School Climate Improvement Planning Guide
The School Climate Improvement Planning Guide (Planning Guide) is intended to be used by schools or districts to create a comprehensive school climate effort. The Planning Guide is based on the five activity sets as defined by the U.S. Department of Education’s Quick Guide on Making School Climate Improvements (Quick Guide), which is part of the School Climate Improvement Resource Package (SCIRP) and the U.S. Department of Education’s School Climate Surveys (EDSCLS). As you work through developing plans within each activity set, we recommend that you reference the Quick Guide, which provides the dos and don’ts along the way. You can use these as a guidepost as you create your plans. Throughout the Planning Guide, we will offer recommendations on which sections you may want to complete for each workgroup session (see the School Climate Workgroup Outline document for an overview of each session). It also may be helpful to take the SCIRP self-assessment to identify what activity sets you should focus on.
District Name:
School Name:
Climate Workgroup Lead:
Climate Workgroup Members:
Activity Set 1: Planning for School Climate Improvement
Effective planning is essential to maximize the impact of your school climate improvements, ensure efficient resource use, and enhance the likelihood that your efforts will have a lasting effect. Planning can help you identify the supports and infrastructure (e.g., resources, knowledge, systems) needed to implement and sustain your school climate improvements. Use your notes from Session 3 in your School Climate Workgroup Outline document and SCIRP Module 1 from EDSCLS to complete the sections below.
Key decisions as you plan your school climate improvement efforts
1. How do you define school climate? What model of school climate do you use (for example, you may want to consider the Office of Safe and Healthy Students model of school climate)?
2. What is your vision of school climate in your school or district?
3. What supports and infrastructure do you need to implement your school climate improvements?
Key actions as you plan your school climate improvement efforts
How do your school climate improvement efforts connect to other existing school or district school improvement activities? The efforts listed under School Climate-Related Initiative Activities That Support Goals below are only a sample of other efforts that your school may be engaging in that relate to, but are not specific to your school climate practices. You will identify your current school climate practices during Activity Set 4. Furthermore, it is not expected that your school engage in all of the efforts listed below.
School Climate-Related Initiative Activities That Support Goals / How does the current activity relate to school climate? /SEL Programs
Discipline
Anti-Bullying
Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)
Professional Development
Curriculum and Instruction
School Improvement Activities
Afterschool Programs
Mental Health Supports
Other (______)
Activity Set 2: Engaging Stakeholders
Engaging administrators, teachers, students, district staff, parents or guardians, and community partners can help you enhance response rates and the quality of responses, which can help you better identify stakeholder needs and concerns. Engaging stakeholders includes informing all members of your school community about school climate improvements as well as obtaining stakeholder input and feedback on the effort. This process is more effective when stakeholders receive necessary training and support (e.g., professional development), when communication strategies maximize access to information, and when school climate efforts are connected with other efforts in which the stakeholders are involved, such as positive behavioral interventions and supports, trauma-sensitive approaches, efforts to reduce racial disparities, and social and emotional learning. Use your notes from Session 3 in your School Climate Workgroup Outline document, SCIRP Module 1 and SCIRP Module 2 from EDSCLS to complete the sections below; however, it is important to note that engaging stakeholders occurs throughout each activity set in the school climate improvement process.
Key decisions as you engage stakeholders in your school climate improvement efforts
1. What are your key messages about your school climate improvement efforts that you would like to communicate to stakeholders? You may wish to reference SCIRP Module 1 and SCIRP Module 2 from EDSCLS to support developing key messages.
Key actions as you collect and report school climate data
1. How do you plan to communicate and engage your stakeholders (e.g., administrators, teachers, students, district staff, parents or guardians, and community partners?) into the school climate improvement efforts process (e.g., communicating results of the data, engaging in the evidence-based programs, etc.)? Use information from SCIRP Module 1, SCIRP Module 2, and SCIRP Module 5 from EDSCLS to support your planning process. Note that in Activity Set 3, you will create a plan specifically to communicate your school climate data to stakeholders.
Communication and Engagement Strategies(e.g., roles and responsibilities within climate efforts; obtaining feedback and input; communicating about school climate vision, importance of school climate, and school improvement efforts) / Format for Communicating and Engaging With Stakeholders
(e.g., in-person meetings, family or community events, presentation with slides or infographics, written report, etc) / Timeline to Complete / Person Responsible
Activity Set 3: Collecting and Reporting School Climate Data
Data collection furnishes evidence of how your stakeholders perceive the school climate. This set of activities provides you with strategies on how to collect, analyze, and report your school climate data. The results of your data collection and analysis can guide your action plans to improve the climate in your school as well as support your assessment of the effects of your efforts to improve school climate. The results also can inform other efforts that relate to school climate, such as bullying prevention and positive behavioral interventions and supports. This work aligns with Sessions 4 through 7 in your School Climate Workgroup Outline document.
Key decisions as you collect and report school climate data
1. What types of school climate data did you collect and review? Use your notes from Session 3, SCIRP Module 1 and SCIRP Module 3 from EDSCLS to complete this question.
School Climate Survey Data (e.g., student and staff perception surveys) / Administrative Data (e.g., discipline, attendance data) / Qualitative Data (e.g., parent focus groups)2. How often do you plan on collecting your school climate data in the future?
Key actions as you collect and report school climate data
Identifying your major themes
Based on the data interpretation session, Session 4, you had with your school team in February, look back to your notes in the climate data protocol under Step 5. Interpreting Major Themes and record your key takeaways here. First record your major themes, and then record some of the reflective conversation you had about your major themes. There are two sets of planning templates below to record your thinking.
