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Geyser Middle School credits restorative practices and community commitments for lower exclusions and higher belonging
Summary
Geyser Middle School staff told the board their Tier 1 community commitments, restorative coaching and homeroom lessons coincided with a rise in belonging (36% to 51%) and reductions in exclusion days and tardies; staff described reentry meetings, TST teacher supports and student affinity groups.
Esteban Delgado, principal at Geyser Middle School, told the board the school’s sense-of-belonging metric rose from 36% to 51% after implementing Tier 1 community commitments, homeroom lessons and expanded family and counselor supports.
District presenters explained two discipline metrics: exclusion risk (percentage of students experiencing any exclusion) and exclusion days per 100 students (severity/duration measure). At the district level, staff pointed to quarter‑to‑quarter improvements for some groups (example: Black/African American exclusion days per 100 dropped from 16.6 to 8.9 for Q1 year-over-year). Geyser staff described restorative options, incident reporting and reentry meetings as core to reducing both the frequency and length of exclusions.
Max Wise, Geyser’s restorative justice coach, described recurring homeroom lessons and a hidden-bias protocol that reached about 95% of students in a targeted lesson and helped students and staff adopt shared language for restorative conversations. Catherine Howard and Jennifer Holm outlined a Tuesday teacher-support table (TST) and the school’s practice of responding promptly to student incident reports to restore trust.
Esteban Delgado said the changes led to visible culture shifts — fewer tardies, fewer lunch detentions and more students reporting they want to be in class.
“Our kids like to be here. Our kids want to be here,” Delgado said when describing the changes at Geyser.
Staff recommended continuing restorative training, sustaining TST capacity and sharing the Geyser model with other schools.
