Author: Jeremy Braun, Academic Dean Status: Funding Proposal — Draft for Development Review Date: May 2026
KP Restore is a structured alternative-to-expulsion track that pairs a defined period of virtual learning with restorative work — acts of service, apologies, and accountability conditions — that a student must complete to return to in-person learning at Kingdom Prep. A dedicated Director of Restorative Practices leads the program and builds positive school culture between cases.
Kingdom Prep has a discipline-driven attrition pattern that is structural, not anomalous. The 2025-26 academic year, through May, illustrates the scope:
For comparison, AY 2024-25 saw 20 total departures. This year is approximately 2.35× last year, which makes the pattern more visible but does not change its character — every year since the school opened, KP has lost 15-20+ students primarily through the discipline lever. Across that history, the school has been treating an estimated $200,000-$260,000 of annual revenue erosion as a fact of life.
Backfill does not close the gap. Per-pupil funding is paid in two installments — the third Friday of September and the third Friday of January. A backfilled student arriving between September and January receives only the second payment ($6,500); a student arriving after January generates no funding for the current year. Backfill is structurally lossy and assumes a steady inflow of similarly-positioned applicants who themselves carry attrition risk. The pattern is discipline-driven exit → partial or no backfill recovery → repeat next year.
KP's stated 5-year goal is to grow enrollment to 300 students. The math for that goal forces the question:
KP Restore is not primarily a deficit-mitigation program. It is a precondition for the growth strategy. The 300-student target is not realistically achievable through recruitment alone given the current discipline-driven attrition pattern. Reducing that attrition is the structural lever.
Sized against this year's 31 KP-Restore-eligible cases, broken out by per-pupil-funding timing tier:
| Timing tier | Cases this year | Revenue impact today | Revenue capturable per kid retained |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-1st-Friday-Sept (Aug) | 2 | $0 received | $13,000 (full year) |
| Sept-Jan window | 17 | $6,500 received; 2nd payment lost on expulsion | $6,500 (current-year) |
| Post-3rd-Friday-Jan (Feb-May) | 12 | Both payments received; no current-year impact | $0 current-year, $13,000 next-year baseline |
Annual revenue recovery at modeled retention rates:
| Retention rate | Current-year recovery | Next-year baseline preservation | Combined annual benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40% | ~$54,000 | ~$73,000 | ~$127,000 |
| 50% | ~$68,000 | ~$91,000 | ~$159,000 |
| 60% | ~$82,000 | ~$109,000 | ~$191,000 |
Two configurations are evaluated. Both include the Director position; they differ in whether a dedicated facility is part of the program design.
Option A — Director + home office anchor (virtual-primary)
The Director operates from a dedicated office in the school building. Students complete their restoration period primarily at home, with structured daily in-person check-ins at the school building.
| Cost item | Annual estimate |
|---|---|
| Director salary | $50,000–$65,000 |
| Benefits (~20%) | $10,000–$13,000 |
| Program materials & platform | $3,000–$5,000 |
| Total annual cost | ~$63,000–$83,000 |
| Retention rate | Revenue preserved | Net margin |
|---|---|---|
| 40% | $127,000 | +$44K to +$64K |
| 50% | $159,000 | +$76K to +$96K |
| 60% | $191,000 | +$108K to +$128K |
Option B — Director + convent facility ($4,000/month, as-is)
The Director operates from the convent property, which serves as a dedicated KP Restore space — daily check-in anchor point, counseling sessions, and restorative-work coordination. No renovation is required for the current proposed use. Students complete virtual learning at home but report to the facility for structured daily touchpoints.
| Cost item | Annual estimate |
|---|---|
| Director salary | $50,000–$65,000 |
| Benefits (~20%) | $10,000–$13,000 |
| Convent facility lease | $48,000 |
| Program materials & platform | $3,000–$5,000 |
| Total annual cost | ~$111,000–$131,000 |
| Retention rate | Revenue preserved | Net margin |
|---|---|---|
| 40% | $127,000 | -$4K to +$16K (approximately break-even) |
| 50% | $159,000 | +$28K to +$48K |
| 60% | $191,000 | +$60K to +$80K |
Summary: Option A is cash-positive at any modeled retention rate above 40%. Option B reaches positive return at approximately 45-50% retention. The facility provides a visible, dedicated physical presence that may itself improve retention outcomes by signaling program seriousness to students and families; this is a judgment call for leadership.
