The Student Behavior and School Climate Task Force held its second meeting Monday – continuing its discussion of ways to improve student behavioral issues statewide.
The conversation focused heavily on restorative practices, a social science toolkit that focuses on relationship building and empathy, as opposed to zero-tolerance discipline policies.
While most committee members spoke in favor of restorative practices, they voiced concerns over not having the time, professional development or staffing to properly execute the process.
"A lot of the schools are sorely lacking professional development and the funding to implement it," said Donna Husten, a teacher from Sussex Technical High School. "We talk about if there's something going on in my classroom, and 'can I call the interventionist?' or call this person or call that person — a lot of times there's just no one to call because we don't have the funding for that. We don't have the position for that. We don't have the units for that."
Anita Bulischeck, a school counselor in the Lake Forest School District, agrees, noting at her school they have a teacher who also has a school counseling degree and often gets pulled to help with behavioral issues.
"If you do the changes and have everything in place, the bad part of that is, you're pulling money because that unit, instead of being placed with a special [education] teacher to push that special [education] teacher into a classroom, is now being used for that restorative classroom or that [in-school suspension]," Bulischeck said. "So it does come down to funding. It does come down to resources. "
Senate Education Committee Chair Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine Hundred) notes she feels the discussion only further proves there’s a need to restructure the current school funding system and spend more money on education statewide.
“I know there are people who are skeptical of, like, more money isn’t going to solve the problem. But I hope those who are skeptical are hearing this conversation because more money means you can hire more people. You can hire more behavior interventionists," Sturgeon said, continuing on to discuss the need for smaller classroom sizes and better teacher-student ratios.
Sturgeon alluded to the idea that another task force would be created soon to go over the recommendations released late last yearencouraging Delaware to invest anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion more in education.
Capital School District Superintendent Vilicia Cade attributes staffing shortages to competing focus areas being mandated by the state.
“There’s this statewide pressure for third grade reading proficiency, and then you’re competing with all of these mental health and behavioral issues. People are overwhelmed at every level, and then we can’t find people," Cade said.
The committee plans to look at school discipline data from the varying school districts at their next meeting to better understand the most common behavioral issues Delaware is facing in the classroom.
