Albany Community School (ACS) is a K-8 school with about 90 students and, like many schools, has seen administrative turnover for the last several years. Despite the changes in administration, the school has endeavored to sustain its PBIS implementation. Under the leadership of Jessica Thomas, the current principal, their PBIS systems and practices have blossomed, resulting in a healthier culture for students, families, and staff.
Jess took over the leadership of ACS in the middle of the year and immediately accessed coaching support to help with the organization and coordination of their PBIS efforts. She and her Social Emotional Learning (SEL) staff met regularly to revamp their universal handbook, invite student voice into revisiting the school-wide agreements, and prioritized the universal elements of the framework in order to strengthen their PBIS foundations.
In year two, Jess prioritized putting systems into place to ensure staff had resources to implement core PBIS schoolwide and classroom practices. Even when challenges arose, Jess maintained a positive attitude and utilized feedback from staff, students, and families to strengthen her SEL team and supports. Jess focused on reigniting the work necessary to provide relevant targeted supports to students and helped staff learn more about function-based thinking. She and her SEL team pushed into classrooms not only to do observations, but also to model responses to interfering behavior. Staff began to notice changes in the climate and culture. Tenured staff joined with new staff to support their learning of the framework and mentor them as they worked on their implementation.
In year three, Jess continued to strengthen her SEL team, provide training and feedback to staff, access coaching, and remain hopeful and reflective about their PBIS journey. Recognizing that she wanted a team to be trained at the Intensive Level, she supported her SEL coordinator in being trained in Functional Behavioral Assessments, a prerequisite for Intensive Training. She brought a team to the BEST/VTmtss Summer Institute to attend the Refreshing, Enhancing, and Deepening strand and arranged for training at the Intensive Level to be provided during the 24/25 school year.
Throughout her years as the ACS administrator, Jess collaborated with her entire school staff to enhance their PBIS implementation efforts and dedicated coaching and staff meeting time to delve deeply into the data from multiple sources. They have utilized the Tiered Fidelity Inventory, School Climate Survey, and the Self-Assessment Survey to inform decisions and develop action plans. In addition to soliciting staff input, families and students were asked to help interpret the findings, help celebrate successes and prioritize areas of focus. Finally, the ACS community reviewed behavior data using SWIS to develop boosters for teaching and practicing the school-wide agreements.
This will be Jess’ fourth year as the ACS administrator and her SEL team is solid, she had minimal staff turnover, and staff and students can look forward to another supportive year where they can thrive as collaborators and learners. As she says, “One thing I tell my staff a lot is that when students don’t know how to meet our agreements (what’s perceived as don’t know how to behave), we teach. That truly has transformed my response to student behavior and influenced team members’ thinking. It’s been a positive culture shift for sure! I feel like my whole staff has learned a lot about better ways to respond to behavior. PBIS works, as it’s meant to change adult behavior and response to students.”