Wichita Public Schools program enlists students to resolve conflicts between peers
When a series of arguments between 7th grade boys at Coleman Environmental Magnet School last fall left one student “so furious that he wanted to punch this kid,” USD 259 behavior specialist Laura Almquist-Parks said, it wasn’t detention, suspension or expulsion that brought about a peaceful resolution: it was other students and facilitators of a Wichita Public Schools program that recruits kids in the district to help their peers resolve conflicts through discussion.
“The Peacekeeper Program, I believe, has really … become part of our culture of how we deal with conflict,” Almquist-Parks said. “My peacekeeper team then followed up with these boys a couple of weeks later, and we were really excited to have both of them tell us, ‘Yeah, we’re cool now; We’re actually friends,’ which they had not been before.”
Almquist-Parks, counselors and leadership with Wichita Public Schools held a press conference for media Wednesday to share more information about its Peacekeeper Program, an initiative at Coleman, Truesdell, Hamilton, Curtis, Pleasant Valley and Wells middle schools where students in a peacekeeper class learn peer-to-peer approaches to restore relationships and be appropriately reactive to conflict. In the case of the bickering 7th grade boys at Coleman, that took the form of student peacekeepers asking each boy a series of questions about what happened, why, and the outcomes of their behavior.
“Most importantly, they were able to talk to the boys about their ideas of how to solve this conflict, … (and the boys) acknowledged on their own will what they had done that had contributed to the problem, but then they were also able to hear from the other one about how their actions had affected them,” Almquist-Parks said. “The boys get to have a voice, all of our kids get to have a voice. They get to be heard, and they get to listen to the other students.”
The program is not a substitute for discipline, and is instead used to address lower-tier behaviors, officials with the district said, such as moderate classroom disruptions, bullying, inappropriate language and horseplay. The district’s update on the program comes after several district teachers and United Teachers of Wichita members shared their concerns and frustrations at Monday evening’s school board meeting about the district’s failure to adequately discipline students, resulting in volatile situations for students and staff, as well as faculty turnovers, speakers said.
“For the last few years, teachers and staff at your schools have dealt with a toothless code of conduct that did not include any meaningful ways to address disorderly conduct, obscene behavior, or social disruption,” Arthur Stewart, a district parent and Truesdell Middle School teacher, said.
Truesdell is one of the schools where the Peacekeeper Program has been introduced. “The absence of meaningful consequences for disrupting the learning environment, for practicing obscene behavior, for dehumanizing conduct, for consistent malfeasance, and for the overt destruction of community norms and its property is not only an invitation for students to continue to do these practices, but a license also to do so more boldly.”
District Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld acknowledged Wednesday that the Peacekeeper Program has its limitations, but said that numbers regarding teacher turnover are “trending in a good way” this year, and the district is continuing to look at solutions for situations that influence misconduct.
“Good teachers leaving the profession — there is some truth to that, but I do feel this is … multi-function,” Bielefeld said. “This is not going to be the one thing that solves the problem for everyone, there is no one thing that solves dysregulated students; there’s screen time impacts, there’s other community factors, there’s students experiencing homelessness, there’s all sorts of factors that come into play and challenge managing a classroom.”
To address the issues created by those factors, Bielefeld said, the district started introducing restorative practices — proactive efforts to repair harm and build relationships — more than a decade ago. But after the COVID-19 pandemic, the emphasis on restorative practices expanded district-wide, leading to the implementation of the Peacekeeper Program at select middle schools.
“Why is the time now to double down? We want, number one, to ensure that the investment we made continues,” Bielefeld said. “Too many times in education, we’ll try something for a few years and then something will change and it’ll go away, and I did not want that to happen. I wanted this investment to see long term fruit.”
It also comes two years after Wichita Public Schools and The U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement after an investigation uncovered race and disability discrimination in the district’s disciplinary practices. Bielefeld said the Peacekeeper Program can help mitigate situations that previously would’ve warranted more serious disciplinary action and subsequently help prevent inequities from arising.
In the case of the two 7th grade students, “that could have turned into an office referral, an out of school suspension, something like that,” Bielefeld said.
“Because we were proactive, because we had assistance in place with the Peacekeeper Program, we were able to avoid that,” he said. “So I would hope parents see this as a really strong positive, as a way that the industry is working … for really supporting kids at the kid level, supporting students at the student level.”
“(Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan) says a lot in public that we can’t arrest our way to a safer community, and the same is true of a school district; we can’t suspend our way to safer schools. We’ve got to change students in a different way so that they never get to that point.”
With the board of education’s support, Bielefeld said, the district is working to expand already-implemented restorative practices and introduce the program to other district schools; Assistant Superintendent Michele Ingenthron will transition to a new role in order to help do so. But the program and the constructive dialogue it’s brought about and the skills students have gained have already made a tangible difference at schools like Coleman, and shows promising signs of continuing to do so, Bielefeld said.
“I have found in my 20 plus years as an administrator and 13 as a principal that those conversations really impact student behavior in a lot of ways that just consequences don’t,” he said. “That’s really what our goal is as a school district, is this becomes a part of the culture of Wichita Public Schools, that we are restorative in nature, that 80% of what we do is being proactive with students and families and with one another, and that if we do cause harm, we can stop it as quickly as we can.”
