How Gus Garcia Academy Built Brotherhood and Led Austin ISD in Referral Reduction
Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy, an all-boys middle school in Austin, TX, used four years of behavior data to target specific issues like vaping, fighting, and disrespect. With LiveSchool House Points, teacher-vs-student competitions, and a restorative tribunal system, the school led the entire Austin ISD district in reducing discipline referrals.
“It's culture, it's relationship before instruction. You don't have that foundation, you can't do any of the other stuff.”
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The Challenge: An All-Boys School Post-Pandemic
Gus Garcia Young Men's Leadership Academy is a unique campus in Austin ISD: an all-boys middle school where students wear ties and are expected to embody brotherhood and servant leadership. When Principal Jose Mahia arrived four years ago, the school was still reeling from the pandemic, and the discipline data told a difficult story.
African-American students were disproportionately represented in referral data – not just at the campus level, but across the district. The numbers had made Gus Garcia an outlier, and the district was watching. Mahia knew the school needed more than incremental improvements. It needed a complete rethinking of how behavior was tracked, discussed, and rewarded.
The first step was asking hard questions. Were teachers writing referrals for behaviors that didn't warrant them? Were expectations attainable? Was the school incentivizing the right things? Those critical conversations became the foundation for everything that followed.
Four Years of Data, Three Targeted Behaviors
Rather than casting a wide net, Mahia and his team analyzed four years of behavior data and identified the three most frequent and disruptive issues: vaping, fighting, and disrespect toward teachers. These became the school's targeted behaviors – the focal points of every conversation, poster, and LiveSchool configuration on campus.
The staff built a tiered behavior approach, carefully defining what constituted a Tier 1 classroom issue versus a Tier 2 or Tier 3 referral-worthy event. A student not turning in homework, for instance, was reframed as a relationship matter between teacher and student – not something that should generate a referral and land in a student's permanent record.
LiveSchool became the vehicle for both positive and corrective tracking. Anytime students demonstrated the opposite of the targeted behaviors – showing brotherhood, being respectful to adults, avoiding conflicts – they earned points. Being a "Brother's Keeper" and helping a sixth grader tie his tie earned 10 points. Showing respect to an adult in the building earned 20. The tiered point values were intentionally designed to reflect what the school valued most.
Houses, Competitions, and the Harry Potter Model
Gus Garcia organized students into Houses by grade level – Alpha, Beta, and Kappa for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Every two weeks, the school held House Meetings in the gym where LiveSchool data was projected for everyone to see: which House had the most points, which behaviors were trending positively, and which needed work.
These meetings were more than data reviews. Mahia used them for transparent conversations with the young men, telling them directly that they were the change agents and that the staff could not do the work for them. Top earners in LiveSchool were called down to participate in House challenges, creating a clear path: meet the behavioral goals, and you earn the right to represent your House.
The biggest motivator cost almost nothing. Every nine weeks, students who accumulated enough LiveSchool points earned a ticket to a teacher-vs-student athletic event. The sport rotated to match the athletic season – flag football in fall, soccer, basketball, and ending with dodgeball and volleyball. For a hyper-competitive all-boys school, the chance to play against their teachers was the ultimate incentive. Students who didn't earn enough points became the audience, and that social distinction alone drove behavior change across the building.
The Tribunal: Restoring Points and Teaching Lessons
One of the most debated decisions at Gus Garcia was whether to use demerits in LiveSchool. Some teachers argued that students had earned their points and shouldn't lose them. Others felt consequences needed to be immediate and tangible. Mahia's team met in the middle and created what they called the tribunal system.
When a student lost points for a serious infraction – say, 50 points for vandalizing a restroom – the counselors, assistant principals, or the referring teacher would meet privately to design a restorative path. The student might do cafeteria cleanup for a week, earning 10 points per day, and recover all 50 points through community service.
The approach combined accountability with hope. Students learned that mistakes had consequences, but every day was a new opportunity. As Mahia described it: a student who makes a mistake needs to feel it, but also needs to understand that they can learn from it and dig themselves out. The tribunal kept students engaged in the point system even after setbacks, preventing the downward spiral that often accompanies purely punitive approaches.
When the Eighth Graders Got Competitive
The eighth-grade teaching team initially resisted LiveSchool. Their argument was familiar: these students are practically high schoolers, they won't care about points. They didn't embed it into their classroom systems with the same fidelity as the other grade levels.
The result was visible in the first House Meeting. Sixth graders – the youngest students on campus – had accumulated the most points and were leading the competition. When the first teacher-vs-student game arrived, it was the sixth graders who had earned the right to play, while the eighth graders sat in the stands watching.
That moment shifted everything. The eighth graders, who were supposed to be the campus leaders and ambassadors, started putting peer pressure on their own teachers to award more points. By the second nine weeks, the eighth-grade team had fully bought in – not because administration mandated it, but because their own students demanded it. As Mahia reflected, the students' intrinsic motivation took the enforcement off his plate entirely.
Community, PTSA, and Sustaining the System
Funding was tight. As a Title I school, Gus Garcia couldn't buy pizza every two weeks for the winning House. So Mahia brought the challenge to the parents. The PTSA committed a line item within their budget – roughly $3,000 for the year – to provide treats like Rice Krispies, chocolates, popcorn, and snow cones for House celebrations every two weeks.
But Mahia was careful to balance tangible rewards with intangible recognition. The school developed what they call the "YMLA clap" – a whole-school recognition where, on the count of three, everyone claps in unison for a student who has done something exceptional. No prize, no treat – just the acknowledgment of their peers and the tradition of their school. Mahia found that students responded to both, and the balance prevented the system from becoming purely transactional.
A dedicated House Committee of four to five teachers met monthly to monitor LiveSchool data, print posters, display point totals on the cafeteria TV, and send reports to the broader staff. One influential teacher was designated as the key point person, and his visibility with both students and colleagues helped sustain momentum. The success has spread beyond Gus Garcia: other schools in Austin ISD have invited Mahia's team to deliver professional development on replicating the model.
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