Fix School Discipline Toolkit for Educators | Page 52
HIGHLIGHT ON LEATAATA
FLOYD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
(FORMERLY JED SMITH)
Sacramento City Unified School District
during instruction to increase student engagement;
daily use of culturally and linguistically responsive
teaching strategies; Individual Learning Plans for
high achieving students; regular after school team
meetings to discuss data, instructional response, and
intervention; and extended day instruction. After
learning what our goals were eleven of our thirteen
instructional staff left.
Why did you decide to implement PBIS and SEL?
BA: We had focused on rigorous academic
instruction. From the beginning of Day One, we knew
that we prepared for the wrong thing.
Former Principal Billy Aydlett and Assistant Principal Cory Jones
Tell me about how you came to work at Leataata
Floyd Elementary and about the climate of the
school before you instituted Positive Behavior
Support (PBIS) and Social Emotional Learning
(SEL)?
Former Principal Billy Aydlett (BA): This school
was being operated like a school from the 1950s but,
obviously, things have changed. The school had an
in-school suspension model that involved students
being sent to a room called the “Dungeon.” The
school’s leadership had hired a substitute to watch
the students in the Dungeon and make them sit
quietly. They did not receive any instruction and they
were not given any school work to do. Additionally,
that room was full of black and brown boys.
Under the Superintendent’s No Child Left Behind
Priority School Initiative, teachers and staff were
given the choice to leave at the end of the year. Mr.
Jones and I let the instructional staff know our
goals for transforming the school, which included,
among other things, daily use of technology tools
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How we can fix school discipline
Assistant Principal Cory Jones (CJ):
What’s so funny?
CJ: It’s not really funny but it was immediately
obvious that we had more serious work to do to
get students ready to learn. On the first day of
school, after we had sent all the kids to class, a
kindergartener continued to play outside and made
no moves to go to class. I went over to her told her
who I was and asked her name. She looked at me,
said nothing, turned around and continued playing. I
asked her again and she told me, “You’re a stranger, I
don’t know you, I don’t have to listen to what you say.”
BA: I saw this happening and it was humbling and
inspiring.
CJ: Later, at the end of the first day, we had a
meeting with the staff to talk about how things had
gone and one teacher, who is usually very good at
establishing relationships and reaching kids, just
broke down and cried. She basically went through
her entire bag of teaching strategies and tricks