1. Identify your major themes after your review of school climate data. After you identify your major themes, determine whether each major theme is a strength, an area of improvement, or a priority area. When deciding a priority area, we recommend suggesting one priority that will take more intensive work and one priority area that is a low-hanging fruit with which you will have more immediate successes. You will use your identified priority areas as you move into Activity Set 4.
Major Theme / Strength (Y/N) / Area of Improvement (Y/N) / Priority Area(Y/N)
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b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Interpreting your major themes
2. Reflect back on the thinking your team did during the data interpretation session, Session 4, and record some of your key takeaways here. Use SCIRP Module 3 and SCIRP Module 4 from EDSCLS as well as the SCIRP School Climate Data Interpretation Resource to help support your thinking about interpreting school climate data.
Focus Question / Notes and Additional PromptsHow do the different data sets and stakeholder perspectives converge and diverge from one another? / Converge:
Diverge:
What do these data tell us about the climate of the school? Strengths? Areas of improvement? / Strengths:
Areas of improvement:
Considering the root causes or reasons for your priority area from your major themes (e.g., your most significant climate challenges and strengths)
3. Now that you’ve spent some time identifying the key strengths and challenges related to climate in your school, reflect with your team to consider why you are experiencing these challenges. When you design strategies, policies, or professional development to address your challenges, you’ll want to make sure these action steps or plans address the real root cause of the challenge. If your strategies don’t align with the real reasons or root causes of your challenges, you may not get the desired results you intended. Reflect below on the perceived root causes or reasons for your climate strengths and challenges. To identify perceived root causes, we encourage you to explore through qualitative data (e.g., interviews and focus groups) so that you are not guessing. Thus, it is important to collect additional data in between your work sessions. Complete this activity during Sessions 5 and 6 from your School Climate Workgroup Outline document.
Identified Priority Area From Your Major Themes / Perceived Root Cause or Reason for This ChallengeCurrent Strengths that Might be Built Upon as You Address Your Priority Area(s): / Perceived Root Cause or Reason for This Strength
Long-term school climate goal
4. Based on your priority areas from your major themes, identify your long-term school climate goal.
Communicating results to stakeholders
5. How do you plan to communicate to your stakeholders in understanding the results of the school climate data and obtain their feedback? As you do this, think about the format (e.g., reports, memos, infographics, findings, and major themes) that will best communicate the results. Complete this activity during Sessions 5 and 6 from your School Climate Workgroup Outline document, and use SCIRP Module 5 from EDSCLS to identify ways in which to communicate results to your stakeholders.
Information to Be Communicated(e.g., key findings or major themes) / Format for Communicating With Stakeholders
(e.g., presentation with slides or infographics, written report, etc.) / Timeline to Complete / Person Responsible
Activity Set 4: Choosing and Implementing School Climate Interventions
The fourth set of activities—choosing and implementing school climate interventions—provides strategies to implement school climate interventions. Interventions include specific practices with defined activities, policies, and initiatives; broad strategies, approaches, and best practices; as well as evidence-based programs and those with promising evidence. It is important to select interventions that meet your needs and that you can implement in your district. It also is important to provide the necessary supports to ensure successful implementation.
AIR specialists will provide teams with resources to review and interpret to support selecting strategies to address your climate challenges. You’ll want to make sure that the strategies you select for implementation really address the perceived reasons or root causes for your climate challenges that you recorded in Activity Set 3. You will complete this work in Sessions 6, 7, and 8 from your School Climate Workgroup Outline document.
Key decisions as you choose and implement school climate interventions
1. Prior to selecting new evidence-based interventions and strategies to use, it is important to take stock in what you are currently doing, identify how they are currently working and how they relate to your strengths and priority areas. This will help you decide whether you need to keep current efforts, modify them, stop doing them, or add additional efforts. You began to identify other school improvement efforts that are not directly school climate practices, but relate to school climate during Activity Set 1. There may be some practices that you decided upon there that also fit in this table; however, that might not be the case.
How Do Your Current School Climate Efforts Align With:Current School Climate Efforts (e.g., policies, practices, PD, or other resources) / How are they working? / Your Strengths / Root Causes of Your Challenges / Keep, Modify, or Stop Current Effort
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
2. Based on the table, identify the priority areas in which you need to continue to develop your knowledge and implement new strategies.
3. Now that you have decided which strategies you are currently working on that work and that do not work, it will be important to identify any new knowledge that you and your team would like to learn, implementation strategies to support your priority areas, and the identification of next steps to implement your chosen strategies. Prior to choosing any new implementation strategies, we suggest you review evidence-based registries to identify those interventions that research has shown to be effective with your population of students. Potential registries include the What Works Clearinghouse from ED; youth.gov from the U.S. government; National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development from the University of Colorado–Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence; the Model Programs Guide from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Guides for elementary, middle, and high school social and emotional learning programs. Use SCIRP Module 6 from EDSCLS to provide additional guidance as you identify evidence-based programs.
How Do These Proposed NEW School Climate Efforts Align With:Proposed NEW School Climate Efforts
(e.g., policies, practices, trainings, or other resources) / Are these new efforts feasible or practical for implementation? / Your Strengths / Your Root Causes of Your Challenges
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b.
c.
d.
e.
Key actions as you choose and implement school climate interventions
Your key actions in choosing and implementing your school climate practices consist of three steps (1) deciding the additional knowledge you need to obtain to implement the strategy effectively; (2) identify the action steps to implement the strategies; and (3) determine ways to communicate and engage stakeholders about the chosen school climate strategies.
1. Prior to identifying the action steps to implement your chosen school climate improvement strategies, make sure that you conduct a literature review on the strategies to ensure that the intervention meets the needs of your students and staff; that you understand the most effective, research-based implementation strategies within the intervention; and that you understand the common pitfalls that occur during implementation.