The current ladder is binary: a student commits an expellable offense and is expelled, with the family's only recourse being an appeal to the school board, which then decides whether to overturn. There is no structured intermediate path between in-school suspension and expulsion.
Two failures recur:
The "free first incident" lesson. Students have learned that the path is: commit the offense, get expelled, appeal to the board, return. The current system is performatively tough but substantively soft — loud at the front end, reversible at the back end. The deterrent value of the policy has eroded because students and families have learned the consequence is theatrical.
The board operates with thinner context than the leadership team. The board is heterogeneous by design (staff, parent, outside members), which is appropriate for governance. But that diversity comes at a cost in discipline reviews: board members are reviewing decisions removed from the day-to-day operational and relational context. They cannot know about a recent staffing change in a particular hallway, or the specific history between two students, or the supervision gap that contributed to the incident. The current process puts the substantive decision at a level removed from where the context lives.
KP Restore relocates the substantive discipline decision from the board (reactive, context-thin) to the leadership team (proactive, context-rich), and replaces the performative-tough/substantively-soft current pattern with a structured-and-unavoidable consequence.
KP Restore is designed to carry weight in the school's culture — known to students, felt by the student inside it, and unmistakable to the community watching from the outside. This is a feature, not a side effect.
For the student in KP Restore: the program must be experienced as serious, structured, and inescapable — not as an extended break or an informal process that fades into the background. The daily schedule, the supervision structure, the counseling sessions, the service work, and the behavioral contract are all designed to be substantive enough that the student knows they are in something. The structured re-entry period, and the fact that re-entry is earned rather than automatic, reinforces this at the back end.
For the broader student body: the program should be commonly understood as a major process that a student goes through — not hidden or euphemized away. Students should know it exists, know that it is not easy, and understand that it is the consequence for expellable behavior. A program with cultural presence has deterrent value before a single incident is processed through it. A program run quietly in the background has none.
The Director is the primary steward of this cultural presence. The way the Director talks about the program to students and staff, the way the re-entry process is conducted, and the way re-entry students are held to a different standard during the structured re-entry period all shape how the program is perceived by the community.
Uniform: white shirts until colors are earned back
KP already has a shared cultural vocabulary for this. During Leadership Term, all new students wear white shirts until they complete their rites of passage and earn their school colors. KP Restore draws on that same framework: students in the program wear white shirts. They are in the process of earning their way back.
This is not a punishment uniform — it is a cultural statement with shared meaning across the school community. Every KP student already knows what white shirts mean. No explanation is required. The visual distinction gives the program presence without stigma, and frames what the student is doing as a process of becoming worthy of the colors again rather than a sentence being served.
Re-entry, accordingly, is the moment when the student gets their colors back. The Director's re-entry meeting is designed as a ceremony: the Director presents the completed restoration plan, delivers the re-entry recommendation, and — with the student's family present — returns the student to their school colors. This moment is worth building with care. A student who earns their way back through a meaningful process is more likely to honor what that means than one who simply reappears after an appeal was approved.
KP Restore applies to expellable offenses where KP would otherwise make a decision to remove a student. It does not apply to students or families who choose to disengage — students who refuse to attend, families who voluntarily transfer to another school, families who relocate, transportation losses, or graduation. Those are family- or student-level decisions outside the program's scope.
This boundary is principled, not pragmatic: KP Restore is an intervention into KP's own decisions, not a recovery program for cases where the decision rests with the family.
Default-yes, with named exceptions plus a discretion clause.
KP Restore is the default response for any expellable offense, with the following exceptions:
The written-rationale requirement on (5) is deliberate: it forces transparent, named reasoning for any exclusion outside categories (1)-(4) and protects the program from drift toward arbitrary exclusion.
A family may decline participation in KP Restore. A decline returns the case to the current pathway — expulsion with right to appeal to the board.
Decision authority sits with a small, trained panel.
The restoration plan is two-sided: student-side restorative work + institutional-side debrief. Both must complete before re-entry is finalized.
Student-side: seven components. Every KP Restore case includes:
Institutional-side: the leadership-team debrief. A 20-minute leadership-team review of what supervision, staffing, or operational gap contributed to the incident, with named adjustments recorded as part of the case file. Co-accountability is a defining design principle: the school also examines its own contribution when a discipline incident occurs.
During the restoration period, the student is removed from in-person instruction but remains enrolled, on KP rosters, and on per-pupil funding. Coursework continues via a virtual-learning platform.
