"You better not pout, you better not cry..."

“You better not pout,
You better not cry,
You better watch out,
I’m telling you why…”

Think you know the next line? It has nothing to do with Santa Claus and everything with being naughty or nice. After a long discussion with Taylor teachers and staff at our staff meeting on Monday, we identified three areas of needed improvement in our student discipline approach. I want to share these areas with you and advise you of what we are doing to address them. Three big areas of concern were:

Lunch Detention: Staff was concerned that the setting of detention (office conference room) and relative lack of structure made lunch detention less effective than it could be. We have made the following changes to detention:
• It was moved to the Home Economics room 208 which is quieter and easier to supervise.
• We implemented stricter rules for student behavior in detention
• We will increase adult supervision in the room

Lunch Supervision: Staff was concerned that there were not enough adults in the halls and on the patio at lunch and during passing periods. Teachers have redoubled their efforts to be in the hallways during passing periods to make sure student behavior is appropriated. Teachers have also volunteered to give up their lunch break to help with supervision. Finally we have redeployed custodial staff to the patio at noon to assist with supervision. Finally we need parent volunteers to assist with supervision. If you want to help us out, please call Mr. B if you are interested.

In-School Suspension: We are going to begin our ISS program on January 7th. We have purchased the prep periods of four teachers who will supervise students assigned by the principals to ISS. The new room will be housed in the 100 wing in space currently used by our OT/PT staff - they are moving to room 310. ISS will largely take the place of Saturday School which is being phased out.

These improvements will require changes to the Taylor Discipline Matrix. Mrs. Meyer and I will be working on this over the holiday and will post the new matrix on the Taylor website in January. We are also working on the plan to give lockers to students – more on that in next week’s issue. I hope you all have a wonderful week.