KP Restore — Concept Document (Draft v1)

One-line frame

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.

Why now: the structural problem KP Restore addresses

Kingdom Prep has a discipline-driven attrition pattern that is structural, not anomalous. The 2025-26 academic year, through May, illustrates the scope:

• Year began with 200 students vs. budgeted 220 (a $260,000 under-enrollment shortfall vs. budget on under-enrollment alone, at ~$13,000 per-pupil funding).
• Through May: roster sits at 174 students.
• Total student departures this year: 47 (33 KP-Restore-eligible discipline cases + 14 family-decision cases that fall outside this program's scope).
• Discipline-driven loss accelerated late-year: 11 expulsions in March (3/2-3/23), with 4 more from a pair of fights on Tuesday, May 5.

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.

The strategic case (the most important frame)

KP's stated 5-year goal is to grow enrollment to 300 students. The math for that goal forces the question:

• Current state: 174 students. Need to add 126 net students over 5 years = +25 net/year.
• At current attrition (~47 departures/year): KP must recruit 72 students annually just to net the +25 growth. Over 5 years, that requires ~360 successful recruits — and assumes none of them experience the same attrition pattern they're entering, which is unrealistic.
• With KP Restore at a 50% retention rate on the discipline-driven slice (33 expulsion cases this year → ~16 retained): annual attrition drops to ~30 (16 expulsions + 14 family-decision cases held flat). Annual recruitment burden becomes 55 students/year, or ~275 successful recruits over 5 years.
• Difference: ~85 fewer recruits needed across the planning horizon.

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.

The financial case

Sized against this year's 33 KP-Restore-eligible cases, broken out by per-pupil-funding timing tier:

Annual revenue recovery at modeled retention rates:

Even at a conservative 40% retention rate, KP Restore preserves more revenue per year than it costs to operate (estimated 100-300 facilitator hours plus modest materials and external-resource budget). At 50%+, it funds the program with operating margin and could support a part-time RJ-coordinator role from recovered revenue.

The current discipline ladder — and where it falls apart

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

Program design

Scope (what KP Restore does and does not address)

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. Family-disengagement patterns (parent-removal cases, "just stopped coming" cases) likely warrant a separate analysis and intervention, but are out of scope for this concept.

Eligibility

Default-yes, with named exceptions plus a discretion clause.

KP Restore is the default response for any expellable offense, with the following exceptions:

1. Weapons offenses
2. Sexual misconduct or assault
3. Physical attacks on staff
4. Credible threats of violence against named individuals
5. Any other case where the leadership team determines, by written rationale, that participation would create unacceptable safety or community risk

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 panel and governance

Decision authority sits with a small, trained panel.

• Panel composition: Principal + one counselor + a representative voice for any harmed party (when there is one) + the assistant principal as alternate. KP currently has four staff trained in restorative practices (two counselors, principal, assistant principal), which provides scheduling resilience and case rotation.
• Staff voice: all staff who teach the student receive a one-page summary of the work completed and a 48-hour window to surface concerns before the return is finalized. Concerns flow to the panel for consideration; the panel may adjust the return plan but is not bound to a vote.
• Re-entry meeting: the student, family, decision panel, and the student's advisor or mentor convene for the formal return. The student hears the conditions of return and signs a behavioral contract specifying completion criteria, expected behaviors going forward, and the consequence of contract violation (typically, return to the standard expulsion pathway).
• Board role: oversight rather than primary review. Board receives case reports and periodic program-outcome reviews. Board involvement in individual cases is limited to families who decline KP Restore (which returns the case to the current expulsion-and-appeal path) or who fail to complete the program.

Restoration plan structure

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:

1. Written accountability reflection. Not an apology letter — a structured analysis (~3-5 pages) of what happened, what the student did, who was harmed, why it was wrong, and what the student understands differently now. Reviewed by the decision panel.
2. Direct apologies to harmed parties. In-person with a panel facilitator present where possible; written where not (victim declines, threat dynamic, safety reasons). Apologies acknowledge specific harm, not generic regret.
3. Acts of service tied to the offense. 20-40 hours of structured service shaped by the case: - Fight → mentoring younger students, peer-mediation training, community-building work - Drug offense → recovery/awareness programming, substance-education service, community-partnership work - Theft / property offense → restoration to the affected party + community-stewardship hours - Other → service work selected to repair the specific harm done
4. Pastoral / counseling sessions. A series of sessions with the school counselor or pastor. KP's Lutheran faith-formation context is a unique advantage here — the conversations can go deeper than secular school discipline allows.
5. Family engagement component. Parents participate in the re-entry meeting at minimum, plus at least one parent-counselor session during the program. Family participation is a completion criterion, not an optional add-on.
6. Behavioral contract for return. Specific expectations going forward + the consequence of contract violation (return to the standard expulsion pathway). Includes a 30-60 day heightened-observation period after re-entry.
7. Re-entry presentation to the panel. Final step: the student presents what they did and what they learned. Panel decides whether completion criteria are met. Presentation can include harmed parties at panel discretion.

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 (a hallway-coverage change, a duty-roster shift, a mentorship pairing, a building-access modification, etc.) recorded as part of the case file. This is a key feature, not a footnote: it signals that the school is also accountable when discipline incidents occur and protects the program against the "you're going easy on the kid" critique by demonstrating that the institution itself is adjusting to learn from each case. Co-accountability is a defining design principle.

