John Small Elementary School employees are working as a team to promote good behavior in students, not only for school purposes but also as a lifelong tool for success.

Ginny Batts, an exceptional children’s (EC) teacher at John Small Elementary, said the whole school has worked to implement the Positive Behavior Intervention System, in which students are rewarded for good behavior, thus creating incentives and reducing discipline problems.

“Every teacher is working with every child in every class,” she said. “It’s not always easy to get every child to do what they need to do.”

As part of the PBIS process, teachers were divided into teams, and each team follows a $100 budget to come up with a new prize or event that will act as an incentive for good behavior, Batts said.

She said student conduct is tracked with points on a behavior log, and the students need to earn a certain amount of points to be able to participate in the reward.

“It’s not as easy as it seems to be,” Batts said. “They are working each day.”

One of the main events that is part of the PBIS rewards system is a Fall Ball, which was first organized in 2014. If a child earns enough points for good behavior, then he or she can dress up — last year the dress code was book character costumes — and attend the event that features food and fun, Batts said.

“The whole thing was to have students earn their way to an incentive,” she said. “The kids really enjoyed it.”

“They had to earn so many points on their behavior log to do it. … Everybody did not get to go, which was not great,” Batts said.

She said those organizing the Fall Ball this year, which will be on Oct. 23, are still looking for a sponsor to cover the costs. Last year they received a $4,000 grant from Lee Chevrolet in Washington.

Batts said the goal is to make each reward bigger and better than the last and encourage students to strive to think about their actions, in school now and in the future.

As for the long term, the school is hoping the new system will help improve students’ overall success and test scores, as John Small Elementary showed slight improvement in the 2014-2015 school year on their school performance grade but still did not meet its expected growth.