Building a District Where Every Student Is Known: How North Plainfield Made Relationships a System
North Plainfield School District was never short on care.
Walk into any classroom three years ago and you would have found teachers who knew their students, showed up every day, and genuinely wanted the best for them. But across six schools and thousands of students, district leaders began to notice that the experience students had depended too heavily on the classroom they happened to be in.
In some classrooms, relationships were intentional and visible. Students started the day with morning meetings, teachers built community proactively, and conflict became an opportunity for learning. In others, those same practices were absent. And after a full year together, many students still couldn’t say much about the classmates sitting beside them.
“At the end of the year, students didn’t know a lot about each other,” says Assistant Superintendent Filipe Luis. “Trying to create opportunities for them to connect became really important.”
For a district serving an exceptionally diverse student population, that gap mattered. North Plainfield didn’t need more caring adults so much as it needed a consistent system for building community across every school and classroom.
The Heart of the Challenge
The challenge also looked different depending on the age group.
At the middle and high school levels, the disconnect often showed up between students and staff. When conflict happened, it frequently ended with detention, removal from class, or another consequence that resolved the immediate situation but left the relationship unchanged.
“There was a need for relationship-building, helping teachers understand the student’s state of mind and vice versa,” says Luis.
At the elementary level, the picture looked different. Students generally felt supported by adults, and climate survey data reflected that. The bigger concern was how students interacted with one another. Staff wanted students to build stronger peer relationships, resolve conflict more constructively, and develop interpersonal skills that would carry into middle school and beyond.
There were teachers who were already doing this work exceptionally well. Some classrooms naturally incorporated reflective conversations and caring activities. The issue was consistency.
“Some teachers were already doing things like Circle Time and First Five-type routines, but it wasn’t happening systemically.”
From Pockets of Practice to Districtwide Commitment
District leaders had already begun questioning the limits of punitive discipline, while the teachers’ association was advocating for restorative approaches. At the same time, leaders like Lucas had firsthand experience with restorative approaches and believed they could work at scale if implemented thoughtfully.
After vetting multiple partners, the district chose Edtomorrow because leaders were looking for more than a short-term training program. They wanted a thought partner that could help build consistency across schools and sustain the work over time.
“We felt like we were in a solid place. The question was: who will help us grow and bring uniformity?”
The rollout was intentionally slow and deliberate. Administrators trained together first, followed by the creation of school-based implementation teams that could train teachers and support the work internally. The district piloted practices in select classrooms during the spring semester of 2024 before launching districtwide the following fall.
That pacing was intentional. Leaders wanted teachers to have time to practice and adapt before additional layers were introduced.
“We wanted to set people up for success,” says Lucas.
What It Looks Like in Practice
Today, relationship-building in North Plainfield is embedded into the structure of the school day rather than left to individual teachers to figure out on their own.
At the elementary level, every classroom begins with a morning meeting that includes the First Five, Edtomorrow’s free daily resource, delivered to educators’ inboxes every morning with 20+ ready-to-use activities: memes, discussion questions, mindfulness moments, quotes, and more. Teachers don’t have to build from scratch or scramble before the bell. They take what fits their students that day and go.
Classroom Circles now happen regularly across schools and are used for everything from community-building to conversations about test anxiety and peer conflict.
“Students are used to circles as a form of communication,” says Lucas. “It’s become a method we use for many different things throughout the year.”
The impact is often most visible among students who previously stayed quiet. Teachers describe students who once passed during every round now volunteering stories, suggesting discussion topics, and participating more comfortably with their peers.
“Some of the kids who typically aren’t vocal now have an opportunity to share something. That’s connection.”
The work also extends beyond homeroom classrooms. Specials teachers, administrators, and high school departments all participate intentionally, helping students experience consistent relationship-building practices throughout the day without making the routines feel repetitive.
When Discipline Becomes Learning
One of the biggest early concerns was whether focusing on relationships would come at the expense of accountability.
District leaders addressed that directly. Restorative practices, they emphasized, do not eliminate consequences. Instead, they change the way adults approach conflict and what students are expected to learn from it.
That process, which North Plainfield calls reflect and repair, starts with a few simple questions: What happened? Why did it happen? Who was impacted?
Students are not always ready for those conversations immediately. Sometimes the reflection happens later that day or even the next morning.
“They think about how it impacted others and can discuss it,” says Lucas. “That’s the type of growth we are working toward.”
Recently, two fourth graders had a recess conflict that quickly spread beyond the original disagreement. Instead of handling the situation solely between the two students, the assistant principal brought the two entire classes together in a circle to process what had happened as a community. One of the students’ parents later reached out to express appreciation for how the situation had been handled.
The Results
The district has seen measurable improvements in both student behavior and school climate over the past three years.
Chronic absenteeism decreased by approximately 3%, while detentions dropped 8% and overall student incidents declined 5% in the last year alone. District leaders believe those outcomes reflect more than improved compliance. They point to stronger relationships, greater consistency across classrooms, and a growing sense of student connection to school.
Those improvements were supported by intentional scheduling changes that made relationship-building part of the school day rather than an optional add-on. Dedicated time for First Five and Circles was built into schedules across grade levels, helping create more consistent student experiences across classrooms and schools.
Staff say the deeper shift, however, is harder to capture in spreadsheets.
Teachers describe fewer power struggles and more productive conversations with students. Students participate more freely, particularly those who previously struggled to find their voice in class. And in a district as diverse as North Plainfield, staff are excited that students are learning about each other’s families, cultures, humor, and interests in ways that rarely happened before.
“Those small things make a real difference,” says Luis.
District leaders believe those daily interactions ultimately shape whether students feel connected to school and whether they want to be there.
From Initiative to Identity
From the beginning, district leaders designed the work with sustainability in mind. Implementation teams helped build internal capacity, while new staff members continue to receive onboarding and support as they enter the district.
What began as a district initiative has increasingly become part of North Plainfield’s identity. As Luis says, “If it’s not at the forefront, it becomes a choice rather than a commitment. It has to be who you are.”
What North Plainfield built across six schools wasn’t the result of perfect conditions or unlimited resources. It was the result of deciding that connection was the foundation. If a system for knowing every student can take hold here, the question worth asking is what it might look like in yours.