Two configurations for the physical space component are evaluated:
Option A — Director's office as anchor point The Director operates from a dedicated office within the school building. Students report daily for structured check-ins and restorative-work coordination, then complete virtual learning from home.
Option B — Convent/dorm facility ($4,000/month, as-is) The convent property serves as a dedicated KP Restore space — the Director's base of operations, daily check-in anchor, and location for counseling sessions and restorative-work coordination. No renovation is required for the proposed use.
The key programmatic advantage of Option B over Option A is supervised virtual learning. Under Option A, students complete coursework from home between daily check-ins. Under Option B, students report to the facility and complete virtual coursework on-site, under adult supervision, during the school day. This eliminates the variables that undermine home-based virtual learning: students who should be doing coursework at 10 AM can instead be doing other things — the convent facility removes that ambiguity entirely. For a discipline-intervention program, this distinction matters. The program's credibility depends in part on whether students experience it as a real, structured consequence, and a supervised facility makes that tangible in a way that home-based work does not.
Both options include the following supervision structure, which ensures the program does not become unsupervised home time:
The Director is the operating spine of KP Restore. This role makes the program administratively viable and structurally durable — without a dedicated person, the program falls into leadership-team workload and eventually fails to execute at a consistent standard.
Position summary
The Director of Restorative Practices & Student Success reports directly to the Principal and carries a dual mandate: administering KP Restore when cases are active, and building positive culture within the school when they are not. The Director's authority is clearly bounded: intake is owned by administration (Principal + AP/Dean of Culture decide whether a student enters KP Restore); re-entry is owned by the Director (the Director certifies program completion and authorizes the student's return to the school community). Everything in between — logistics, documentation, teacher communication, family contact, service-work coordination, counselor partnership, and daily supervision — is also the Director's domain.
The Director also serves as the school's primary point of contact for families who are disengaging for reasons outside discipline — transportation, financial pressure, school-fit concerns — and troubleshoots retention solutions at the family level before those situations become departures.
Essential duties
Program administration (when cases are active) - Convene and coordinate the decision panel at intake; manage case file documentation throughout the restoration period - Serve as single point of contact for the student and family during KP Restore — daily contact, progress tracking, schedule coordination - Manage the teacher-communication layer: brief weekly check-ins (5-10 minutes per teacher per active case) to route assignments, track completion, and flag issues back to instructional staff so teachers do not have to individually manage a student who is not in their classroom - Coordinate the 20-40 hours of service work — confirming host placements, tracking hours, verifying completion - Facilitate the re-entry meeting and prepare the re-entry presentation process - Maintain program records, case outcomes, and retention data for quarterly reporting
Proactive culture & prevention (between active cases) - Relationship-building with students, faculty, and staff — present in hallways, classrooms, and common spaces as a known, trusted adult face - Early-intervention outreach for students showing behavioral or academic risk signals, before situations escalate to the discipline level - Peer-mediation and conflict-resolution programming in partnership with counseling staff - Training and reinforcement for staff on restorative-practice principles, supporting the existing four trained staff members
Family engagement & retention - Proactive outreach to families showing signs of disengagement — attendance patterns, communication gaps, unresolved logistical concerns - Troubleshoot solutions for families weighing departure for reasons outside discipline: transportation coordination, referrals to community resources, connection to financial assistance, scheduling accommodations - Serve as an accessible, relationship-based point of contact for families who may not feel comfortable going directly to administration
Mid-year transfer onboarding KP frequently receives applications from students mid-semester — students who left their previous school for a variety of reasons and are looking to start at KP before the next natural entry point. The current answer is typically "start at semester 2" or "start at summer school," which loses students who are ready to enroll now.
The Director's infrastructure supports a lighter onboarding track for these students using the same framework: the student arrives in a white shirt and earns their school colors over a structured 2-4 week period. The Director serves as their dedicated integration adult — daily check-ins, counselor introductions, teacher coordination — and the earning-colors ceremony at the end marks a genuine moment of belonging rather than a bureaucratic first day.
No separate program name is required. The Director knows the difference between a restoration case and an onboarding case and manages the case file accordingly. The shared infrastructure — white shirts, Director attention, earning colors — does the work without needing two distinct programs. The practical effect for families: KP's answer to a mid-year application is no longer "wait" but "we have a structured start for your student and they'll be in their colors within a month."
Collaboration with counseling staff
KP's two counselors are embedded within the program — they are not administrative decision-makers in it. The Director provides the structure that channels the counselors' work and expands their reach. Left without that structure, counselor work tends toward low-volume one-on-one contact with a narrow slice of students. The Director changes that by creating explicit assignments, schedules, and accountability touchpoints.
