MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A program aimed at addressing discipline issues among kindergarten through fifth grade students in Berkeley County is working, according to officials.
Dr. Tyler Long with the Berkeley County Schools’ Collaborative Action Response for Education Success (CARES) Academy said on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline” they’ve seen behaviors start to improve.
“We have students who came to us acting out almost daily in their home schools and we’ve seen a decrease. These students are having episodes maybe every couple weeks now, so yes it is working,” Long said.
The CARES Academy works to eliminate distractions in the classrooms. It’s a districtwide approach to help students who need behavior intervention.
“Our goal is to decrease the behavior of the individual student which ultimately, we hope, is going to impact that individual student’s entire classroom,” Long said.
Students who are sent to the CARES Academy work on three specific goals including academic, behavior and social skills for about 6-7 weeks.
“We take their behavior challenges, and we work specifically with those,” Long said. “We have to reteach them how to properly behave.”
Long said they use a special technique that involves coping skills to manage behaviors and return students to the classroom.
“In many cases they are not getting the reinforcement at home on what’s right and what’s wrong. At this level, you do have to give consequences, but there’s a lot of reteaching because sometimes you’re punishing these students for things that they may not necessarily know that it’s wrong,” he said.
State Senate Education Committee Chair Amy Nichole Grady (R-Mason) said during an appearance on “Talkline” last week state lawmakers should prioritize school discipline issues when they return for the 2024 Regular Legislative Session in January.
School discipline has been a major topic of discussion among state Board of Education members in the last year after a report was released in May that showed more than 28,000 West Virginia students were suspended in 2022. The average student suspended lost about six days of classroom instruction, which has led to poor test scores.
Grady said she also believes behavior problems have driven more teachers away from the profession.
“It’s not necessarily the pay that makes teachers leave. It’s the behaviors and the expectations that we’re supposed to be able to deal with the behaviors,” Grady said last week.
State Board of Education President Paul Hardesty previously called the discipline issue in West Virginia schools “a crisis.”
Long said he hopes the CARES Academy can be implemented in more county school districts across the state.
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November 29, 2023 at 12:07AM
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Berkeley County CARES Academy works to improve student behaviors - West Virginia MetroNews
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