Local school officials say a program now in use in Pitt County could provide a blueprint for developing an alternative to traditional out-of-school suspensions in the Edenton-Chowan Schools.
Virginia Jones, Edenton-Chowan Schools director of special populations, and Joy Harvill, executive director of the Edenton Educational Foundation, presented an overview of the Bridges Program now in use in the Pitt County Schools at the local school board’s Feb. 7 meeting.
According to Jones and Harvill, the Bridges Program is a partnership between the Pitt school district and a faith-based organization that provides an alternative to unsupervised out-of-school suspension. The program’s goal, they said, is to prevent the time a student spends suspended from the classroom from becoming nothing more than an unproductive break from school.
Jones said traditional out-of-school suspensions usually last from one to three days for students suspended for the first time, while second and third suspensions can last for longer periods.
School principals issue out-of-school suspensions for infractions like fighting and other extreme misbehaviors they believe can’t be addressed by other means. The challenge, according to Jones, is to make the time the student spends away from school both productive and behavior-changing.
That’s where a program like Bridges can help, she said.
“We really hope to reach students who get caught up in bad decisions, who end up with an out-of-school suspension,” Jones said. “We’re hoping to offer them the chance to go somewhere to complete their school work and have some restorative conversations with some adults to help them.
“They can debrief and think about what happened, why it happened, and what could have been done differently,” Jones continued. “It’s really our hope that that kind of student would come in and then return to the school, not having that sort of behavior again, then going on with their year.”
Jones said a Bridges program in Edenton-Chowan would serve middle and high school students suspended for the first time. The objective would be to provide an environment that prevents a student from repeating the same behavior in the future.
A similar program, Hope Academy, serves students who repeatedly demonstrate unacceptable behavior. Jones said her recommendation would be to establish a program that was more interventionist, flagging students at risk of being suspended before their behaviors become repetitive.
Greenville’s Bridges program serves students facing first-time suspension in grades 1-8, but Jones said she sees a need in Edenton-Chowan for a program serving middle and high school students.
The Bridges program uses volunteers and one paid certified teacher who works with the children on school work, counsels them on ways to avoid repeating the behavior, and ensures the time spent is productive. The Pitt County program costs about $55,000 per year to operate. Transportation is not provided, and students are required to keep up with their classwork while at Bridges. Parents may opt into the program or not.
Jones said she and Harvill were just presenting the Bridges program as an idea for the school board’s consideration. School officials have discussed how student behavior has taken a step backward since the resumption of in-person classes following the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of the epidemic, student referrals to the principal’s office jumped 76% for the 2022-23 school year.
The next step, Jones said, is more research into other similar plans and how they are administered and funded.
“As we go into the next year having more conversations between us and the community, we can determine where community resources or organizations might be interested in running something like this. Then we can work out the logistics,” she said.
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