Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 17

Highlight: Azusa Unified
School District
Azuza Unified School District (AUSD) is
located in Azusa, about 25 miles north
of Los Angeles. Over the past few years,
Superintendent Linda Kaminski and the Board
have been actively shifting AUSD’s focus away
from punishment toward prevention. Using
opportunities provided by the Local Control
Funding Formula, AUSD engaged parents,
piloted a program for high needs students,
created an advisory group for foster youth that
included foster parents and youth, and began
rolling out School-Wide Positive Behavior
Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS).
Additionally, AUSD committed in its LCAP
to phase out “willful defiance” as a ground for
suspension and expulsion over the next three
years. Additionally, the District focused on
increasing attendance this year by doing home
visits to understand and address problems.

Azusa High School is located in AUSD and
serves 1399 student,. 90% of which are Latino
students, 5% are white, 2% are Filipino, 1% each are
Asian and African American and less than 1% each
are Native American and Multiracial. In 2012-2013,
the school had 89 suspended students and 189 total
suspensions. In 2013-2014, the first year of SWPBIS
implementation, Azusa High issued 3 suspensions
to 3 students. So far this year, it has issued just one.
Additionally, graduation rates are up to 95% from 84%
before implementation. In addition, the attendance
rate has improved from about 95% to 97%.
How did you begin the implementation of
Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports?

Board member Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez: On the
Board, we had been pushing to lower suspensions
but mostly by making it a requirement for principals
to change practices. Principals would then tell
teachers and send kids back to the classrooms.
Then the Board was getting calls from teachers
saying that principals were not supporting them.
We received many calls from teachers here at
Azusa High. We don’t get those calls any more from
teachers complaining about not being supported.
That is a testament to Principal Rubalcaba and full
implementation of SWPBIS.
Principal Ramiro Rubalcaba (Mr. R): When I got
here, we set up a SWPBIS committee of students,
parents, teachers, administrators, a security person
and a counselor, and classified staff, to identify
positive ways of supporting our students and
improving the school climate and culture. Based
on our audit of practices that were in place, we
eliminated tardy sweeps, which just kept kids out
of class, and wrote a progressive discipline policy
with the input of community members, teachers,
staff, parents and students. The PBIS committee
received training from Los Angeles County Office
of Education (LACOE) and came back to revise its
behavioral purpose and school-wide expectations.
The training cost about $15,000.
Kimberly Dahm, English Teacher: Before we
started implementing PBIS on campus, you would
walk through campus and there wasn’t this safe,
high school vibe. If you said, “Hello,” to students
they would sort of look at you weird. People weren’t
friendly to each other. I was fairly positive but as we
work on implementation I see places that I can grow.
We used to wait for terrible things to happen and
then dole out consequences. I love PBIS because we
are teaching behaviors t