also work with our tier 3 students and their teachers to provide individualized behavior contracts/goals.  We also provide daily check in/check out systems with these students to provide more individual, structured support.  

How do you share information with the rest of your faculty (e.g., emails, newsletters, meetings, etc.)?  How often do you share this information?  We share information through faculty meetings and email.  Recently we had a data contest which was announced through ITV and email.   The staff that guessed correctly how many office referrals, location of most referrals, and month of most referrals won prizes.  Graphs were also shared via email.  Our team also displays current data on our Data Board, which is located in the office conference room), monthly. 

What do you see as the overall strengths of your team?  Please provide details. Each person on our teams is very positive and hard-working.   We work together to accomplish our goals and everyone pitches in.  It also helps to have both of our administrators serve ACTIVELY on our team.  Our entire team really believes in PBS!  As the coach, I cannot imagine a group that works as smoothly as ours during the first year, so I know that we will just get better and better.  We have so much experience on our team and that helps us divide tasks up and get the job done. 

In what areas of PBS does your team excel (e.g., rewarding students/staff, teaching expectations, data-based decision-making, etc.)?  Please provide details below. I believe we excel in teaching our students the expectations and at rewarding them in fun, cost-effective ways.  Our students really know what the expectations mean and how to live them daily.  They really enjoy the prizes we give out each month at the raffles, as evidenced by the survey we gave them.  The also enjoy the monthly big event/Cardinal Cash-In (please see some of our pictures). The students love receiving Cardinal Cash and our staff does an excellent job of recognizing students consistently and often, along with providing specific verbal praise.

Discuss the changes you have seen on campus since PBS implementation (e.g., data, climate, morale, etc.). We have implemented PBS since the beginning (this is our first year open, we are a new school).  We started with PBS the days our doors opened to students.  It has been great, because from the beginning, students have had a consistent set of rules and expectations. 

What are some obstacles that your team has had to overcome?  Please explain the process for overcoming these hurdles below. We had to overcome the hurdle of having enough incentives.  We decided, as a team, to come up with one relatively low cost big event. 

Another obstacle was how to get everyone done.  We decided to have team members volunteer for the things they enjoyed doing and then the team members actually followed through with their duty!  Our recorder is great about documenting our meetings and what each person is responsible for.  We make copies of the minutes and give them to the team after the meeting.  We also make the minutes available on our public drive, so that all staff members can access them.  The coach also emails the last meeting’s minutes and a reminder before each upcoming meeting. 

For next year, we have further defined roles for each team member.  We are going to have two people assigned to communications (one for staff and one for families) as this is a huge, important job.  We are gong to have a Data Entry person and also a Data Analyst.  We will have our recorder, team coach, and a distributor (who will distribute our Cardinal Cash, raffle tickets, and other supplies to the staff).