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Welcome to The Principal’s Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I’m Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we’ll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.

Hey everyone. Welcome to The Principal’s Handbook. Today I’m going through my five-step behavior blueprint with you to help you reclaim your time and reduce office referrals. This is a freebie you can download—I’ll put a link in the show notes. This tool is great for reducing office referrals.

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As a principal, I had the opportunity to see my office referrals go from 340 in a school year to 180. That was pretty significant. We were able to do that right before COVID by reducing behaviors, and we were really excited with the progress from implementing different strategies.

Having office referrals all day is super stressful and takes up a lot of your time. When I talk to principals about being better instructional leaders or getting into classrooms more, it really comes down to this: if you’re constantly dealing with behaviors and putting out fires, it’s really hard to focus on instructional leadership.

My goal is to help principals have more time, and a huge part of that is reducing office referrals. So today, I’ll share five tips with you. Like I said, I encourage you to download the blueprint because I include amazing resources with each tip for you to implement in your building.

Okay, let’s dive into each tip, and I’ll share how I used these in my building.

Step 1: Track Office Behaviors
As I mentioned, I started with 340 behaviors and began tracking them when I was an assistant principal before becoming principal. The principal I worked with was starting to implement PBIS, and we knew that to know if PBIS was effective, we needed data.

We tracked how many kids came to the office, who they were, why they were sent, when incidents occurred, where, what caused them, and what discipline was given.

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We created a tracking system. A good one is PBIS Apps’ Swiss. We used it when I was a teacher, but our district wouldn’t buy it for just one building. So we created a Google form that worked really well. The benefit was being able to modify it each year.

My assistants and I would copy the form each year and tweak what we tracked. Over time, we improved what we measured. In the behavior blueprint, I include a Google form you can copy to create your own.

Having that data was great for parent conversations and official purposes. For example, if a parent needed data for doctors, or if I had to suspend a student, I could quickly provide accurate data from the spreadsheet.

It also helped us see patterns and trends. Behavior data is the first step to solving problems and reducing behaviors because you can take it to your PBIS team or staff meeting and collaboratively find solutions.

Step 2: Utilize Your Behavior Team
I had a PBIS team with tier one and tier two groups. It doesn’t have to be PBIS specifically—any behavior or leadership team will work.

Our team had representatives from all grade levels. We reviewed the data, saw what was happening, and decided what school-wide tier one strategies we needed to reduce office behaviors.

Having teachers involved was helpful—it gave me buy-in and brought better solutions since they lived the day-to-day reality.

When choosing your team, pick teachers strong in discipline—those who model routines and procedures well and can teach each other.

We even sent some teachers to local tier one classroom behavior trainings.

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Ensuring teachers are teaching and modeling expectations is crucial. If many behaviors come from classrooms, the problem lies there and needs fixing. If behaviors come from recess or lunch, that’s a different issue.

In the blueprint, I include a copy-paste email template to invite teachers to your team and a meeting agenda based on what I used.

Step 3: Create a Behavior Matrix
This took some time with staff but was very helpful. Teachers often asked, “How do I know if I should send a student to the office? Is this classroom-managed or office-managed?”

We created a matrix to clarify this.

We realized it depends on grade level. In kindergarten, a lot of modeling and reteaching is needed, especially early on. Kindergarteners are learning school behavior, language, and how to solve conflicts—hitting is common because they don’t have words yet.

This differs greatly from fifth grade.

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When creating your matrix, be as clear as possible but accept some gray areas.

I told staff that with threats, if unsure, send the student to the office unless it’s a vague “I’m so mad” threat.

You want to avoid a situation where a student threatens another and it’s never addressed by administration.

These conversations help teachers feel comfortable sending students when appropriate without thinking it means they’re bad teachers or can’t manage their classroom.

Sometimes teachers send students too often without thinking, so finding balance is key.

The blueprint includes an editable behavior matrix tool—a Google Doc and PDF version with examples.

Step 4: Empower Teachers to Call Parents
This is important to reduce office behaviors because many teachers don’t call parents as often as they should.

I was one of them early in my teaching career—I hated tough conversations and avoided making parents mad.

But this misses opportunities to build relationships and intervene before escalation.

I encourage you to empower teachers to call parents before you do.

If I ever called a parent before the teacher, the parent was usually upset that the teacher hadn’t called first.

Remember, when the principal calls, it escalates the situation.

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In the blueprint, I include scripts teachers can use when calling parents.

If teachers are nervous, I either coach them beforehand or call together so they can hear how I talk with parents.

This modeling builds their confidence and improves conversations.

Sometimes teachers—even those with 25 years experience—say things that violate FERPA or other guidelines, like sharing other students’ names.

Constantly reminding teachers what can and cannot be shared with parents and emphasizing customer service is important.

Some teachers are natural communicators, others need support.

Normalize “good news” calls from teachers to parents, too.

Step 5: Use Restorative Practices to Close the Behavior Loop
I find restorative practices extremely helpful.

I have a podcast episode about behavior academies and restorative practices—I’ll link it in the notes. I also had the authors of a restorative practices book on that episode.

Restorative practices help students reflect on their behavior, understand why they acted that way, and reduce repeat behavior.

They’re also helpful when explaining discipline to parents.

For example, in elementary, parents might balk at “detentions” for young kids.

But if you explain it’s a time for reflection so behavior doesn’t recur, parents are more supportive.

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I use restorative prompts with kindergarteners through older kids, adapting for writing challenges—sometimes they verbally share or draw their reflections.

Students answer questions like: What happened? Who was affected? What were they feeling?

The goal is reflection, not punishment.

Be careful not to create power struggles over completing paperwork.

For students with fine motor or OT challenges, writing can be a trigger, so adapt accordingly.

It may not lead to immediate change, but over time it helps close the behavior loop and reduces incidents.

To recap the five steps for reducing office referrals:

1. Track office referrals and collect data. (See my podcast episode 57 for more on this.)

2. Utilize a behavior team.

3. Create a behavior matrix.

4. Empower teachers to call parents.

5. Use restorative practices to close the behavior loop.

I encourage you to download this free blueprint—it includes many resources to help you reduce office referrals.

When referrals go down, you gain time to get into classrooms and be the instructional leader you want to be.

Please take the time to download and use it—I’d love to hear how you implement it in your building.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. Help another principal who’s struggling with behavior referrals.

Remember, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose.

I hope you have a great week. I’ll see you back here next time.