The behavior committees for schools in Illinois Valley Central School District 321 are working together on a plan that will help to unify the behavior expectations throughout the district.
Representatives from each school presented their plan at district 321’s school board meeting April 27.
“One of our goals this year was to have a district-wide behavior discipline plan,” said Jennie Hawkey, the district’s curriculum director.
Pat Auge, assistant principal at Chillicothe Elementary Center said the discipline plan is based on three basic topics: be responsible, be respectful and be safe.
“We want to strengthen and communicate a consistent system of age-appropriate, setting-specific expectations that teach, encourage and reinforce positive behaviors in our schools,” Auge said.
He presented a “behavior matrix” with a breakdown of expectations for different settings that students find themselves in on a daily basis, such as classrooms, hallways, locker rooms, gyms and so on. The matrix will be posted throughout the schools.
“Every setting we have, every classroom that we have, whether it’s South, whether it’s IVC, whether it’s CEC or Mossville, we’re all going to have these same expectations,” Auge said.
Chad McDowell, sixth-grade teacher at Mossville School, said the school has focused on teaching students responsibility.
A fifth-eighth-grade behavior responsibility plan has been implemented in which the students receive homework tickets for completed assignments at the discretion of the teacher.
The tickets are entered into a drawing, and a Deal or No Deal-type game is played with prizes.
“It’s worked pretty well,” McDowell said. Be respectful, McDowell said, will be Mossville’s focus during the 2010-11 school year.
Assemblies with teacher-performed skits to model negative and positive behaviors are planned to teach students to be respectful.
“Our goals are established on a needs basis,” said Mike Bethel, principal at South School.
He said that teachers at South come up with their own rewards systems in their individual classrooms.
“It works pretty effectively,” he said.
“The first two weeks (of school) the teachers spend time teaching the behaviors that they want,” he said.
Mike Gray, assistant principal at IVC High School, said students will be taught ideals from the matrix during their homeroom period.
“I think that at the high school, it’s going to be a perfect fit for our student assistance program because our goals in that program are prevention, support and intervention,” he said.
“We want to make sure that at the high school, we address these issues as well,” he said.
In other business, the board:
• recognized the CEC girls’ volleyball team, which, with a 27-1 record, placed second in the eighth-grade State volleyball championships. They have a two-year record of 55-1.
“It takes a lot of work, and they’ve done that,” said coach Sara Kinney. “It takes a lot of support of each other. I can truly say these girls all get along with each other, they work well together, and they help each other when they’re down and they congratulate each other when they do well.”
She said the support of the parents and staff were very important to the girls’ success.
The group of girls on the volleyball team have an average GPA of 3.67.
• heard a literacy presentation from literacy coordinator Janean Hansel. A new series of textbooks have been purchased for the district.
The series highlights include complex and complete reading and writing programs, literacy skills linked to science and social science content standard and comprehension instruction connected throughout the series.
• heard a construction update from Polyak.
“The addition at South School has changed drastically since we walked through there a couple weeks ago,” Polyak said. “The project is currently 83 percent complete.”
Classrooms, library, the office and computer lab have been carpeted, the academic hallway has been tiled, tile in the cafeteria is about 75 percent complete, sidewalks in the courtyard have been poured, and painters are finished.
“It is really, really transforming quickly,” he said.
• announced that the district received a certificate of financial recognition from the Illinois State Board of Education based on the 2009 school year financial data.
“Given the economic difficulties school districts are facing, the State Board realizes this is a significant accomplishment,” said Christopher Koch, state superintendent of education, in a letter sent to the school district.
• approved the renewal of Illinois High School Association and Illinois Elementary School Association memberships.
• approved a bid of $27,280 from J.J. Braker & Sons for masonry work at the high school.
• approved a bid of $68,655 from Lippert Inc. for new kitchen equipment to be installed at South School.
• approved a bid of $191,800 from Peoria Roofing for roof work at Mossville School.
• approved bids of $184,143 from K-Com Technologies for fire alarm replacement at CEC and IVC.
• approved the contract of Tobias Thomas, band director at Mossville School, effective for the 2010-11 school year.
• approved the resignations of Chantelle Fahrenkrug, Spanish/English teacher at IVC High School, and Sarah Abbott, Bright Futures aide at Mossville, both effective at the end of the 2009-10 school year.
