Saturday school to replace in-school suspensions at CMS

As detentions and in-school suspensions are having less of an effect on young students, Creston Middle School Principal Lesa Downing has plans to change how the school addresses discipline.

“Once you do 10 to 15 (detentions), the kids are just over it. I’m trying to be more proactive and also looking at different ways to hold them accountable,” Downing said. “One of the things I want to implement this year is intervention Saturday school. Right now we have a lot of in-school suspensions, and our students can’t learn if they’re not in the classroom. We have students right now that don’t care. They would rather sit in in-school suspension, but I think if I do a Saturday, it will have more meaning and more impact.”

At the Creston School Board meeting July 17, the board approved the updates to the Creston Middle School handbook.

Downing will partner with in-school suspension supervisor Karen Stover to make the transition.

“We already pay her to come two to three hours after school to make up detentions,” Downing explained. “It’s going to be the same amount of money.”

Saturday school will be twice a month from 8 a.m. to noon.

“The first part will be helping students get caught up on their work because sometimes the students who get a lot of (office disciplinary referrals) are often the students who are also behind, so we’ll help them catch up,” Downing said. “The second part, we are going to do (social emotional learning) lessons. If we have seven kids in there having trouble being respectful in class, then we’re going to do SEL lessons on how to be respectful. We’re going to talk about that and we’re going to talk about what that looks like.”

For the final part, Downing has partnered with the Creston mayor on opportunities to make a difference in the community.

“The third part is going to be community service,” she said. “I’ve talked to Gabe Carroll, he has some things we can do in the community, or the janitors have given me a list of things we can help them out with.”

Though Downing is hopeful parents will drop off and pick up their children, she would look into checking out a school car to get them.

“I’m really hoping that the parents take it upon themselves to get them there and pick them up at noon,” she said.

If students are unable to attend Saturday school, parents will need to meet with Downing to come up with a suitable consequence.

“We can’t expect students to do better if we don’t teach them better,” Downing said.