Case assignment When a student enters KP Restore, the Director assigns the case to a specific counselor — not whoever happens to be available, but a deliberate match based on the student's needs, the counselor's existing relationship with the student or family, and current caseload balance. The assigned counselor owns the relational and pastoral work for that case for its duration.
Session schedule The Director sets a session cadence for each case — typically 2 sessions per week during the first two weeks, then 1 per week through re-entry. The Director tracks whether sessions are occurring, not by sitting in on them, but by reviewing the case file and following up directly with the counselor if sessions lapse. Counselors do not manage their own KP Restore calendar; the Director coordinates it.
Shared case file The assigned counselor documents a brief summary after each session — not full clinical notes, but enough for the Director to know: how is the student engaging? Are there signals worth flagging? Is the student on track? The Director uses this to shape the re-entry recommendation. The counselor uses the case file to stay current on what the Director is seeing in the daily schedule.
Weekly alignment check-in The Director holds a 15-minute check-in with each counselor on their active KP Restore cases every week. Agenda: student engagement, any family dynamics to flag, whether the counseling sessions component is on pace, and whether any case needs a schedule adjustment. This gives the counselors a regular accountability touchpoint and keeps the Director from making re-entry calls without relational input from the counselor.
Re-entry input The assigned counselor participates in the re-entry meeting and provides a verbal readiness assessment from a relational and pastoral perspective before the Director's re-entry recommendation is finalized. This is not a veto — the Director makes the call — but the Director's recommendation is explicitly informed by the counselor's read of the student.
Proactive culture work (between active cases) The Director also coordinates the counselors' work outside of active cases: peer-mediation groups, small-group sessions with at-risk students, classroom visits, and any all-school programming tied to character and community. The goal is to expand counselor reach beyond the one-at-a-time model by pairing them with programmatic structures the Director creates and manages. The Director identifies where counselor expertise can be scaled; the counselors deliver the relational content.
This structure keeps each role doing what it does best. The counselors' time is protected for student-facing work; the Director carries the administrative and coordination load that currently falls into no one's hands.
Qualifications
Compensation
Estimated range: $50,000–$65,000 annually depending on experience, plus standard benefits. Given the program's projected net margin ($76K-$96K at 50% retention under Option A), the Director position is self-funding at modest retention performance.
Under Option B, students report to the convent facility after regular school begins and dismiss before regular school ends. This maintains a clear separation between the KP Restore cohort and the general student population — same institution, different daily rhythm — which serves both the program's structure and the student's sense of entering a distinct, consequence-bearing environment.
The Director opens and closes each day. The schedule builds in all four required components: spiritual formation, academic, general character, and offense-specific restorative work.
| Time | Block | Component |
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:20 AM | Director check-in | Director greets students; brief accountability review — yesterday's commitments, today's plan, any family updates |
| 9:20 – 9:50 AM | Spiritual formation | Led by the counselor with a Master's in spiritual formation, coordinated by the Director. Devotional or reflection rooted in Scripture tied to the themes of the student's restoration plan (forgiveness, accountability, community, restoration). Journaling component feeds into the written accountability reflection. On days when the counselor is not on-site, the Director holds this block. |
| 9:50 – 11:05 AM | Academic block 1 | Structured virtual coursework, on-site under Director supervision; platform tracks engagement and submission |
| 11:05 – 11:20 AM | Break | |
| 11:20 AM – 12:20 PM | Academic block 2 | Continued coursework; assignment submissions logged |
| 12:20 – 12:50 PM | Lunch | |
| 12:50 – 1:45 PM | Character & restoration work | Rotating content based on where the student is in their plan (see below) |
| 1:45 – 2:00 PM | Director close-out | Review of day's work, preview of tomorrow, Director completes required family-contact verification |
| 2:00 PM | Dismissal | Students leave before regular school dismissal |
Character & restoration block — rotating content
General character work (throughout the program) Curriculum focused on responsibility, community, and integrity — appropriate to KP's Lutheran context. Structured discussion, journaling, and reflection activities. The counselor with a Master's in spiritual formation is the primary lead for this block when present, bringing her academic background to bear on the character-formation component. She visits 2-3 times per week on a schedule coordinated by the Director.
