Engaging Faculty in School-Wide Positive Behavior Support: Strategies for Buy-In and Ownership

1. Building Faculty Involvement

2. Objectives • Understand why staff need to be committed to decreasing problem behaviors and increasing academic behaviors • Identify four approaches to gain faculty buy-in to the school-wide PBS process • Develop a plan to get buy-in and build ownership across faculty

3. Decreasing Problem Behaviors • Staff commitment is essential • Faculty and staff are critical stakeholders • 80% buy-in/consensus must be secured • 3-5 year process

4. What does 80% buy in mean? • Consensus means that I agree to: • provide input in determining what our school’s problems are and what our goals should be • make decisions about rules, expectations, and procedures in the commons areas of the school as a school community • Follow through with all school-wide decisions, regardless of my feelings for any particular decision • Commit to positive behavior support systems for a full year - allowing performance toward our goal to determine future plans

5. Faculty Are Familiar withthe Behavior Problems • Communication is essential in this process • Open communication will allow faculty to feel as though they are part of the change process • Faculty will begin to understand what is happening across campus • Frequent communication opens dialogue for problem-solving across campus

6. Strategies • Use the existing database • Use a team planning process • Conduct staff surveys • Develop an “election” process for the completed plan

7. Use the Existing Database • Where behaviors are occurring (i.e., setting) • What types of behaviors are occurring • What types of consequence was delivered to discipline students • When problems behaviors occur most frequently • How many discipline referrals, suspensions, and/or expulsions occurred last school year • How many faculty are absent daily • Other (loss of instruction time, student absences, etc.)

8. Time Cost of aDiscipline Referral(Avg. 45 minutes per incident)

9. Instructional Days Lost (August-March)

10. Instructional Days Lost Per 100 Students

11. How to Use the Data to Get Faculty Buy-in • Share visuals (graphs) with faculty on a regular basis • The visuals are a powerful tool: • To let staff know the extra work they are doing is paying off • To show specific areas that may need a more intense focus • Emphasize the “Team” process

12. Average Referrals Per Day Per Month

13. Multi Year Office Referrals per Day Per Month

14. Conduct Staff Surveys • Staff surveys are an efficient way to: • Obtain staff feedback • Create involvement without holding more meetings • Generate new ideas • Build a sense of faculty ownership

15. Sample Staff Survey Item • Check the OUTCOMES below that you would like to achieve at our school… • Increase in attendance • Improvement in academic performance • Increase in the number of appropriate student behaviors • Students and teachers report a more positive and calm environment • Reduction in the number of behavioral disruptions, referrals, and incident reports

16. What Other Schools Have Found to Be Effective • Faculty Retreat – day before official pre-planning • After the overview at a faculty meeting staff signs on chart paper labeled Yes/No/Need More Information • Show sections of the school-wide video

17. Supporting Systemic Change • Those involved in the school must share : • a common dissatisfaction with the processes and outcomes of the current system • a vision of what they would like to see replace it • Problems occur when the system lacks the knowledge of how to initiate change or when there is disagreement about how change should take place

18. Challenges • Reasons for making changes are not perceived as compelling enough • Staff feel a lack of ownership in the process • Insufficient modeling from leadership • Staff lack a clear vision of how the changes will impact them personally • Insufficient system of support

19. Solutions • Develop a common understanding • Enlist leaders with integrity, authority, resources and willingness to assist • Expect, respect and respond to resistance (encourage questions and discussion) • Clarify how changes align with other initiatives • Emphasize clear and imminent consequences for not changing • Emphasize benefits • Conservation of time/effort • Alignment of processes/goals • Greater professional accountability • Stay in touch with peer leaders during the change process

20. Remember • PBIS involves all of us • we decide what our focus will be • we decide how we will monitor • we decide what our goals are • we decide what we’ll do to get there • we evaluate our progress • we decide whether to keep going or change