Delaware hired all staff with interview questions from PBS model. All staff members share the PBS philosophy. Staff volunteered for core team and at least 90% of entire school staff attend meetings voluntarily. Principal, Dean, Guidance and Team Leaders are represented on the core team. Having the same team members year after year provides for consistency and for interpreting data to make necessary changes. We constantly review data and make decisions for improving student behavior as needed. We have celebrations of success with staff at the end of each day and make positive calls/communications home to our families for students daily as well. We have monthly Family Nights where we highlight our students “best” efforts and attendance at these meetings has risen each month.

Our plan is a fluid document. We collect and monitor student behavioral data – both minor and major. We review daily attendance, tardies, and students leaving school early. We communicate bi-weekly on academic performance, attendance and behavior per class to all families. We concentrate on the “frequent flyers” data by looking at period-by-period and setting data. We can predict when we will have spikes of activity and modify our routines accordingly.

We are lucky in that we are a small school. We actually meet as often as daily for a “review of the day.” We meet in the front office with “chocolates” and debrief. Staff have common planning and often discuss issues during planning or lunch in the common work area. We communicate with weekly Staff Bulletins, daily by email, and bi-monthly meetings. All stakeholders are surveyed once each year as well. At the beginning of each year, prior to regular teacher pre-school workdays, our entire staff come in early for Staff Development on PBS and district initiatives. This additional time and commitment by the staff solidifies our unity on our philosophy of education and annual goals at Delaware.

Our strengths are that we work as a team in everything that we do. Our “we” means all staff: Maintenance, Food Service, Instructional Support, Teachers, Administration, etc. Open communication is also our strength. The whole team is on the same page as to our mission, vision, and goals – the map as to how we are going to get there is reviewed and revised by all stakeholders. The philosophy of “come with a solution in mind” works at Delaware. Staff members know that it is great to discuss a concern, but also come to the meeting with suggestions as to how to improve the situation. We openly discuss and decide on a course of action with buy-in from all staff members.

Our team does an excellent job of rewarding students for demonstrating REACH in different settings. REACH is a part of the DAS philosophy and is discussed daily with all students before dismissal to class. REACH is utilized to counsel with students that have been removed from class for disruptive behavior – utilizing positive feedback as a tool for re-teaching our expectations. Student Ambassadors model expected behavior and are nominated by peers and classroom teachers.

Our team also utilizes data to make decisions concerning every aspect of the daily routines at Delaware. Student schedules reflect careful review of time/date/setting events. Transition times were reviewed and we noted that we needed to re-teach REACH for the transition to/from lunch. Both individual student data and group data are reviewed by the team.

We realized last year that we needed to step up our end of PBS. We wanted to implement with fidelity the model in its entirety. We spent a great deal of time at the beginning of this year and at mid-year making sure that our plan was working throughout the building. We needed to post our setting expectations – not just talk about them. We created lesson plans to teach each setting expectation and continue to re-teach as we return from breaks or get new students.

We continue to find ways of being creative with incentives; since we are a small site, funds are limited. We researched many ways to reward students that do not cost anything other than time.