PEEKSKILL, N.Y. The Peekskill City School District Board of Education held a special meeting Tuesday night with district teachers and Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) leaders to discuss ways to improve student behavior.
The topic of improving classroom behavior has been an area of increased focus this year under the school board and new superintendent of schools, James Willis.
"If we don't have good behavior in the classroom, then we can't have learning," said Willis at the beginning of the 90-minute discussion at the Peekskill Middle School cafeteria.
School board president Joe Urbanowicz said that feedback from faculty pointed to an inconsistency in the way the code of conduct was enforced from school to school and from classroom to classroom, and said that maybe it was a matter that should be addressed through staff development.
Oakside Elementary School second grade teacher Shanti Urreta spoke on behalf of a number of teachers present from the school.
Uretta said that while the majority of students at the school are willing to learn, there are at least two or three in each classroom who display disruptive or bullying behavior. Thirty percent of students are unfocused or easily distracted and there are still other students who lack adequate social skills for the classroom, she said.
Uretta read three recommendations from faculty, which included putting aside time each day to teach students social skills. "They act the way they do because they don't know any other way," she said. "We need to teach them."
Another recommendation was to use a software program called "MindUP," a program she said had a high success rate in several countries in improving student behavior. The program costs $29.99 per teacher and $5,000 per district for a company employee that works with each district.
Uretta also said teachers would like to see a "highly creative behavior class" where students from all classes could go if they needed a break from class as long as they were willing to do so without disrupting their classmates.
Peekskill High School biology teacher Jim Senning spoke on behalf of high school faculty and told school board members that high school faculty felt they could better discuss their concerns and suggestions in a closed meeting environment but he did list several concerns.
One concern was tardiness during the first five minutes of class, which he acknowledged was nothing new. But another concern that is new is the district's allowance of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones. "This will lead to a serious violation of privacy at some point," Senning said.
School Board Trustee Marcella Bobe said even when the devices were banned, students had them. She said the board would have to come up with a consistent way to implement a policy to ban such devices, if they chose to do so.
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