Brevard Public Schools Discipline Audit: What Did It Reveal?

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November 2022 Newly Elected Brevard School Board Chair Matt Sushin Standing outside the Brevard County Jail with the sheriff wayne ivyTogether they declared “New day” for discipline at the Brevard school.

Heightened tensions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, laws restricting what can and cannot be taught in classrooms, teacher retention issues, bad student behavior and lack of support are shifting feelings among BPS staff. had reached the point.

Susin promised “the most prolific policy the school district has ever had,” but what followed in the months after the video was less dramatic. A disciplinary audit led by auditor RSM has been initiated in the school district where the student resides. This aimed to explore the disciplinary processes within the BPS and to make suggestions on how to address the behaviors that disrupted classroom learning.

On Monday, the district released an auditor’s 87-page report showing that Brevard’s discipline problems aren’t all that different from those of surrounding school districts.

Comparing data collected over four years from Osceola, Volusia, Lee, Seminole, and Orange counties, Brevard County was found to be somewhere in between.

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Brevard’s average incident types compared to other school districts also varied, with 9.02 incidents per 1,000 full-time equivalent students, including tobacco possession and use, compared to an average of 5.12 incidents per 1,000 for comparable school districts. It was a matter. In other areas addressed, such as the threat/intimidation and alcohol categories, Brevard reported less than 1 incident per 1,000 full-time equivalent students, while comparable school districts scored 3.62 and 3.47, respectively. I am reporting.

The audit highlighted multiple issues, but the main one boiled down to the lack of a centralized office to handle the discipline. Instead, responsibility rests with teachers, principals, and administrators.

This can lead to confusion and room for error, said deputy supervisor Sue Hann.

“A lot of what comes out of audits is actually about some of our own internal processes and oversight, which are not necessarily specific to the discipline itself, but how we manage the discipline process. We have a responsibility to monitor the disciplinary process and make sure we are actually getting results from the disciplinary process,” she said.

There was no big major “Ahaha!” Rather than an audit moment, we focus on the smaller issues of reporting disciplinary issues, classifying disciplinary behaviors correctly, and creating a better environment for staff and students.

The BPS has five disciplinary levels that classify different behaviors based on their severity and potential threat to students and others in the district.

School staff are required to report behavior through the School Environment Safety Incident Reporting software, an incident reporting system that establishes 26 codes of conduct to be reported to the Florida Department of Education. If behavior violates her BPS Code of Conduct, but is not considered SESIR-defined behavior, it should be reported through the locally defined Code of Conduct.

“It’s a process of many people doing different things with software systems, and software systems are not perfect…there are many categories of disciplines and then different corrective actions,” said Han. Stated, many moving parts.

To create the report, auditors focused on both SESIR behavior and locally defined behavior. Their report focused primarily on the first trimester of He 2022 to He’s 2023, but utilized data from previous years in comparison to Brevard County and similar districts.

Audit findings

During the first semester of 2022-2023, the audit found:

• 680 SESIR incidents against general education students. Fifty-seven percent of these occurred at the high school level, and approximately 374 of these incidents were classified as tobacco possession and/or use.
• 335 SESIR incidents against ESE students. About 45% of incidents occur at the high school level. 160 of the reported incidents were classified as tobacco possession and/or use.
• There were 18,772 locally defined incidents among general education students, with 40% occurring at the high school level. The most reported behavior was approximately 2,918 times, with students walking away from their assigned location. This was followed by willful disobedience/rebellion, which was reported 2,897 times.
• 9,739 locally defined incidents occurred among ESE students, 1,750 reported cases of willful disobedience/disobedience, followed by 1,414 reports of being outside their assigned area. had.

what’s next?

The school board will decide what to do with the report. At this point, no action will be taken until the findings are presented to the Board at its 9:00 am meeting on Wednesday.

In a controversy over the BPS’s discipline policy that erupted in December following an in-prison video, Susin said she first raised the issue of a discipline audit two years ago. At the time, it was postponed due to more pressing issues.

Ms Susin said on Monday that the audit indicated that parents needed to do more.

A survey conducted among teachers, administrators and bus drivers found that many did not feel that parents or students understood the policy or expected to cooperate with it. It became clear.

In addition, many said their safety was threatened by the students.

“You can’t move this needle without your parents,” says Susin. “If we can’t educate our parents, we will be in a bad position.”

Han agreed, adding that making schools safer would be a collaborative effort.

“We need to train better,” she said. “We need to do a better job of bringing stakeholders together. This includes parents and students. So we have to do a better job of getting all the information.”

A major problem identified in the audit was the way problem behaviors were reported, with BPS staff misclassifying behaviors, incorrectly recording the date the incident occurred, and entering the wrong outcome for behaviors. was

Han said he wanted to create a centralized group for discipline.

“I think one of the recommendations to set up a sort of disciplinary group with ministerial-level status makes sense,” Han said.

Susin agreed that developing a disciplinary group would be beneficial. He added that improving things within the district would be a collaborative effort.

“I don’t want to create a situation where people go looking for people who haven’t filled in the proper information,” he said. “I think it’s our responsibility as districts and school boards to make those people feel good. That’s our job. Let’s get down to business. Turn around and say, ‘You’re wrong.’ You’re wrong, you’re wrong,’ because in the end everyone owns a piece of the problem — parents, students, everyone.”

Finch Walker is an education reporter for FLORIDA TODAY.Contact Walker 321-290-4744 again fwalker@floridatoday.com. twitter: @_finch walker.