Students have volunteered to paint doorways. Below, Detective Mike Chappel conducts a mock sobriety test before the prom. Glen Driggers, left, in a white shirt; Dan Shelton, center, and Rorey Short walk with goggles that mimic a drunken person’s vision.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires Frieda Squires

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — The graffiti began crawling up the walls of the girls’ bathroom at South Kingstown High School, spreading onto the ceiling and even out the doors.

Then the toilets became regularly clogged with toilet paper. “It got to the point where you couldn’t go to the bathroom,” says senior Felicia Strom.

Felicia, the student council president, finally had enough. She sat down with Principal Robert B. McCarthy Jr. and an adviser, and with their support organized meetings for the girls in each grade.

She asked them if they were disgusted with the bathrooms. They all raised their hands.

Had anyone seen the vandalism taking place? Some raised their hands.

Had anyone done anything about it? No one stirred.

And with that, Felicia and a handful of others began taking back the bathrooms from what they claimed was a small group of girls who was running the school. A box was placed in the office so students could anonymously identify the culprits. The bathroom walls were repainted during February vacation and have largely remained clean. In exchange, the administrators installed mirrors.

“Everybody felt empowered after that,” Felicia says.

The resolution of the battle of the bathrooms represents just one part of a broader effort to change the course of suburban South Kingstown High, a once-stellar school that has seen its reputation slip in recent years as ills often associated with the big city have crept into its halls: sporadic fights, flagging enthusiasm and a segment of the student body who are disengaged and scoring poorly on tests.

To combat these problems, the whole school is embracing an ambitious and innovative approach that will require a significant climate shift. The school will strive to reward positive behavior and place the emphasis not on the disruptive students, but on those who are trying to do the right thing.

The effort is aimed not just at changing student attitudes. It banks on influencing faculty thinking as well. And 90 percent of the school’s 150 or so staff have formally committed to it.

Emphasizing positive behavior is a technique in use in one other high school in the state, urban Central Falls, and it is also being tried in some Rhode Island elementary schools.

But the South Kingstown effort is more than that. It includes nonviolence training as well as a new counseling approach developed by the faculty itself.

That element — the high school’s “counselor of the day” program — is unusual enough that South Kingstown will present it at a national conference this summer.

SOUTH KINGSTOWN was a leader in the state just over a decade ago, a school that prided itself — and still does — as a showcase for University of Rhode Island professors’ children. The school’s overall test and college admission scores still hover among the top in the state, but the Department of Education has given the school its most unfavorable designation, that of making “insufficient progress,” because low-income and special needs students failed to meet state learning targets for two consecutive years.“I still think it’s one of the best schools in the state for most kids,” says School Committee Vice Chairman Joseph Sweet, while also noting that the district has had difficulty reaching its low-income students. “They don’t do a great job for all kids.”

Some link the problems to administrative turnover and growing pains. The school has seen four principals in the past decade. Enrollment swelled during the 1990s, eroding its small-town feel. About 1,250 now attend.

Tensions have grown in recent years. Administrators this spring accelerated a plan to place a police officer in the school after conflicts related to a violent feud in Peace Dale made their way into the building.

Students describe a clique of girls who roam the halls during classes. The police have responded to a fight that ended with a pregnant teenager being arrested. A 14-year-old allegedly assaulted a business teacher in December, leaving him with a fractured eye socket.

Students say they don’t feel at risk, but that the school is ready for change.

“There’s no respect,” said Maeri Ferguson, another senior. “[The unruly students] think it’s Jerry Springer in there.”

South Kingstown does not appear to be a school in crisis. On a recent Friday afternoon, well past the final bell, sophomore class leaders planned a school cleanup, and the painting of a mural of a surging wave on stairwell doors was well under way.

“Hopefully, this will bring kids’ respect up in school,” said Sam Gross, a cleanup organizer.

Teachers and students stopped Principal McCarthy every few feet as he walked through the halls, to give him details about a field trip in the works or a class. He knew them all by name.

Still, a recent report by a visiting team of educators identified many of the difficulties the school is striving to address.

The team found classrooms filled largely with eager students led by dedicated teachers, but it noted a gap between the school’s high-achieving and disenfranchised students that lingers nine years after an earlier School Accountability for Learning and Teaching (SALT) report noted the same divide. The school is ripe with potential, but riddled with inconsistent behavioral and academic expectations. Not all teachers are engaging all the students.

“Changing the climate means changing staff attitudes,” Sweet said, and a recognition “that all kids are deserving of success.”

SO THE ADMINISTRATION this fall will roll out a package of programs promoting nonviolence and positive behavior, setting clear expectations for everyone in the building.

“We need to develop a mechanism so we are on the same page about what happens in the classroom, behaviorally and academically,” McCarthy said.

Some steps, such as the “counselor of the day” program, started this school year and will continue in the fall. Under the new approach, counselors try to connect in positive ways with students sent “to the office” for all kinds of misbehavior that in the past might have resulted in some kind of discipline.

