District presents annual student conduct report; administrators point to concentrated referrals and new interventions

Rice Lake Area School District administrators presented the board's annual report on student conduct and discipline under Board Policy 4.42 at the July 14 meeting, saying most students have zero or one major incident while a small subset accounts for a disproportionate share of office referrals.

"So they accounted for over 2,500 of them, or they're about 48% of all of our referrals," said an elementary-level presenter (Unidentified Presenter S12) describing the district's top-20 students statistic and the district's effort to use data to target interventions.

Presenters across elementary, middle and high school levels outlined common definitions for "majors" (office-managed incidents) and "minors" (teacher-managed incidents), and described the district's tiered response: monthly Tier 1 and Tier 2 meetings, individualized behavior plans, social/academic intervention groups (SEG groups), mentoring, and mentoring or adult mentors. The elementary presenters noted separate behavior incident reporting for 4K students, and the middle-school representative explained that minors are typically managed by classroom teachers while repeated minors can escalate to majors.

At the high school, administrators said classroom incidents (excluding unexcused absences or truancy) totaled roughly 977 last year and that the two highest referral categories were cell-phone use and sleeping in class. "Our two highest referrals last year were cell phone use and sleeping in class," the high-school presenter (Unidentified High School Administrator S9) said, and noted plans for a back-to-school letter to parents stressing expectations around sleep and phone use.

Administrators described staff training strategies (PBIS, restorative practices, behavior academies) and tools for consistent reporting (EduCLIMBER and Skyward). They emphasized that better documentation helps identify patterns (time of day, particular class periods, or specific students) and guide targeted support — for example, check-in/check-out sheets, individualized goals, or referral to special education services where appropriate. The presenters said campus safety officers (SROs) assist when off-campus or harassment incidents meet thresholds for police intervention.

Trustees asked about teacher workload and whether restorative and PBIS approaches scale to students who are not receptive; administrators acknowledged escalation options, including suspensions or off-campus placement in extreme cases, and said they are balancing restorative work with necessary consequences.

Next steps include continued professional development for staff, further implementation of behavior academies, targeted parent communications at the high school, ongoing data reviews at building level, and continued refinement of documentation practices.