Planning Center Mission Statement--The Jamestown Middle School Planning Centers are comfortable environments where students can develop positive relationships to help them gain classroom skills, learning strategies & emotional skills to use in their everyday life & help them become positive members of our community.

Washington Middle School has a caring place for students to have a listening ear and the help of a compassionate adult – their planning center, which has been operational for three years. Paraprofessional Kim Rizzo works with Washington students in the planning center, which is a proactive setting designed to help students problem-solve, develop appropriate school and classroom behaviors, and reduce the need for removal from the classroom.

Washington Middle School’s Planning Center is part of the school’s PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) giving extra support to individual students based on their specific needs. For example, a student may transfer into the school and have difficulty adjusting or another student might need some time to talk to someone after a behavior concern. Students might just need to catch up on
schoolwork.

Planning centers are not a place to send students as punishment; they are not in-school suspension rooms. They are not long-terms placements. The length of time can vary from minutes, to hours or as long as it takes to get the student back to class. It all depends on what the student needs help in to make them successful in school.

Using Planning Centers helps students learn new skills on how to deal with their social emotional issues, keeps classrooms undisturbed and increase instructional time, changes school’s mindset from punishment to helping to change behavior, decreases the number of suspensions, improves grades and attendance, and helps students transition back into school.