How York Suburban Middle School Built PRIDE into Every Hallway, Classroom, and Bus Ride

The Pride Store and Hershey Park

The reward system runs on two tracks: everyday and aspirational. The Pride Store – launched at the start of the third marking period – offers homework passes, study guide access for assessments, and entry to the student lounge during lunch. Students spend their points at their own pace.

The aspirational track: Hershey Park. The amusement park reserves days specifically for school groups, and York Suburban booked three – one per grade level. Students who accumulate 75 PRIDE points can cash them in for a trip. By midyear, more than 400 of the school’s 750 students had already earned enough.

Teachers noticed something unexpected in the aftermath. Students who cashed in large point balances for Hershey Park still needed to be motivated for the rest of the year. Staff adjusted by being more intentional about reinforcement frequency – recognizing that after a big “purchase,” students need a quicker path to their next reward.

The Student Lounge

On an exterior wall of the cafeteria, the school carved out a lounge – a quieter alternative to the main lunch crowd. Students pay PRIDE points for a reservation. Inside: foosball, chess boards, Connect Four, Uno, and plans for Nintendo Switch consoles pending grant funding.

Everyone pays their own way. If a group of friends wants to go together and one person is short on points, the group waits. “It’s positive peer pressure,” Lauderman says. The next week, friends are cheering each other on to earn enough.

The lounge doubles as a relationship builder. For students who find the large cafeteria overwhelming, it’s a space to eat lunch with a small group of friends. The school is exploring whether high-earning students could eventually pay the way for others – tying generosity back to the Community component of PRIDE.

The Pride Club

The boldest move was handing students real ownership. A new Pride Club – targeting about 45 students across three tracks – launched in the spring:

• Rewards track: Students review the Pride Store, analyze point data, and recommend new rewards based on what their peers actually want.
• Community outreach track: Students write grants, seek donations from local businesses, and plan improvements to the student lounge.
• Leadership track: Students create videos modeling expected behaviors aligned with the PRIDE rubric, produced and shared schoolwide.

The club meets every other cycle on the school’s six-day rotation – about 90 minutes of planning time per month. It’s the school’s bet that student voice will solve problems staff can’t anticipate on their own.

From Physical Tickets to Real Data

Before LiveSchool, York Suburban used physical pride tickets. Teachers had to distribute them, students had to keep track of them, and counting was a manual process. The switch to digital eliminated that friction – but the school kept one physical element. When students cash in points at the Pride Store, they receive a printed receipt of what they earned and purchased. Some students prefer that tangible proof.

The data side transformed the PBIS team’s work. The team – which grew from 4–5 members to 12–14 this year, blending PBIS and restorative practices committees – meets monthly for 30 minutes. They can now see reinforcement patterns across teachers, grade levels, and time periods instead of counting paper tickets.

Student feedback confirmed the direction. A Likert-scale survey across the first two marking periods returned a consistent 4.3 out of 5 rating for LiveSchool. The few dissenting students preferred hard copies – which the physical receipts already addressed.

When budget season came around and administration asked whether to continue, the answer was unanimous: “Hands down – we’re not getting rid of it. It’s something we need to keep.”

What’s Next

Year one was about building the foundation. Year two will be about refinement. The PBIS team is working with their local Intermediate Unit to tighten the behavior matrices – making expectations more explicit and more student-friendly, with input from the Pride Club.

The school is also exploring LiveSchool’s demerit system for minor classroom management issues, while keeping it separate from major disciplinary referrals. The goal: use LiveSchool as the single communication channel with families about behavior, both positive and corrective, so parents only need one place to check.

Lauderman frames the work as a scaffolded approach to motivation – meeting students where they are with extrinsic rewards while gradually building the intrinsic habits. “The homework pass makes them do the study guide. The study guide builds the habit. The habit becomes the motivation.”