Coming in from outdoor playtime last Wednesday afternoon, red-cheeked and out of breath, the students in the new PRIDE program at Maple Avenue Elementary School hung up their jackets, gathered the tickets they’d collected on the corners of their desks for demonstrating “expected behavior” and selected a “choice time” activity from bins in the corner of the classroom.

“Where are your shoes?” the teacher, Jonni Nichols, asked a boy.

Looking down at his boots the boy responded, “I’m going to keep these on now. We have very little time.”

“OK,” Nichols said. Then the boy found his place among the other kids, playing quietly as the end of the school day approached.

To call this a typical interaction in the PRIDE classroom might not be quite accurate. The program was developed to help students struggling with significant emotional and behavioral challenges. The atmosphere isn’t always placid.

But in its five months of operation, the program is showing measurable signs of success — reducing classroom disruptions, eliminating school suspensions and bringing students who’d been placed out of district back to their school community. Now, Claremont educators are ready to build on that success. At a special school district meeting last month, voters agreed to put half of a $1.3 million windfall from the state into a new special education trust fund. With the money, district administrators hope to expand the PRIDE program as well as create a district-wide autism program and an alternative program for at-risk students at Stevens High School. The goal is both to save the district money and to give students with special needs an optimal education.

“We’re really confident that we can best serve the students of Claremont in this manner,” SAU 6 Superintendent Mike Tempesta said at the Dec. 12 meeting at which the trust fund was approved. “We’re educating Claremont students in Claremont, in the least restrictive environment, in their hometown, in their neighborhoods, in their communities, and that is why we are in this business.”

PRIDE stands for Project-based, Respectful, Individualized, Data-Driven Education. The program is housed in two classrooms in Maple Avenue Elementary School — one for grades K through two and one for grades three through five — and serves students from each of Claremont’s three elementary schools. It can accommodate 12 to 14 students and currently has 10. A staff of nine, including an administrator, a social worker, five specially trained paraprofessionals and two teachers certified in both elementary education and special education, work in the two classrooms.

Rather than following one specific model, the PRIDE program borrows successful strategies from a variety of models, said Pride Program Administrator Cheryl McDaniel-Thomas. When a student first comes to the classroom, McDaniel-Thomas creates a chart that keeps track of his or her behavior challenges, noting the type of behavior — non-compliance, destructiveness, aggression and others — as well as the day and time it occurred, what precipitated it and what interventions were used. That data is then used to develop an individualized plan for the student.

“Although there are some common strands across all the kids, it’s not one size fits all,” she said.

For the first few weeks a student is in the program, he or she is likely to push the boundaries. “It’s like, ‘are you people really going to keep me safe?’ ” said McDaniel-Thomas, who came to Claremont this year after serving as director of student support services in the Newport School District. Once trust and boundaries are established, the students begin to make progress, she said. After six to nine weeks without displaying any unacceptable behavior, students are “baby stepped” back into mainstream activities, starting with recess, lunch and gym and progressing to academics.

“We want to make sure we set them back up for success,” McDaniel-Thomas said.

Having clear off ramps also helps maintain the integrity of the program, said Benjamin Nester, director of special education for SAU 6. “The goal is always to meet students’ needs in the least restrictive environment,” he said. “One of the things that’s crucial when developing a new program so that it doesn’t become a dumping ground is entry and exit criteria.”

While they’re in the program, students participate in daily social-emotional programming and counseling, along with academics. For example, at the beginning of each day, students clip a clothespin on a chart on the wall, indicating their level of worry that day. They use a chart on the opposite wall to talk about the size of their problems. “We teach a lot of strategies, and we give them the words to talk about their problems,” McDaniel-Thomas said.

Meanwhile, the students benefit from academic programming that emphasizes project-based learning, she said. In November, for example, they made parade floats for Thanksgiving, incorporating social studies, math, science and engineering into the project.

“They wheeled them around the school and the kids came out and clapped for them,” McDaniel-Thomas said.

For all that happens in the PRIDE classrooms, it’s what doesn’t happen there that may be most notable: Suspensions are not an option.

A common scene plays out the first time a student loses control.

“They’ll say, ‘I guess you’re going to send me home now, right?’ ” McDaniel-Thomas said. “And we say, ‘nope.’ ”

The new policy comes at a time when many educators are questioning the wisdom of sending kids home for behavior problems. A bill introduced in the New Hampshire Legislature this week seeks to limit the duration of and reasons for out-of-school suspensions, which, studies show, are administered disproportionally to minority students and students with disabilities.

Nester didn’t know how many students were suspended at the elementary school level this year as compared to last but assumes the numbers have plummeted given that PRIDE program students have received no suspensions. Additionally, he said, parents are being called in less frequently, reducing the incidence of students going home early due to disciplinary problems and in turn reducing the burden on parents.

Prior to the PRIDE program, students with emotional-behavioral issues were often assigned a one-on-one paraprofessional. “But even with that kind of one-on-one support they couldn’t safely stay in the classroom all day,” Nester said.

Students with the most severe behavioral issues were placed in schools outside of the district, often traveling an hour each way. The PRIDE Program brought three of those students back into the district. Their progress so far has been good, McDaniel-Thomas said.

“I would say we have one who’s doing spectacular, one who’s doing OK and one who’s still struggling,” she said. “I would say they’re all doing better here than they were in their previous placement.”

The district, which serves about 1,800 students, currently sends about 30 to 35 special education students to schools with specialized resources and staff to meet their needs, Nester said. Like the PRIDE Program, the other programs presented at the special school district meeting are designed to reduce those numbers.

The autism program, which administrators hope to develop this spring, would allow three students who have been identified for out-of-district placements to stay in Claremont, Tempesta said. Additionally, three other families whose children are in out-of-district placements for autism have expressed interest in returning, he said. Keeping those six students in Claremont would save the district $557,000 in return for a $293,000 expenditure on the program, a net savings of $264,000.

Prior to coming to Claremont last July, Tempesta served as director of the Central Massachusetts Collaborative in Worcester, a public school entity that provides special education services to public school districts. He wants to build a program similar to CMC’s THRIVE program, which uses instructional strategies developed by the New England Center for Children, an internationally renowned autism program.

Under Tempesta’s leadership, the CMC tripled in size and moved into a new facility. Such a dramatic expansion isn’t possible in this region, he said, but he does think a quality autism program could eventually create revenue for the district by attracting families from other towns.

More important, though, it would provide a better educational experience for Claremont students, Tempesta said, echoing sentiments expressed by parents and educators at the special school district meeting.

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Meanwhile, plans for the alternative education program at the high school are still taking shape. Unlike the other two programs, which emphasize early intervention, an alternative high school classroom would serve as more of a stop-gap measure, Tempesta said. The high school has had different types of alternative programs through the years. The most recent one was dissolved in 2018 due to budget and staffing issues.

Administrators are now investigating the most effective ways to serve about 30 high school students at risk of dropping out, about half of whom are special education students, Tempesta said. That could mean investing in additional counselors, mentors and other supports that would allow students to stay in their regular classrooms rather than creating a special classroom, he said.

“We’re being very judicious in how we approach it,” he said.

Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.