Janet, I could never find anything on coscieous discipline that you don't have to pay to read so I just hear what I'm told. I was told that if a child bops another kid on the head, we are to simply redirect. We CAN say, "That is NOT OK" and talk to the child, but we can't use the words "we don't" "you can't" "no" etc. For example, if children are running in the hallway, the teachers say, "Walking feet, friends" (they call the kids friends). If the kids still run, they can go on to say, "It is not safe. Use your walking feet." Of course, it doesn't work very often. The regular kids even try to get away with stuff. The difficult children are out of control. I aided in a class once and there were three kids who were hurting other kids. I asked the teacher if I could take Child 1 and put him in a chair away from the kids and she said, "We can NEVER take a child away from his peers for isolate him." I said, "So what can we do?" She sort of shrugged and said, "Just try to redirect him." I have never ever seen anything so worthless as a childcare program/philosophy.
The parents do have meetings at the school to learn "conscious discipline." I have no idea what that means. I never sat in on a meeting. They also teach nutrition and other life skills. What bothers me is that this school must believe that because these people are low income, they are not good parents. It seems that way to me, at least. I'm sure this is true of some of the kids, but not all. And there are plenty of crapola high income parents too.
You can't beat the price of free daycare. I think that's why some of the parents keep their kids here. On the other hand, I don't think most parents know exactly what goes on at school. But...it is not just this school. My sister is an aide in a Special Needs classroom in public school. The kids are very low functioning. She is also shocked at what goes on there, and she also is not allowed to talk to the parents because aides can't talk to parents. Only the teachers can do that. And the teacher wants herself and the school to look good, so she isn't going to be honest and say, "When Johnny goes to math with his aide, he doesn't learn anything. In fact, the aide has to do his work because he is too busy singing, making noise, and disrupting the class. He should be in a more restrictive setting." If she has less kids, they may decide the teacher doesn't need to be there and she wants her job.
If I were young and just starting out, but knew what I now know, my kids would go to a private school or, if I couldn't afford that, be homeschooled. We have no say in what goes on in our public schools. I always thought we did, but we don't even really know what goes on. My sis says they clean up their act and make everything look good when a parent is there. Sis works at a very high income school. Many of the parents are ashamed of their high needs kids and some don't spend any time with them, delegating their care to nannies. Not all of them, but a lot! They achieved, they expected their kids to achieve. Many can't handle it when they realize that their child will never achieve. Of course this is from my sister and is only her interpretation.