Officials from Sampson County Schools are currently working on implementing a support system to better serve students in the future.
During a recent meeting, the Sampson County Board of Education received an overview of the Multi-System of Support (MTSS). Col. Tommy Macon, assistant superintendent for academics and student services, said the system will be focused on improving academics and behavior. Kathy Mason, instructional coach, and Dondi Hobbs, elementary instructional coach, are leading the endeavor.
“It’s not a process for struggling students to go through and MTSS is not another alternative to our referral system for exceptional children,” Hobbs said. “It’s a framework that we go through in understanding our data and tackling various problems that we see as a district in instruction or behavioral problems as well.”
According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, MTSS is a multi-tiered framework which promotes school involvement through engaging, research-based academics and behavioral practices. The goal is to have every public education system implement and sustain all components of the system to help prepare students for college and career opportunities.
The critical components of the system include leadership; data-based problem solving; data evaluation; instruction and intervention; building capacity and infrastructure for implementation; and communication and collaboration.
“It’s a system approach, meaning that from the district level, school level, to the classroom level, we’re applying this data processing approach,” Hobbs said. “What we see in our data as weaknesses, we’ll try to tackle it using the problem solving process.”
In the past, the district used the Response to Instruction, which addresses the academic weaknesses of students. The Positive Behavior Intervention System of Support was also used to help students with their conduct.
“With Multi-System of Support, we’re marrying these two initiatives together,” she said. “Both of these thread together as a problem solving model.”
Macon noted training will take place over a three-year time span, before it’s fully implemented. Every school in the district will have the framework in place.