After over a year of dedicated work from a number of community leaders including GCPS staff and various local civic organizations, we have completed a comprehensive review of GCPS fighting policy and are recommending changes at a series of town hall meetings this summer.

Please come to at least one of our meetings so that we can capture your feedback and offer a community-supported presentation to the school board this fall. It is our goal to serve the public interest. You have a valid point of view and we are interested in what you have to say.

You will hear all about our findings at the meetings but just to hit the highlights:

Current fighting policy makes no distinction between minor physical contact and serious physical injury when addressing discipline. Our proposed policy underscores that discipline should serve to educate and correct behavior and that severe punishment should be reserved only for dangerous physical contact to ensure the safety of children and staff.

Our proposed policy seeks to provide interventions that serve to prevent behavior from escalating to physical contact by:

• Training teachers and staff to serve as effective de-escalation intervention points 
• Implementation of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) with fidelity, which includes restorative practices.

These research-based models address the behavior of all students with transparent, measurable goals, and published results while accounting for the social emotional learning of students. The district and its schools serve the entire school population best when they limit discipline practices that alienate and ostracize children.

• Harsh discipline practices like suspension, expulsion and incarceration widen the achievement gap and greatly hinder a child’s ability to make amends for their mistakes and move forward socially and academically.
• It is in the best interest of all parties to provide interventions and discipline that provide an opportunity for children to learn to resolve conflict and restore harmony with their classmates.

We are in the process of completing plans for our last two town hall meetings now and we will publish information here as it becomes available. The proposed dates for those meetings are August 6 and August 12.