Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports

Fruitport Community Schools is dedicated to removing any social or emotional barrier in the way of students achieving their full potential in both school and life.  To do this, we have developed a wide array of programs and supports designed to help students know success and reward in school. FCS has spent the past several years developing teams in each of our buildings in order to effectively implement School Wide  Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). PBIS is an evidence-based tiered framework that details the behavioral expectations, interventions, and supports students need in order to learn appropriate school behaviors. Teams use building-wide and individual student data to make decisions regarding each level of the system and to ensure supports are focused on the present need. 

Tier I expectations, interventions, and supports are intended for the entire student body. Examples of Tier I support include the intentional building of student-teacher relationships, the teaching of clearly defined school-wide and classroom expectations and associated consequences, etc.  

Some students have needs that go beyond the scope of building-wide/classroom expectations and need additional supports and interventions.  These are considered Tier II students. Examples of Tier II supports could include Mentoring, Check-In/Check-Out, social skills groups, Meaningful Work, etc.  

Students with the most extreme needs who are not successful with Tier II level of support require more intensive, individualized behavior plans and interventions. Tier III work focuses on collaboration with outside agencies, families, and school staff to design support plans tailored to meet these students’ needs. 

It is important to note that each level of support builds on, rather than supplants, previous levels. In other words, students receiving Tier III support are also receiving Tier I and Tier II supports.

Teams from each building, as well as the district administration, use a variety of data sources to gather input from parents, staff, and students surrounding PBIS practices and implementation. This data is then used for decision making at the building and administrative levels of FCS in order to continually improve our practices and student outcomes. 

One of the assessments used by building teams is the Tiered Fidelity Inventory (TFI). The purpose of the TFI is to provide a valid, reliable, and efficient measure of the extent to which school personnel are applying the core features of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (www.pbis.org › resource › tfi). Teams then use these results to highlight areas for improvement and action plan around those areas. It is the goal of Fruitport Community Schools that each building continue to improve on practices and reach full implementation of PBIS. 

Please see the following links regarding PBIS in our building including the latest TFI results. If you have any questions or would like to be a part of the PBIS team for your child’s building, please contact the building administrator.