Specific restorative work (tied to offense and behavioral history) Content is individualized based on the student's case file and offense pattern: - Fight / repeated conflict: conflict-resolution curriculum, peer-mediation training, mentoring or community-building activity - Drug offense: substance-awareness programming, accountability structure work, connection to recovery community resources - Theft / property offense: restoration-plan work with the affected party, community-stewardship hours, financial-responsibility component if relevant - Pattern of disruption: behavioral root-cause reflection, habit-formation work, structured mentorship pairing
No two students' programs are identical. The Director uses the written accountability reflection and the student's behavioral history to shape this block's content for each case.
A student expelled in late March has 6-8 weeks of in-person school left to return to, which may be insufficient time to complete a meaningful restoration plan. For late-year cases, the restoration plan includes a summer continuation path: work continues June-July, with re-entry to the next academic year contingent on completion before fall start. This is a mechanical adjustment for timing, not an eligibility filter — late-year cases enter KP Restore on the same terms as early-year cases.
For staff and skeptical parents:
For the board and development:
Discipline philosophy and approach 1. Tell me about a time you worked with someone who had genuinely harmed their community. What did restoration actually look like — and how did you know it was real versus performative? 2. Where's the line, in your view, between a genuine second chance and enabling someone to avoid accountability? What does that look like in practice? 3. What's your honest reaction to a student who commits the same type of offense twice?
Organization and coordination 4. Describe a situation where you were coordinating multiple people's work toward one outcome. How did you track whether it was actually happening — not just whether people said it was? 5. One of your assigned counselors missed two scheduled sessions with a student in the program without telling you. How do you handle that? 6. You have three students in the program simultaneously — each at a different stage, different teachers to communicate with, different service placements. Walk me through how you'd manage that week.
Credibility with students 7. What's a situation where you had to earn trust from someone who had every reason not to trust you or the institution you worked for? How long did it take, and what did you do? 8. A student tells you privately that they completed the service hours but they genuinely don't think they did anything wrong. What do you do with that?
Credibility with staff 9. Some teachers will believe a returning student is just going to cause problems again. How do you address that with a teacher before the student walks back into their classroom? 10. A teacher comes to you after re-entry and says, "I told you he wasn't ready." What do you do?
Faith and mission 11. How has your faith shaped the way you think about accountability or restoration in your professional work? 12. KP is a Lutheran school — pastoral care and academic accountability exist in the same space here. How do you think about that combination?
Judgment on hard cases 13. Three weeks into the program, you believe a student is complying technically but not engaging in good faith. The work is done on paper. What do you do? 14. A family is threatening to pull their student from the program entirely — but the student is actually making progress. How do you handle the family?
Scenario 1: Day 1 with a resistant student A 10th-grader was expelled for fighting — his third fight in two years. He's angry, dismissive, and makes clear he plans to "do what he has to do" to get back in school. You're meeting him for the first time.
What the panel is watching for: Does the candidate name what they're seeing? Can they hold structure without being punitive? Do they communicate clearly that this program cannot be faked through — and do it in a way the student actually hears?
Scenario 2: A counselor who isn't holding up her end You're six weeks in. One of the counselors has missed two of three weekly check-ins and her session notes in the case files are minimal or blank. A student's re-entry recommendation is due in 10 days and you don't have a clear picture of where he stands relationally.
What the panel is watching for: Does the candidate address this directly or work around it? Can they hold a colleague accountable without having the authority to discipline them? Do they protect the student's timeline while resolving the issue?
Scenario 3: A skeptical teacher One of the school's strongest teachers — high expectations, very direct — comes to you before a re-entry meeting and says: "I don't think this student is ready to come back into my classroom. He's never respected me and I don't expect that's changed."
What the panel is watching for: Does the candidate validate the concern without caving to it? Can they present the student's progress honestly, including what's still uncertain? Do they commit to specific follow-through rather than empty reassurance?
Scenario 4: Compliance without ownership Week 3. The accountability reflection is technically complete — correct words, right length — but reads like a checklist with no real ownership. In the daily check-in the student says: "I did everything I was supposed to. When am I going back?"
What the panel is watching for: Does the candidate name what they see in the reflection directly to the student? Can they push back constructively? Do they have a concrete next step — or just "you need to do better"?
Scenario 5: Director-counselor disagreement on re-entry A student in the program is struggling. The counselor assigned to his case believes he needs more time before re-entry. You review the completion criteria and believe they are technically met. You're both in the room.
What the panel is watching for: Can the candidate hold their own judgment while genuinely incorporating the counselor's relational read? Do they know when to defer and when not to? How do they make the call — and communicate it?