BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Student discipline was the main topic discussed on Wednesday during a meeting with the Brevard County School Board.
A nearly 100-page audit by the district’s audit committee outlined the biggest behavior problems in schools and revealed a lot of the confusion when it comes to reporting and tracking discipline in the district.
“We identified and categorized the key factors that we found in our research. Impacts from the pandemic, students who were not in person — not in a classroom setting and coming back from the pandemic — maybe have picked up some behavior and have forgotten really good behaviors on their way back into the classroom,” said a member of the district’s audit committee.
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During the first semester of the 2022-2023 school year, the audit revealed the highest number of incidents involved students who were out of assigned areas, willfully disobeying, were tardy to class, had classroom disruption and had physical aggression.
40% of those behaviors occurred at the high school level, according to the report.
The audit pointed out the main problem was how staff recorded the wrong dates when reporting behavioral incidents within the district, also entering the wrong consequence for the action.
Board members went over a list of recommendations from the audit, advising more communication with law enforcement, increased training for staff and increasing the effectiveness of Alternative Learning Centers (ALC).
“It is both ways of communication where we’ve seen some of the other incidents and where some of this comes up into play is ... law enforcement and some of the municipalities on videos with buses and stuff like that is not enacting certain things that are supposed to be based on communication and setting that up,” Matt Susin, Brevard Public School Board chair, explained.
Board members also tossed around the idea of possibly hiring an assistant superintendent of discipline that has direct supervision for behavior, but some say they want to wait until a new superintendent is officially hired.
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