PHS PRIDE
Palatka High School Dean Jana Wilhite holds a list of suggestions for improving behavior at the high school. PHS teachers and students collaborated on the list at the beginning of this school year.
Life at Palatka High School is getting better every day with the PRIDE program in full swing at the district’s largest school. PHS Dean of Students Jana Wilhite said incentives for good student behavior have greatly improved the high school. “We have all kinds of things going on to reward students,” Wilhite said. “The students are much happier and we are having a lot fewer issues. There were so many years we focused on the negative. Now, the kids are responding to positive change.”
One change this year is Palatka High’s “cell phone lunch.” If students as a whole adhere to conduct expectations, they are allowed to use cell phones, iPods and MP3 players at lunch. “Before we started that, we were going two or three times a day to classrooms for reports of students using cell phones,” Wilhite said. “Now we are going about once every two weeks.” Lunch is also longer this year – 50 minutes up from last year’s 30 minutes, which Wilhite said gives teachers a little extra time to eat and write lesson plans.
PRIDE stands for: Prepared, Respectful, Involved, Disciplined and Enthusiastic. It is part of a series of new programs implemented by Superintendent Tom Townsend to improve conduct and increase academic achievement at every county school. “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Townsend said. “But it is clear these programs are working, judging not just by the data, but, more importantly, by students telling us things are better.” PHS Principal Deborah Decubellis, in her first year at the high school, said PRIDE is helping move PHS to the elite status she envisions. “We are at the point where 99.9 percent of our students are doing the things we want them to do,” Decubellis said. “That is a big improvement. We are doing it one Panther at a time – a friend turns around a friend, and it progresses from there. It is going to take collaboration from all stakeholders – students, parents, teachers, staff and the community. And we are going to get there.” PHS holds student drawings for prizes including concert tickets. And once a week, a “Top Cat” at each grade level wins prizes including a T-shirt and a reserved parking pass. Wilhite said a 4-minute interval between classes recently reverted to 5 minutes when students said they were having trouble making it to their next class before the bell. “We are really interested in our students’ input,” she said. “When we see something not working, we’re going to listen and make changes where appropriate.”
