Educational and Community Leadership

Discipline Management System

trainingJoel L. Smith

As a result of Joel’s ongoing data capture and review effort, he became convinced that a more efficient, more accurate, more consistent process of implementing Student Code of Conduct process violations could be created.  He convened a cross-discipline team to analyze the process.  As a result of his conviction, he designed an electronic Discipline Management System (DMS).  The process is inclusive and organic: stakeholders have tremendous input into the system.  An electronic learning community was established in order to capture stakeholder input and questions. This allowed for immediate response to questions and concerns and, in most cases, virtually immediate systemic adaptation to necessary changes and enhancements.  The end result was a model that was embedded systemically, and that works efficiently and consistently across the entire district (250 plus schools).  This simple but sophisticated system allows staff to input and analyze the data: an added benefit is, as a result of the organic evolution of the process, a non-threatening, uncomplicated training process supports the implementation. It is safe to say that the Discipline Management System was a product of Joel’s vision and would not have been developed or implemented without his leadership.

Creating the DMS, in Joel’s vision, was never a complete entity.  Although it was developed as a stand-alone tool, Joel saw it as part of a larger initiative.  The Discipline Management System was to be the Ying to the Risk Management System’s (RMS) Yang.  The DMS’s role was responsive:  if a student committed a Student Code of Conduct violation, Joel wanted to create a system that insured that processes were equitable across locations, and data was captured in consistent fashion.  The DMS is necessarily a reactive system, in that it is triggered by a student committing a code of conduct violation. However, what if we could create a system merging concerns about students’ behaviors, academic performance, and their social ecology?  Joel’s vision was to create a proactive system incorporating these variables.  This is, in fact, in alignment with the Response to Intervention expectations in place today nationally. Joel again convened a cross-discipline team (including community members) to begin this process.  Team commitment and alignment to the concept was less of a challenge than might be expected, as a result of the immense popularity and ease of implementation of the DMS.



Discipline Management System Flowchart
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Discipline Management FlowChart

 

 

It's Always the Right Time to do the Right Thing-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.