Breakfast Welcomes NHS Students With Perfect Attendance

By Eliza Hallabeck

Newtown High School Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) team members waited in the school’s lobby on Friday, November 19, for the first of three mornings that greeted students with perfect attendance during the first quarter of the school year.

“The purpose of the PBIS team is to promote positive student and staff behaviors while improving academic outcomes,” said NHS psychologist Jennifer Hoag. “Our stated PBIS goal is to decrease student class cuts by 50 percent over the next two academic years.”

According to Ms Hoag, the breakfasts are just one of the PBIS team’s initiatives. PBIS is a national initiative established by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education to give schools capacity-building information and technical assistance for identifying, adapting, and sustaining effective schoolwide disciplinary practices, according to the PBIS website.

The PBIS team at Newtown High School — school psychologist Tom Brant, physical education teacher Matt Childs, Assistant Principal Scott Clayton, science teacher Trent Harrison, school counselor Bret Nichols, art teacher Carol Skolas, school social worker Suzanne Tyler, special education teacher Lisa Reichin, and Ms Hoag — have been working to raise funds to support the PBIS initiative. Breakfast for the 317 students with perfect attendance was served thanks to money raised from selling blue water bottles with the NHS PBIS logo.

Designed over the summer and painted in three different locations as murals in the school to help provide a positive reinforcement for students, the PBIS team’s acrostic spells out “HAWKS” for “Have respect, Act responsibly, Work with honesty and integrity, Keep high expectations, and Support the community.”

The $8 blue water bottles are on sale at the school, and will be sold during the high school’s Thanksgiving Football Game on Wednesday, November 24, according to Ms Hoag.

For each quarter students have perfect attendance, they will have their names entered into a raffle at the end of the year for a prize that will be unveiled at that time, according to Ms Hoag.