Board approves discipline plan

Metro public schools will have a new approach for working with disruptive students this school year after school board members voted Tuesday night to approve a proposed new, three-part discipline plan.

Metro schools administrators will reconstitute the district's alternative learning centers (ALCs) to provide better services and strengthen district-wide preventative measures to improve student behavior in zoned schools, and they will open a new kind of alternative program called New Beginnings in January.

Existing ALCs house students who have committed zero-tolerance offenses such as bringing a gun or drugs to school or assaulting a school employee.

New Beginnings would serve students who constantly violate less severe school rules despite every attempt at intervention by local school leaders and communication with parents.

Two New Beginnings will open in the second half of the 2004-05 school year for a maximum of 250 students per site in fifth through twelfth grades.

Board members discussed concerns - such as staffing one counselor per alternative site and serving middle and high school students in the same facility - before unanimously approving the plan.

Chief Instructional Officer Dr. Sandy Johnson said community agencies, among other services, would provide support to the school counselors and provide services targeted to individual student needs, such as alcohol and drug counseling.

Oasis, Centerstone, STARS and Vanderbilt Mental Health are among the agencies who will partner with the alternative programs.

Staff at existing alternative programs will have to reapply for their positions as the district emphasizes putting teachers and administrators best suited to working with students with high needs in the alternative sites.

"We want individuals who want to work with alternative school students," Johnson said.

While the plan does not spell out the training, the district also intends to train alternative school staff prior to the students' arrival.

Tainting alternative programs in the past has been a lack of efforts to help a student transition between the zoned school and an alternative program in a way that sets the student up to succeed.

Administrators hope a transition liaison at each middle and high school will facilitate that process, as well as requiring parent conferences as a student enters and exits an alternative program.

Students entering any alternative program will be evaluated to identify what academic and social needs should be addressed, and individual and group counseling will be a new standard component of the curriculum.

Beyond parent conferences, district leaders plan to engage parents more with parental education programs and referring parents to local community agencies and counseling services as needed.

Both the alternative programs will offer limited electives, and New Beginnings will provide tutoring outside school hours.

Board members asked for a progress report before the second semester to monitor implementation of the discipline plan.

"I think they're going to be very careful with this program," board member Kathy Nevill said of the school staff, "because they want it to work."