School Days Stymied By Some Students’ Misbehavior

Troup Principal Eugene Foreman finds that his daily responsibilities of being an instructional leader who makes visits to his K‑8 school’s classrooms are all too often derailed by the frequent acting out of a few students.

He’s hoping the introduction this coming school year of phone pouches that securely lock away fifth through eighth graders’ distracting electronic devices might help.

Foreman shared those first-hand experiences, and future phone interventions, Monday evening during a report on New Haven Public Schools’ (NHPS) 2023 – 24 student behavior trends and data, as presented to the Board of Education during its latest meeting at John S. Martinez School.

The presentation was given by NHPS Assistant Superintendents Paul Whyte, Viviana Camacho, and Kristina DeNegre. It included personal testimony from Foreman and Career Principal Shawn True.

NHPS’ most recent student behavior incident data is on the decline, though the district has struggled as of late with spikes in incidents with fifth through ninth graders.

In the 2023 – 24 school year, the top behavioral issues within NHPS were fighting, physical altercations, battery assault, and serious disorderly conduct.

Creating phone-free spaces through the program Yondr is one of many strategies Troup is using this coming school year as it grapples with a 65-percent increase in its number of behavioral incidents between last school year (2023 – 24) and the year before (2022 – 23).

Foreman spoke about how these behavior challenges impact him, his staff, and Troup’s students. He said that that a few outlier students frequently disrupt the school day by everything from being in possession of weapons like pepper spray, assaulting other students, walking out of class, and busing cellphones to interact with social media.

“Each day I go to work with a plan of what I’d like to get done, but by around 9:30, 10 a.m., the plan is derailed by issues with students’ behaviors. Unfortunately, once the issues begin they continue throughout the day. This prevents me from doing my job as an instructional leader and keeps me out of classrooms,” Foreman told the school board on Monday.

This year, Troup also used grant dollars to promote school sixth-grade teacher Da’Jhon Jett to become the school’s climate and culture specialist and work with the school’s suspension officer and behavior specialist.

He emphasized that Troup’s behavioral incidents have not been caused by the majority of students.

“I am not a proponent of out-of-school suspension, I prefer my students be in school because they are not learning at home,” Foreman added. ​“Unfortunately, keeping students in school is not always the case when the climate of the classroom and building are affected, and when learning is disrupted, then students must be suspended.”

This past school year, Troup had 109 behavioral incidents, compared to 66 the school year before.

Foreman noted another challenge: some students have refused in-school suspension and therefore parents are called and out-of-school suspension is issued.

In addition to this, Foreman said, while a majority of parents are supportive, there are a few outlier parents who do not support the school’s expectations and avoid taking ownership of the students’ actions. ​“Instead, they blamed all of the issues their child or children were having on us.”

Parents have also refused student services like referrals to Clifford Beers, he noted.

“I cannot have students causing the overall climate of the building to deteriorate. Then it becomes a cycle where teachers will stay home as well as students,” Foreman concluded.

NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón emphasized during Monday’s presentation that the district’s new five-year ​“path to excellence” plan will intentionally prioritize improving culture and climate districtwide. She said this past school year the district collected data to find gaps or repetition in services and support positions, and now it can aim to ​“reset” its student behavioral trends.

Whyte noted that student behavior has had impacts on student learning and teacher retention. ​“We know this isn’t easy. We know that there’s frustration in our schools,” Whyte said. ​“It is our outliers. The majority of students do what they need to do. But we do recognize the challenge that the disruptive children create.”

Last school year’s data has informed the district’s next steps, which the team shared will include better informing school communities of the district’s code of conduct to clarify its expectations for behavior and make clear what happens when students don’t meet expectations, remaining rooted in restorative practices to repair harm caused, offering services like summer bridge programs for eighth graders transitioning to ninth grade, and establishing ninth-grade academies at high schools.

“This isn’t about throwing kids away, and at the same time it’s not about excusing behaviors,” Whyte said.

The district also has a multitiered system of support for prevention and intervention, which includes mental health and first aid training for staff and use of a tool called Review 360 to track student behavior early on.

“I want to emphasize that out-of-school suspensions really are our last resort. We really do want the kids to stay in school, in class, in front of teachers, in front of good Tier 1 rigorous instruction,” DeNegre said.

DeNegre said the executive team is in the process of unpacking the district’s most recent culture and climate survey data to better understand student concerns.

Camacho noted that next steps also include offering professional development focused on data entry for administrators and other school staff to improve the district’s data collection going forward.

School board member OrLando Yarborough requested the next report track the incidents caused by repeat students.

The district’s executive team presented a longer version of this report to the board’s teaching and learning committee on July 17. The additional data, which was not included in the full board presentation on Monday, contained school-by-school incident counts. Some of the schools that saw increased incidents in 2023 – 24 compared to the year before included Edgewood, King/Robinson, Hillhouse, Troup, and ESUMS. Schools with declining incident counts were East Rock, Roberto Clemente, High School in the Community, and Career.

More data included in the July report but not presented on Monday covered student arrests from January to June 2024. A total of 52 arrests occurred, according to the data submitted by the police department. Of that total, 30 were juvenile arrests and 22 were of students 18 and older.