Initiating, expanding, and sustaining PBIS at the school level requires systemic support from the district, state, or region. Organizing across multiple schools improves efficiency in resources, implementation efforts, and organizational management. PBIS at the district and state level provides a supportive context for implementation at the local level.
School-level PBIS implementation is more successful when it’s supported by district- and state-level systems. By supporting multiple schools in the same area, districts and states create a shared vision, language and experience that makes everyone more effective. There are four components for successful district or state PBIS implementation:
Leadership Team to actively coordinate implementation efforts
Adequate funding, broad visibility, and consistent political support
Groups to provide coaching support for local implementation and to train teams on the practices and processes of school-wide PBIS, as well as a system for on-going evaluation
Small number of demonstration schools to prove PBIS is possible within the local fiscal, political and social climate of the state/district.
Why Address District and State PBIS?
Initiating, expanding, and sustaining PBIS at the school level requires systemic support from the district, state, or region. Organizing across multiple schools improves efficiency in resources, implementation efforts, and organizational management. PBIS at the district and state level provides a supportive context for implementation at the local level.
District and State Leadership Team and Mission
Initiating PBIS at the district or state level starts with a leadership team spearheading efforts to build capacity at the school level. To enable and support school-level implementation, the district/state leadership team must have
Adequate and sustained funding
Regular, wide, and meaningful visibility
Relevant and effective political support
The leadership team’s core mission is to increase capacity at the school level in four primary areas:
Training
The district or state needs to establish resources and systems for training schools at the local level. This means knowing the professional development needs, creating a training action plan, investing in building local training capacity, and implementing effective and efficient training activities.
Coaching
Leadership teams organize the personnel and resources to facilitate, assist, maintain, and adapt school training implementation efforts. The team must commit resources for both initial training and on-going implementation support.
Evaluation
The district or state implementation must include measurable outcomes. Leadership teams identify methods to evaluate progress and use data to modify or adapt action plans accordingly.
Coordination
Effective implementation requires coordinating materials, time, personnel, and more from the action plan across multiple schools and contexts. The leadership team carries this responsibility.
Assessing District and State Level Implementation
District and state leadership teams should regularly assess the status of factors associated with systemic implementation of PBIS. Self-assessment results are used to develop and modify district/state action plans. Assessment tools include:
The first step to establish district and state oversight is to download the PBIS Implementation Blueprint. Districts and states getting started with PBIS implementation will also want to establish a leadership team. Be sure to include people whose roles, responsibilities, and activities are associated with:
Training
Coaching
Evaluation
Coordination
Examples
Check out these samples, case studies and lesson plans and use them as a springboard to improve your own implementation
