Reference no: EM132180499

AB High school is one of the largest high schools in the k county in Arizona. It has over 3400 students and more than 340 faculty members with a high diversity within this student population. In the campus there are two parts, the east campus with just freshman students and the west campus with sophomore through seniors. The school’s leadership includes the principal in addition to three principals and nine deans. The school has a discipline program that has the responsibility of having a learning environment that is safe and effective. One assistant principal and three deans are overseeing this discipline system which is affected by multiple factors including the students’ adherence to the code of conduct, the attendance of the students, and the discipline and management of the classroom. Within the discipline system, there are sub-processes working together to achieve the goal of having a quality learning environment. These sub-processes are complex and can be affected by factors like the background of the students, their academic standings and other factors. ultimate customer of the discipline program is the parent or guardian of the student. Those in addition to the students and faculty represent the main stakeholders in this process. Other stakeholders include the security and law enforcement in the school, the administration and the school system of the county. In order to ensure the success of all students, the school has a commitment to do things like: ? Encouraging students to develop pride in the school. ? Recognizing the achievements of all the students, faculty, staff and community members. ? Setting high expectations to hold students and others accountable for. ? Having a curriculum framework to drive instruction. ? Showing students real life applications of knowledge and skills. ? Having multiple pathways for students based on their individual strengths. ? Establishing and maintaining safety and order in the school. ? Offering leadership development for administrators, community members, teachers etc. It was noted by a substitute teacher that there is a lack of standardization in the discipline process through different classrooms. In addition, the administration has concerns that the students who are referred to the office for discipline issues might miss one or more classes while the paperwork is being sent from the teacher to the office. Some of the things that are important and critical for the satisfaction of the stakeholders in general include decreasing the number of both the discipline referrals and classroom disruption, consistency in applying the discipline consequences and also the knowledge of the code of conduct. A lean six sigma project was formed to look at the discipline system as a whole, and then to look into the sub-processes so that recommendations can be made to improve the discipline process and the overall academic environment through the comprehensive application of lean and six sigma tools. Three things are included and are part of what the lean six sigma team will be focusing on: ? Classroom discipline process through which the referral is initiated by a faculty member to the dean’s office. ? Discipline action process which includes the actions taken once the student or the referral arrives to the dean’s office and the data input to the student data base in addition to the feedback to the faculty member who initiated the referral. ? Attendance contract process where a student goes through the reception and adherence to an attendance contract. The process owners and administrators assist in the getting surveys from faculty, students and parents in addition to the interviews with the main stakeholders among the leadership team and staff in the administration. The principal is new but committed to the improvement of the discipline process at his school. Once the surveying is completed, the team will try to improve one or more of the sub-processes within the current discipline system. The project should start at June 11th and end at September 27th of this year. Many benefits can be achieved by this project. This includes enhancing the academic environment so that the student learning is facilitated, decreasing discipline issues of repeat offenders, and decreasing the probability of having liability issues with regard to the faculty use of the disciplinary actions. Some of the concerns that the team has includes: ? Lack of the data available. ? Resistance to change from the students ? Resistance to change from the faculty ? Time limitations. Offenses that might happen include things like cheating, destroying property, classroom disruption, disrespect of others, fighting, making threats, false fire alarms, misconduct on school bus and others. The actions for such offenses include things like: Code Action A Parental contact B Counseling and direction F Retain or pay for property related issues G Retention L Referral to intervention program M Confiscate unauthorized material S Suspension for 10 days R Suspension from school H Saturday School N Special program I Behavior contract or plan As hinted above, the discipline process is not very efficient and is also inconsistent. Students might wait for a long time and in the administration office and thus miss multiple classes while waiting for the paperwork to arrive from the teacher, or to be processed or seen by the dean of discipline. There is variability in the classroom discipline process and the consequences from case to case. The lean six sigma team will hold a focus group with a representative sample of the faculty and another focus group of a sample of the students to identify what is important to the faculty and students with regard to the discipline process. Discipline process goes through different steps that start with the reception of the discipline referral from the classroom. In this sub-process, actions are taken when the faculty member notices a student doing thing that is considered to be violating the code of conduct. It is started by either imposing discipline action on the student (like giving the student an extra assignment, separation from the class or calling the parent or guardian) if the misconduct is of level 1 or initiation of the referral form to the dean’s office if the violation is relatively severe. The teacher will complete the referral form but might wait until the end of the current class to do that. The student will wait in the dean’s office until the form is sent by the faculty member and until the dean becomes free to look into the referral. In total, this wait might take from 20 to 90 minutes. A second sub-process includes the actions by the dean’s office. This sub-process starts with the referral of the student and goes through the data entry and processing and ends with feedback to the faculty member who sent the referral. Once the referral form is received and the dean becomes free as mentioned above, the dean will open and review the student’s history and then see whether the misconduct is severe or not. If it is of levels 2, 3 or 4, the dean will contact the parent or guardian but if it is of level 4 or higher, the dean will open a police investigation. The form is completed by the dean and the student is given the discipline consequence. The student then completes the discipline action(s). It is the dean’s responsibility to follow up to make sure that student completed this discipline action. In case the student does not complete this action, another discipline action will be assigned by the dean. If it happens that the violation is habitual or the student decides to refuse to complete the action, a behavioral contract will be issued by the dean between the student, the parent or guardian and the dean so that everyone agrees on improving the behavior. Once this step is completed, the office assistant will receive it and enter the data in the student’s database with a copy of the form placed in the file of the student and also given to the faculty member who initiated the process. A third sub-process is the initiation of an attendance contract. During this sub-process, this contract is tracked and along with resulting discipline penalties in case a violation of the contract occurs. When a student is absent for more than 5 days without an excuse, then the attendance dean starts an attendance contract for that student. Initially, a meeting is held which includes the attendance dean, the student and the parents or guardians. The student must have the signature of the teachers for each of the classes he/she attends each month through the length of the contract. The attendance dean will then verify that the form is filled every month. If a violation occurs by the student, then this student is penalized and a referral for the discipline and consequence are completed. When the contract is completed by the student, it is stored in the student’s file. The team collected data about different critical to quality areas and came up with the following results: Most of the offenses (42%) are done by the freshmen. Students with discipline issues have more days of absence than the students with no discipline issues. About 20% of the violation codes account for 80% of the referrals. Students who do offenses tend to repeat or continue to commit offenses.

1. As mentioned above, 42% of the referrals are for the freshmen. Perform a cause and effect (fishbone) diagram for this problem.

2. Perform a why-why diagram for the problem shown in part 1.

3. It was also mentioned that students to do offenses continue to do offenses. Perform a cause and effect (fishbone) diagram for this problem.

4. Perform a why-why diagram for the problem shown in part 3.

5. The team found that 80% of the referrals are caused by just 20% of the violation codes. Perform a cause and effect (fishbone) diagram for this problem.