Positive Behavior Support – Fontainebleau High School

You may wonder “What is PBS?” Your kids may come home speaking of FISH and Mr. Rogers in a high school. Let me explain to you what Positive Behavior Support (PBS) and the FISH Philosophy are and how they fit into the Fontainebleau High School environment. During the 2004-05 school year, St. Tammany began the implementation of a behavior program that focused on positive reinforcements instead of negative consequences. This was the beginning of PBS in our parish.

Our first goal was to establish a PBS Team. We then adopted some behavioral expectations for FHS, including the FISH Philosophy. This is a philosophy based on a Seattle, Washington fish market that was able to change their employee behavior by adopting some basic principles. These principles are: Be There, Choose Your Attitude, Make Their Day, and Play. From there we began trying to change the atmosphere of FHS.

Our next job was to determine which behaviors we needed to be changed. Fortunately, most of our common behaviors would be considered minor in most schools. We targeted tardies as a behavior we could change and in the last two years we have seen a large decrease in student tardiness. It’s amazing what high school students will do to get a free ice cream! We still have a long way to go, but improvement is obvious.

As we progressed on our PBS quest, we moved on to other behaviors. Last year we implemented a good behavior ticket program. These tickets are given to students that are exhibiting different parts of the FISH Philosophy. Last year between December 2007 and May 2008, we gave out 1000 tickets. This year since August we have given out over 3000 tickets. Our students love the tickets and the prizes they receive from “Mr. Rogers” as he does his monthly drawings. This has been more successful than we could have ever imagined.

No program can be implemented without an assessment. The state goal for PBS is to score an 80% of all of the expected benchmarks. FHS had our first state assessment last year and scored a 75.5%. Not a bad score for a high school in its first evaluation. Our PBS Team then took the recommendations of our state evaluator and made some changes. With a few more signs around school, using the broadcast team as our teaching venue, and the hard work of our teachers and students, we saw immediate progress this year. We scored an 83% on our parish pre-assessment and then we began preparations for the state assessment in December.

After a few tweaks and working around the snow, we surpassed our goal. Fontainebleau High School scored 100% on our most recent state assessment. We are not only PBS proficient, but we also hold the honor of being a demonstration site for other schools to see. In addition, we are the first high school in St. Tammany Parish to be proficient, and may be the only high school in the state to achieve such a score. All credit goes to our wonderful FHS staff and more importantly the fantastic student body of bulldogs. We now look forward to more successes from our Positive Behavior Support Program.