Specifications include, but are not limited to: The Marion County School Board (“District”) desires to engage a firm to provide educational services to general education and/or students with disabilities who are alternatively placed and/or expelled with educational services. While it is the expectation that all students will be successful on a typical school campus, at times students demonstrate behaviors that warrant their removal from campus for a period of time. Students may violate the Code of Student Conduct with an act so egregious that he/she must be alternatively placed or expelled with services. Students may also repeatedly exhibit disruptive behaviors, with no response to intervention, warranting an alternative placement or a change of placement as a continuum of services to provide a more restrictive setting to meet his/her (academic and/or) social emotional needs. Within Marion County Public Schools a multi-tiered behavioral framework is utilized to provide differing levels of support and intervention based on students’ needs across all schools district- wide. Within this multi-tiered behavioral framework, supports provided to all students are referred to as tier 1 (e.g., school wide expectations, consistently applied consequences, reinforcement of appropriate behaviors). Supplemental supports, instruction, and intervention are provided to groups of students who demonstrate at-risk behaviors and are referred to as tier 2 (e.g., check in/check out, anger management groups, social skills groups). Students who need more individualized supports to be successful received tier 3 interventions which are more intensive in addition to being individualized (e.g., behavior intervention plans). The multi-tiered behavioral framework is positive behavior support (PBS) and is part of the overall multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) that is essentially the umbrella of our way of work in Marion County. Just as the multi-tiered behavioral framework is described above, a multi-tiered system of support ensures differing levels of support and intervention are provided to students based on students’ needs. It is expected that bidders will propose the delivery of educational services within a multi-tiered system of support emphasizing PBS as the specific multi-tiered behavioral framework to be utilized. By nature of the population to be served, all students will be in need of intensive and individualized support; therefore, the tiers of support provided within the proposed alternative school(s) will look different from a typical school campus. It is imperative that proposers have an understanding of these implications. For example, tier 1 at the proposed alternative school will look very similar to tier 3 supports provided to 1 to 5 percent of students on a typical school campus. Proposals must outline services to be provided within the structure of a multi-tiered system of support and multi-tiered behavioral framework, clearly defining all three tiers. Specifically, proposals should not make reference to being a “tier 3 school,” as there must be evidence of differing levels (i.e., tier 1, 2 and 3) of support and intervention even though it is assumed that all students will need more intensive and individualized (tier 3) support than those served on a typical campus. Ensuring that students transition smoothly from their base school to the alternative setting, and then successfully transition back to their base school once the length of placement has been fulfilled is critical. Proposals must incorporate plans for implementing the ten critical elements of PBS within the alternative school. Additionally, it is expected that proposals will outline how the alternative school will work with base schools to ensure consistency in teaching school wide expectations to facilitate transitions between schools and strengthen the students’ behavioral skill sets. 1.4 Absolute Priority: Proposers must provide High Quality Academic Instruction to students within a multi-tiered behavioral framework to improve behavioral outcomes within the alternative setting as a whole, and for each student who transitions from the alternative setting into a typical school campus or post-secondary setting
