How Huntingdon Area Middle School Earned Three Consecutive Years of State PBIS Recognition

Three Ingredients at the High School

Payne attributes the high school’s rapid success to three factors that he has carried into his work at the middle school. The first was the planning team. The group met for an entire year before rolling anything out to the broader staff. Those meetings involved what Payne describes as heavy conversations – genuine debates about whether PBIS was an administrative directive or something the staff truly believed in. The team communicated expectations directly to the faculty and took ownership of the messaging rather than leaving it to administrators alone.

The second ingredient was the PBIS coaches. These were teachers with high energy and strong ideas who treated the coaching role as if it were their primary job, even though it was layered on top of their teaching responsibilities. Payne still attributes a significant portion of the high school’s ongoing success to those coaches.

The third and most powerful factor was the students themselves. The team brought a group of students to visit a neighboring school that had been running PBIS for several years. Those students came back energized, created a video to share with the faculty and student body, and became the driving force behind buy-in. Payne believes that to this day, the high school’s PBIS program endures because students own it. They still run Dance Party Fridays – a student-organized tradition where the PBIS team selects the music that plays between class periods during transitions.

Earning the State’s Recognition

When Payne arrived at the middle school, PBIS had been in place for multiple years, but the building had never scored high enough on the state’s Tier Fidelity Inventory to earn official recognition. Previous administrators had been unable to get the program over the line.

The unofficial turning point came during the COVID year, when state evaluators conducted a fidelity check and the school met the standard for the first time – though no banners or formal recognition were issued due to the circumstances. The 2021–22 school year became the first official year of state recognition, followed by a second and then a third consecutive year.

Maintaining that status requires annual evaluation. Evaluators from the state visit the building, walk through the school, and assess whether PBIS is being implemented with fidelity. Payne describes the ongoing work as a continuous cycle of communication – reminding staff of the expectations, sharing data at faculty meetings, and consistently returning to the core question of why the work matters.

BEARCATS and the Digital Store

The school’s expectations are organized under the acronym BEARCATS: Be Engaged, Act Responsibly, Care About the Team, and Safety. Teachers award LiveSchool points aligned to these four values throughout the day, and students accumulate points toward purchases in the school’s digital store.

The store was the brainchild of the assistant principal, who built the ordering system through a Google Form with images so students could browse items and place orders from their devices. Every Friday, the office staff pulls names and prints orders for fulfillment. Students can purchase throughout the week, but Friday is when items are delivered.

The inventory reflects what students actually want, informed by surveys. Branded Bearcat gear is among the most popular – beanies with the Bearcat logo, T-shirts, and sweatshirts all move quickly. Water bottles became a hot item after student feedback, and staples like mechanical pencil lead and small gadgets round out the everyday offerings. The bigger-ticket items like sweatshirts require more points, giving students a reason to save over weeks rather than spending immediately.

Now in its second year, the store has become a fixture of the school’s weekly rhythm. Payne notes that students continue purchasing beanies well into spring, and the branded gear has become a visible symbol of school pride throughout the building.

Raffles, AirPods, and a TV

Beyond the weekly store, Huntingdon runs a quarterly raffle system that creates a second tier of motivation. Students can purchase raffle tickets for five points each, and those tickets go into a drawing at the end of each marking period for larger prizes.

The prizes escalate across the year to maintain momentum. The first marking period featured oversized bean bag chairs – a hot item the school identified through student feedback. The second quarter offered AirPods. The third marking period targets gift certificates, and the end-of-year raffle traditionally includes a television. Some students adopt a spend-as-you-go strategy, purchasing small items weekly and buying a few raffle tickets on the side. Others bank their points all quarter, converting everything into raffle entries for a shot at the big prize.

The two-tier system – weekly store for immediate gratification, quarterly raffle for long-term saving – mirrors the same financial literacy dynamics that emerge naturally in a point economy. Students learn to weigh the value of a beanie now against the chance of winning AirPods later, making real decisions about delayed gratification without a formal lesson on the topic.

Make the Days Count

Payne is candid about the fact that the system is not perfect. Buy-in remains an ongoing project – some teachers still need reminders to increase the number of points they are handing out. The Tier 1 team meets monthly to plan events, and PBIS coaches handle the logistics of larger celebrations throughout the year.

One of those celebrations is the Mini-THON, a tradition modeled after Penn State’s famous THON dance marathon. Schools across Huntingdon County organize their own versions to raise funds for local families facing health crises or other hardships. The PBIS team and coaches help organize the middle school’s event, channeling the positive culture the school has built inward toward the broader community.

The everyday moments matter just as much to Payne. He describes walking through the hallway and watching a student pick up a piece of trash without being asked, or seeing students hold doors for one another, or noticing kids wipe down their cafeteria table whether or not they made the mess. These small behaviors have become routine – evidence that the BEARCATS expectations have moved from posters on the wall into the daily habits of the student body.

Payne’s billboard message for every principal borrows a line from a former superintendent whose sign still stands by the district office: don’t count the days, make the days count. For Huntingdon Area Middle School – now three years into state-recognized PBIS fidelity and still building – that is exactly what they are doing.