Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS)

Connections to the Promise of Excellence:

PUSD’s strategic plan, the Promise of Excellence, outlines four focus areas to ensure success: Talent Development, Student Success, Community Partnerships, and a Culture of Excellence. PBIS is designed specifically to support student success, connect with families and the community, and is committed to ongoing Professional Learning to build staff capacity as well as talent development in order to create a distinguished culture of excellence within the Pomona Unified School District. The support systems within the tiered framework of PBIS ensure that communities of practice are put in place, comprehensive, monitored, and evaluated to determine the fidelity of tiered implementation. After all our commitment is “Equity and Excellence for every student in every classroom, every day.”

–Education Services, PUSD

Why should the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework exist in schools within PUSD?

In the past, school-wide discipline has focused mainly on reacting to specific student misbehavior by implementing punishment-based strategies including reprimands, loss of privileges, office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions. Research has shown that the implementation of punishment, especially when it is used inconsistently and in the absence of other positive strategies, is ineffective. Introducing school-wide PBIS that embeds an instructional component, modeling, and reinforcing positive social behavior is an important step of a student’s educational experience. Teaching behavioral expectations and reinforcing students positively for following them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehavior to occur before responding.

-OSEP Technical Assistance Center