Now, counselors take turns being the counselor of the day, staffing a room set aside for meeting with students as soon as they are referred. But, instead of meting out punishment, the counselor engages the teenager in exercises that include setting short- and long-term goals, looking at what got them there in the first place, and discussing what they could do differently. Students return to class the next period rather than lose valuable hours waiting to see an assistant principal.

Counselors view the program as a success and believe it allows them to reach some of the detached students who might have fallen through the cracks in the past. Students are referred for more in-depth services after their third visit.

“There are peaks and valleys; it’s the nature of being an adolescent,” said Kirsten Stahl, one of the participating counselors. “Oftentimes kids need more connection,” or to simply be removed from a situation that threatens to turn bad.

For more serious offenses, suspension has been replaced by in-school restriction. This means students must still come to school and spend the day doing school work in a classroom — something they really dislike, administrators say.

IN SEPTEMBER, everyone in the school will be trained in the principles of nonviolence, which will become the school’s overarching philosophy, along with positive reinforcement. It relies on reconciliation and reaching a deeper understanding of the issues at stake, and will be developed through role-playing exercises.

“A big part of the training is to get people to see what it’s like being someone else,” said Amy Leonard, an educational consultant affiliated with the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. “To reach reconciliation, you really need to understand the other position.”

Leonard, who will facilitate the culture shift, interviewed students, teachers, secretaries, cafeteria workers and janitors and concluded in a report issued last week that the four priorities to address are respect, cleanliness, consistency and communication.

South Kingstown will follow Central Falls as the second high school in the state to launch Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) — a program that uses a data collection system to track specific problems. PBIS examines the role the school environment plays in bad behavior, and whether it somehow reinforces those attitudes. It works on the premise that some students need to be taught how to behave, and good behavior should be modeled and rewarded.

“In most cases, schools are reprimanding students. It’s all negative reinforcement,” said Dave Disano, a school counselor in Central Falls. “This program is the reverse. It’s accentuating the positives.”

Take, for example, a student who continually acts up during time for independent math work. The student successfully avoids doing the work by getting sent out of the classroom. Under positive reinforcement, staff look at what’s causing the behavior — possibly difficulty with math — and establish a consequence that brings the student closer to what’s expected.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS throughout the state employ PBIS. In addition, Wakefield Elementary, in South Kingstown, practices the principles of nonviolence. Teachers there hold a monthly celebration to recognize positive behavior.

“Children on any level can understand it,” said Wakefield Principal Michelle Little. “They know what it’s like to be in a hurtful situation. They know how to change that if they want to.”

The training, Little said, “gives them the tools. If you don’t have the training, you don’t always have the tools.”

Together, Little said, the initiatives lay out clear expectations for everyone.

“The work is just as much about changing adult behavior as it is about changing children,” she said.

Other high schools have made significant culture shifts. When Chariho High Principal Robert Mitchell took the helm in 2000, he inherited a school with drug problems and a skyrocketing suspension rate. He and Vice Principal Philip Auger made changes that included rewriting the student handbook to be less punitive and more supportive, giving teachers common planning time, and placing teacher aides in the halls. The school went from low- to high-performing and watched its attendance climb.

Westerly High School implemented the Westerly Integrated Social Services Program, focusing on the socio-emotional needs of students. It provides individual and family counseling, crisis intervention and parent workshops, as well as group counseling on anger management, social skills, domestic violence and grief counseling. Students are referred by teachers, administrators or themselves as an alternative to discipline.

McCARTHY, WHO IS in his second year at South Kingstown, says his school was aware of its shortcomings before the SALT report’s release and some changes were already under way. What’s different from previous years, he said, is that the school community is engaged “in a conversation about what the problems are and how they’re going to be solved.”

Administrators have chosen a wholesale approach. In addition to the emphasis on nonviolence, teachers will spend one period each day on professional development that focuses on student achievement beginning next fall.

“There’s no one way to turn your school around. You have to attack these issues in a variety of ways,” McCarthy says.

George McDonough, a program coordinator for the state Department of Education, agrees that the time has arrived for South Kingstown to take its issues on.

“This isn’t the first time they’ve had indications things weren’t seen as good for all,” he said. He mentioned a 1999 study showing that minority students at South Kingstown were more than twice as likely to be placed in special education classes as white students.

PBIS is a solid step toward improvement, McDonough said, but it is a process that will evolve with time.

“When people do it with purpose … there are big impacts,” he said. “It requires a change in philosophy, and people who don’t want to change philosophies need to find another place to teach.”

True change, he said, needs the commitment of the entire community, including town leaders and parents.

Leonard, the nonviolence facilitator, said she senses the momentum is rolling.

“It’s gotten unhappy enough so that people want change,” she said. “I think everyone wants to see South Kingstown become the best school in the state.”

kmulvane@projo.com