Duration — the time-out window

Hitting three criteria (long enough for the work to be substantive, for the gravity of the situation to register, and for the student body to take notice — short enough that academic catch-up is recoverable and peer relationships don't fracture beyond repair):

• Lower bound: 15 school days (~3 weeks). Sufficient time for the reflection, initial service hours, 2-3 counseling sessions, and apology arrangement. Below this, work is rushed and the gravity element does not land.
• Upper bound: 30 school days (~6 weeks). Outer limit before academic catch-up becomes structurally hard and peer relationships begin to fracture in ways that hurt re-entry.
• Variable within band. Decision panel sets the duration at intake based on offense severity, expected completion pace, and harmed-party readiness. Some cases land at 3 weeks; others at 6.
• Extension provision. The panel may extend by up to 2 weeks if the work is not complete at the upper bound. Extension triggers a contract review with the student and family present. If 8 weeks elapse and the work is still incomplete, that is a signal the program is not working for this case, and the standard expulsion pathway applies.

Virtual learning component — and the supervision case

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.

The on-campus alternative was considered and ruled out for structural reasons:

• Space. The only available space (the convent property) is a residential dormitory — bedrooms, common spaces, garage — not classroom-ready. Conversion to instructional space requires significant renovation: fire-code, accessibility, insurance posture, and physical reconfiguration. Estimated $50,000-$150,000 in capex on top of the lease cost.
• Lease cost. $4,000/month × 12 months = $48,000 annually.
• Staffing. A single staff member cannot supervise 20-30 students arriving on rolling timelines, working across multiple grade levels, on different curricula, with discipline backstories. Realistic minimum is 2 full-time adults (an instructional coordinator plus an RJ-practice supervisor, with rotating panel-member presence). At Milwaukee-market salaries, that is $90,000-$130,000 annually in compensation alone.
• Total program cost on the on-campus model: $200,000-$300,000 per year, exceeding the projected retention benefit ($127,000-$191,000) and making the program net-negative.

Virtual learning is not the cost-cutting choice — it is the only design that makes the program financially viable. The colleague's concern about students at home unsupervised is real, and the program addresses it directly with structured supervision rather than relying on virtual-learning autonomy:

1. Daily structured check-ins. Student reports to school (or a designated location) at 8 AM for a 30-60 minute in-person session: review of yesterday's work, today's plan, brief restorative-practice touch with a panel member. Returns at end of day for verification.
2. Required adult-contact verification. Parent or designated guardian provides signature or text confirmation at multiple points during the day. Failure to verify counts as contract violation.
3. Spot-check provision. Admin or counselor reserves the right to drop in unannounced. Used sparingly, but the right exists and is named.
4. Mentor pairing. Every student in KP Restore is paired with a school-based adult (advisor or counselor) with daily 15-minute contact. Builds accountability and relational continuity.
5. Coursework supervision via platform engagement tracking. Virtual learning is not "log in when you feel like it" — the platform tracks engagement, time-on-task, and work-product submission.
6. Weekly all-panel review. Every student in KP Restore receives a 15-minute panel review each Friday. Status, behavior signals, restoration-work progress. A pattern of disengagement triggers early intervention or contract review.

Together, these six layers sit between the student and unsupervised home time. The home component of the program is the time between daily structured touchpoints — not unsupervised exile.

Late-year (post-Jan) cases — summer continuation path

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.

Strategic positioning

For staff and skeptical parents:

1. It is more rigorous than the status quo, not less. The current path teaches students that consequences are theatrical. KP Restore makes the consequence structured and unavoidable. It is a tightening of the discipline standard, not a loosening.
2. It relocates decisions to where the context lives. The leadership team owns the call, with structured staff input. The board moves to oversight rather than primary review.
3. It protects the institution as well as the student. The institutional-side debrief is the part of the program no purely punitive system contains.

For the board:

1. Strategic-growth frame: the 300-student goal is not achievable on a recruitment-only basis given current attrition. KP Restore is a precondition for growth.
2. Financial-recovery frame: $127,000-$191,000/year preserved revenue at modest retention rates, sufficient to fund the program with operating margin.
3. Multi-year structural pattern: the problem is chronic, not anomalous; the proposed response is structural, not experimental. This pre-empts the "let's pilot it for one year and see" hedge.

Open design questions (to develop in v2)

• Communications strategy — how the program is rolled out to families, students, board, and broader community; messaging for skeptical parents and staff
• Outcome metrics — how we measure whether KP Restore is working (retention rates, recidivism rates, family/staff satisfaction, financial recovery vs. baseline)
• External RJ resource list — vetted Lutheran-network or Wisconsin-based providers for harder cases requiring outside facilitation
• Virtual-learning platform selection — specific platform, engagement-tracking configuration, instructor-of-record arrangement for course continuity
• Summer continuation path operational details — supervision arrangement during summer months, completion verification, fall re-entry process, family-engagement requirements during break
• The March cluster — the 11 expulsions in a 3-week window in March 2026 may represent a specific operational dynamic (Q3-end discipline-review cycle, group-incident cascade, late-year administrative posture). Worth examining whether this cluster is absorbed by the program as designed or needs separate operational attention.
• Specific service-work partnerships — concrete list of service-work hosts (community organizations, internal school programs, mentorship pairings) so the "20-40 hours of service" component has named options rather than being designed case-by-case
• Family-disengagement patterns — separately from KP Restore, the parent-removal and "just stopped coming" cases (currently out-of-scope) likely warrant their own concept document and intervention design

Suggested next steps

1. Leadership team review of this concept document; mark-up and revisions.
2. Concept v2 integrating leadership-team input and developing the open design questions above.
3. Board pre-brief with the strategic-growth and financial-recovery cases, prior to formal proposal.
4. Formal proposal and policy adoption in time for implementation at the start of the 2026-27 academic year, with possibility of late-year piloting if a qualifying case arises before the end of the current year.