Jefferson City Public Schools experienced about a 3 percent rise in reported discipline incidents from the beginning of the current school year in August, through Dec. 16, compared to the same time last year - despite the district's updating its discipline enforcement policies this year.
The 121-incident increase brought the running total for the 2016-17 school year to 3,973 discipline incidents.
At the beginning of this school year, the district rolled out an updated behavior plan that created a more uniform code of disciplinary expectations. The disciplinary code itself has not changed, but the district "set an expectation of holding kids accountable," said Brian Shindorf, director of elementary education.
Shindorf said some of the increase in incidents reported this year has less to do with more misbehaving kids, and more to do with better enforcement of disciplinary policies - a "let's make sure we do what we said" attitude.
There's more consistency now in disciplinary policy between buildings, said Tammy Ridgeway, director of secondary education.
While he's not 100 percent confident, Shindorf said, "I'm not convinced we have 121 more incidents, but 121 more times" principals were following expectations.
A reportable discipline incident more or less represents any incident that crosses a principal's desk. The elementary level is a little different from high school, but if an incident merits entry into the district's Infinite Campus data system, then it counts.
In 2015, a Behavioral Task Force made up of 61 district staff members examined discipline incident data from the 2014-15 school year, also taking into account other data like office referrals, said Director of Special Services Sheila Logan. Logan led the task force along with Ridgeway.
At that time, the task force realized the most office referrals came from second- and seventh-graders.
The district implemented more streamlined disciplinary expectations based on the task force's findings.
JCPS also has a team of behavioral interventionists in its elementary schools meant to address the root issues of student behavioral problems.
Based on data that reflected the beginning of the 2016-17 school year from August through Nov. 8, Logan shared a report at the Nov. 8 school board meeting that stated "the Student Support Process at the elementary level is efficient and effective in guiding behavior and acadmeic intervention. Building teams are focused on providing appropriate social skill instruction and behavioral intervention."
The report listed the number of behavioral interventions staff in different schools had conducted and further classified these interventions as to whether they were proactive or reactive and what grade level at which building needed the most attention. The majority of interventions in every building - sometimes as high as almost 90 percent, like at Pioneer Trail - were labeled as proactive.
Logan said she had heard "very positive comments based on the impact" of these behavioral intervention teams.
She said the district will look at the full semester's worth of behavioral intervention data once the fall semester has ended.
In terms of the current 3 percent spike in districtwide disciplinary incidents, it will take three to five years to understand peaks in numbers, Ridgeway said. She added if after a couple of years, there are trends in the types of incidents reported, "we may need to tweak things a little bit" - referring to what is communicated to teachers, administrators and parents about the expectations of students' conduct.
According to data provided by Director of Assessment and Planning Dawn Berhorst, the four most prevalent types of discipline incidents for the school year to date were disruptive conduct or speech, bus and transportation incidents, physical contact or aggression, and disrespect to staff. Those four categories together represented 76.7 of all incidents.
Other types of incidents include fighting and truancy, but for the past two fall semesters these have made up less than 5 percent of all incidents.
When it comes to truancy, Ridgeway said, the district is focusing more on improving long-term outcomes, and that these are more often achieved "the younger (an age) we can attack truancy."
For example, if a high school student has truancy issues, she said, staff will inquire about their younger sibilings and check their truancy records. If it appears a family has a chronic issue, then their children's needs can be addressed together.
In keeping track of disciplinary data and deciding appropriate responses, Ridgeway and Shindorf reiterated there is a bigger picture.
"The goal is not to document bad behavior," but to prevent future bad behavior, Shindorf said.
"There's not a bad kid, just kids who make bad decisions," Ridgeway said, and tracking behavior over time allows them to make more informed decisions about how to identify and address bad behaviors.