District Level PBS
Durable, and adaptable school-wide PBS in a school requires systemic support that extends beyond an individual school. It is important to organize multiple schools (e.g., cluster, complex, district, county, state) so that a common vision, language, and experience are established. This approach allows districts and states to improve the efficiency of resource use, implementation efforts, and organizational management. An expanded infrastructure also enhances the district and state level support (e.g., policy, resources, competence) and provides a supportive context for implementation at the local level.
What is the difference between district-wide PBS and state-wide PBS?
The systems change strategies for district-wide and state-wide PBS implementation are similar. The four components of successful implementation are the same for both district and state-wide PBS implementation. At a state-wide level, there will be more professionals on the leadership team representing the Department of Education and other human service organizations and agencies including mental health, child welfare, developmental disability may participate as well.
What are the components for successful district and state implementation?
There are four components for successful implementation: (a) a Leadership Team to actively coordinate implementation efforts; (b) an organizational umbrella composed of adequate funding, broad visibility, and consistent political support; (c) a foundation for sustained and broad-scale implementation established through a cadre of individuals who can provide coaching support for local implementation, a small group of individuals who can train teams on the practices and processes of school-wide PBS, and a system for on-going evaluation; and (d) a small group of demonstration schools that documents the viability of the approach within the local fiscal, political and social climate of the state/district
What is a leadership team?
A leadership team is needed to lead the assessment and action planning process. The objective of the team is to increase capacity in four primary areas:
- Training Capacity refers to the system’s ability to self-assess for specific programmatic and staff development needs and objectives, develop a training action plan, invest in increasing local training capacity, and implement effective and efficient training activities.
- Coaching Capacity refers to the system’s ability to organize personnel and resources for facilitating, assisting, maintaining, and adapting local school training implementation efforts. Resources are committed for both initial training and on-going implementation support.
- Evaluation Capacity refers to the system’s ability to establish measurable outcomes, methods for evaluating progress toward these measurable outcomes, and modified or adapted action plans based on these evaluations.
- Coordination Capacity refers to the system’s ability to establish an operational organization and “rhythm” that enables effective and efficient utilization of materials, time, personnel, etc. in the implementation of an action plan.
To enable and support the leadership team’s efforts, the PBS implementation must have (a) adequate and sustained funding support; (b) regular, wide, and meaningful visibility; and (c) relevant and effective political support.
Who serves on the leadership team?
Members of this team should include individuals whose roles, responsibilities, and activities are associated with the (a) prevention of the development and occurrence of problem behavior, (b) development and maintenance of behavior, and (c) management and evaluation of resources related to the provision of behavioral supports. Examples of district-wide team members include:
- District administration
- School administration
- District PBS trainers
- Instruction and Curriculum
- Safe and Drug Free Schools
- Special Education
- School Psychology and Counseling
- Title or other related initiatives
- Student Health
- Parents and family members
- Students
- School-wide Discipline
- Dropout Prevention
- Character Education
- Alternative Programming
- Data or Information Management
- Multiculturalism and Affirmative Action
What are the major responsibilities of the leadership team?
The leadership team works together to decide how many schools are to be involved in the effort. Major responsibilities include:
- Completing a self assessment
- Creating a 3-5 year action plan
- Establishing regularly scheduled meetings
- Identifying a coordinator to manage and facilitate
- Securing stable funding for efforts
- Developing a dissemination strategy to establish visibility (website, newsletter, conferences, TV)
- Ensuring student social behavior is the top priority of the district
- Establishing trainers to build and sustain school-wide PBS practices.
- Developing a coaching network (each school identifies a school coach to facilitate)
- Evaluating school-wide PBS efforts.