By MATT LINDSEY

POTSDAM – This fall Potsdam Central School will aim to be more consistent with disciplinary issues, and discussions will take place about altering the time at which students start their day.

Potsdam Central recently outlined its strategic plan for 2017-18, which intends to better meet social needs of students, emphasizes fair code of conduct treatment, aligns curriculum, and may adjust the school daytime schedule.

The new missions and visions were created following a four-day work session last month at the school that included administrators, teachers, CSEA members and parents, PCS Superintendent Joann Chambers said.

Chambers said the meetings produced four main, immediate priorities for the 2017-18 school year.

Inconsistent Discipline

Chambers said the plan calls for applying the existing student code of conduct to remain fair, consistent and developmentally appropriate.

The district has faced many complaints from parents over the last year concerning inconsistent punishment related to student discipline; including bullying and harassment grievances.

“We've always had the code of conduct – but we really want to pay more attention,” she said, adding that she would do a monthly audit of student discipline to ensure protocol is being followed.

“We want to make sure staff has consistent definition when reporting student misconduct,” she said. Noting that there are similar wordings in the conduct code such as bullying and harassment.

There will also be professional development for teachers to better prepare them to handle conduct issues.

Later school day

Another immediate goal will be for the district to discuss changing the start of the school day for middle and high school students. This is being considered to better meet the needs of students and staff.

Students in middle school begin their day at 7:25 a.m. and high schoolers start at 7:30 a.m. Elementary kids start their day between 8:30 and 9 a.m.

Chambers said research has shown that starting that early may have a negative.

The school will look at the logistics, beginning this fall, to decide if a time change is feasible.

Busing could be an issue. The school does not have the space on buses to transport all students at the same time.

Chambers said a committee would be created or an existing committee would be tasked with figuring out the logistics of a time change.

A decision about the start time will likely not be made until the spring of 2018, Chambers said.

Positivity project

Chambers said the school is implementing the Positivity Project in an effort to nurture the social and emotional development of all students.

The Positivity Project, which will be rolled out this fall to pre-k through 12th grade students, has been headed by PCS fifth grade teacher Todd Kaiser.

The project is aimed building character strengths and realizing and concentrating on commonalities ground instead of differences. Chambers hopes The Positivity Project helps students see common ground instead of difference.

“There is a lot of excitement and work being done on this,” Chambers said.

Aligning curriculum

The district has also worked in recent years to collaborate pre-k through twelfth grade curriculum to better align and to share instructional practices.

Chambers said this would help ensure that all teachers on each grade level are teaching the same concepts and information across the board. “That will help students to succeed at the next grade level,” she said.

The aligning helps prepare students for the next grade, but also ensures students aren’t relearning information from a previous grade.

Participating in the four-day meetings in May were Superintendent Chambers, High School Principal Alison Benedict, Middle School Princicpal Mark Bennett, Elementary Principal Jennifer Gray, teachers Josh Brosell, Jen Herrick, Jim Kirka, Brenda Martin, Kristin Towne, Janelle Wingerter Catherina Boula, Emily Brouwer, Anna Greer, Todd Kaiser, Greg Lapinski, Jill Rubio, Deb Sutton and Sue Waters.

Also participating were CSEA members Michelle Garrow, Tanya Sala and Amy Murphy. Participating parents were Lisa Cooper, Carolyn Zanta, Annie Chase and Drew McFadden.

The session was organized by Sean Brady of Prism Decision Systems, based in Binghamton.