Parents and Community,

We are excited to be well on our way into our first semester with a fantastic start to the 2023-2024 school year!  There is nothing better than to hear the laughter once again and to see all of our students learning and making the most out of each day at Ruth McGregor.  As you can imagine we take our educational rigor very serious, however we try to make sure that we are doing it in a fun way in order to make the learning last!

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

A huge initiative that Sand Creek Community Schools kicked off this school year was PBIS!  It stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.  PBIS is a systems framework.  It is not about handing out rewards.    It is about acknowledging and modeling proper behavior.  Our Building Implementation Team (BIT) has been hard at work along with our District Implementation Team (DIT) developing our PBIS kick off.  Each building, both the Elementary and middle/High School has their own PBIS matrix that lays out the expectations for each area of our building. 

One of the big reasons for this implementation is the connection between academics and behavior.  When school wide behavior supports are in place, this leads to increased academic engagement.  Students obviously can act out for a variety of reasons, but when paired with high quality instruction and positive behavior support it leads to more academic success.

Our entire school, staff and students are a part of this PBIS implementation.  It provides a system to help improve skills of everyone as well as to provide consistency in our staff in how we respond to a situation.  This system encourages our school to work together as a team to provide consistent, positive support for our students. 

Behavioral Referrals:

By putting this system in place it does not promise that we will not have inappropriate behavior, however, with this system in place it allows for positive modeling to take place while reinforcing positive social behavior.  All of our elementary students were taught by the people (cafeteria, playground, bus, and classroom teacher) in each area of our building at the beginning of school what the expectations would look like.  These were demonstrated and discussed.  Our hope is that by having these positive supports in place that it will eliminate some of our undesired behavior.  In the event that we need to have a discipline referral it allows the staff to do what is called “staff managed” by documenting and discussing with the child and/or parent with any minor behavior.  If it should get to the point that the behavior continues to escalate from the staff managed behaviors it would become an administrator managed behavior and the same action would take place by working with the student, staff and parents. 

1SC:

At Ruth McGregor Elementary we demonstrate 1SC: 100% Safe, Show Respect, and Choose Responsibility.  It has been wonderful hearing students and staff reminding others if they are being 100% safe, etc.  Our expectations are posted in the hallways, cafeteria, classrooms, bathrooms, etc. for everyone to be reminded.

We are excited and looking forward to an exciting school year with your child!  Thank you for sharing your child with us and as always if you have a question, a concern or something great to share, my office is always open or you can reach me by email: jodie.gilbert@sc-aggies.us or phone: 517-436-3121.

Make this year great,

Jodie Gilbert