by Allison Ross

By all accounts, the much-hyped School of Innovation at Maupin Elementary has gotten off to a rocky start.

School and district staff say the school, which reopened this fall as a schoolwide Waldorf-inspired arts program, has struggled not only with implementing its new curriculum but also with managing student behavior that some teachers say significantly disrupts learning.

Indeed, the school says it is taking a step back and "resetting" or "refocusing" partway through this school year in order to get a better handle on its academics and behavior.

As students return to classes after Thanksgiving break, third-, fourth- and fifth-grade classes will move back toward a more traditional curriculum - although teachers will still "engage in Waldorf-inspired methods," principal Maria Clemons said.

Nearly a dozen JCPS staff, including curriculum specialists, will flood the school to provide support. Clemons has hired a mental health counselor to work with troubled students, and Maupin has been added to the list of schools to get training this year on a program called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.

"Like anything else, when you start on the road with something, you see where you need to make adjustments to the plan," Clemons said.

JCPS secured a waiver last summer from the state to allow Maupin to deviate from the laid-out sequence of what must be taught at each grade level under the Common Core standards so it could instead follow a more Waldorf-inspired method of teaching. Under the waiver, Maupin students still have to learn all the Common Core concepts from kindergarten through fifth grade, but the order could be changed. For instance, fractions could be taught in fourth grade instead of third grade.

But in practice, some Maupin teachers found the shifted curriculum created problems when they were trying to use JCPS instructional resources and materials, Clemons said. Those resources just weren't aligned to what the school was trying to do.

Clemons said that's why the school and JCPS decided to shift gears in grades three, four and five - the grades that are governed by state-mandated testing - to follow JCPS' more traditional curriculum map. Kindergarten, first and second grade will continue to work on using the Waldorf-inspired arts curriculum.

Meanwhile, the school is also working to deal with distracting student behavior that is subtracting from learning time.

Patty Rundell, a longtime JCPS teacher who resigned her post at Maupin earlier this school year, said she left because the stress of dealing with unruly students was making her sick.

"In some classrooms up to a third of the students are constantly disrupting the class with talking, yelling, fighting, running out of the classroom, running around the classroom, and talking inappropriately to students and adults," Rundell wrote in her resignation letter to Clemons.

Rundell later told The Courier-Journal that it was frustrating to always have to stop instructional time to deal with behavior issues, saying she felt she wasn't getting the necessary support to do her job. "I saw so much potential in these children, but I could not get past the behavior," she said.

Rundell said she still supports the Waldorf-style curriculum and hopes JCPS can make the program work.

"But I think it all got rolled out way too fast," she added.

Others also said they thought the school would be having fewer problems if more time had been given to plan and prepare for the implementation of the Schools of Innovation concept.

The Jefferson County Board of Education signed off last October on putting The Catalpa School model, which proposed a Waldorf-inspired curriculum, at Maupin Elementary. At the time, at least one board member asked whether JCPS had the necessary time to properly implement it and other Schools of Innovations proposals JCPS was considering opening in 2015-16. (JCPS ended up opening one other School of Innovation, the Louisville Reach Academy at Atkinson Elementary.) Clemons was tapped to lead the new school this spring.

Clemons said she would have liked more time to do training sessions and get things in order, but added that hindsight is 20/20. She said the focus now is on how to keep moving forward with the School of Innovation.

"It's kind of like ... you are heading down the road and your car breaks down. It's important to look and know what caused your engine to break, but the important thing is, 'What do we need to get it down the road?' " Clemons said.

Adrianne Moore, a teacher at Maupin, said the high-needs, high-poverty population at her school "is so intense that we have to have a lot of extra resources to help implement the program."

Moore - who was part of a team of teachers that last year pitched the idea of the Waldorf-inspired School of Innovation to JCPS - said only a few teachers so far have been trained in the Waldorf-style model the school is working to implement.

Meanwhile, the "major, major, major" behavior concerns seen in the school are slowing down some teachers' efforts to teach and to practice using the new model, she said.

Clemons said the way her school opened did provide some unique challenges.

"Typically, I would say when a new school opens, the kids are new, the teachers are new and you're all kind of growing it together," Clemons said. "Our certified staff came into a school where the kids were established and knew each other, but we didn't have much background knowledge of our kids."

JCPS spokeswoman Bonnie Hackbarth said it's a "process" to transform the school and fully implement the innovation plan. She said it's expected to take about four years for staff to be fully trained in the Waldorf-style model.

"You're not seeing the new innovation model implemented in every classroom. That was never the plan," Hackbarth said.

She likened the rollout of the Schools of Innovation concept at Maupin to efforts being made to change the culture at JCPS alternative school Minor Daniels Academy, which is also technically a new JCPS school that is housed in the former Buechel Metropolitan High building.

Hackbarth noted that there have been "bright spots" at Maupin, where the Waldorf-inspired curriculum appears to really be working.

Moore, who started as a goal clarity coach at Maupin but stepped back into classroom teaching when Rundell resigned, said that instruction is going well in her class. She related how her first graders shared hot chocolate one morning and how they spent time before Thanksgiving break painting the midnight sky from a Hansel and Gretel story that they'd discussed.

"I'm working diligently. I'm working very intensely to try to get those kids to know it's a safe place in my classroom," she said.

Moore said she worried that JCPS would step in and shut down the Waldorf-style curriculum once it became apparent that there were some difficulties at Maupin. But she said she's been happy to see how JCPS administration has rallied to try to help the school.

"They are trying to make sure we don't get further behind than what we already are," she said. "All the money and support they're trying to put into Maupin to fix it is amazing. That doesn't happen in a lot of schools."