On November 25th, 2019, Dr. Marty Pollio, Superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) and CLOUT leaders conducted a joint press conference to announce the Dr. Pollio’s commitment, made at CLOUT’s Nehemiah Action Assembly in March 2019, to implement whole-school restorative practices (RP) in all 150+ JCPS schools within the next six years.

It was held at Engelhard Elementary School, which is one of the schools currently implementing RP. As part of the event, students conducted a demonstration of a “proactive circle," which they use each day to build relationships and create a caring culture within the school, etc. Also, the principal from an RP middle school shared the story of a recent incident in which the relationship between two boys was restored after one had said some hurtful things about the other boy’s mother who had recently passed away. The principal brought them together immediately and had the first boy interview the boy he had harmed, using restorative questions she had written up. When he asked, “How do you keep your Mom alive in your heart?,” the boy shared that that he slept with her cremation urn in his bedroom to keep her close, and the boy who had said the harmful things dropped his pencil, and looked at him, and said “I’m sorry.” It was a good example of how RP can restore relationships and address behavior issues in a positive way.

The press conference received a lot of media coverage, including the following:

In the coming year, CLOUT will be focusing our efforts on monitoring the implementation to ensure that it is staying on track and being conducted according to national best practices and the guidance of IIRP. We will be receiving progress reports from the school district, which will include data on the project’s impact on school suspensions, transfers to alternative schools, and other indicators. We will also be conducting occasional meetings with school district leadership to discuss the progress of the implementation, and will be visiting RP schools for first-hand observation.