Pittsburgh Arlington PreK-8 public school had a major behavior problem on its hands. With just 360 students enrolled, the school saw more than 130 fights in the 2024-25 school year. Many of the kids who weren’t suspended for violence were chronically absent.
The school also couldn’t hold on to a principal, going through four in just a couple of years.
Finally, school leadership decided to take action.
Principal and staff begin making major changes
Principal Crystal Caldwell and her leadership staff knew they had to do something. The reputation of the school had reached rock bottom.
“Arlington’s history has been a school of violence, and ‘Oh, don’t send your kid there,’” she told TribLive.
Step one was increasing communication. Caldwell and supporting staff began having “safety huddles” every morning with teachers in order to identify potential conflicts before they exploded into physical fights.
Some days that might mean pulling an irritable student aside for counseling or keeping a watchful eye out for kids who are showing signs of struggling at home. All of the staff banded together to keep these little problems from boiling over.
They also began leaning into a concept known as “restorative practices.” Whenever possible, it replaces traditional punishments like detention and suspension with actions that help repair the harm the student caused in the school community. A student might have to clean the hallway if they vandalized it, or apologize and talk it out when they’ve had a conflict with another student.
“We let the kids talk it out, and they come up with their own way to apologize and say how they will do better,” Caldwell told TribLive. “They need a moment of knowing it’s OK to make mistakes, but knowing they can learn from it.”
But perhaps the most interesting change Caldwell and her team enacted was ripped right out of the pages of Harry Potter.
Harry Potter-inspired ‘house’ system builds community among students
In Harry Potter, students at the magical wizarding school of Hogwarts are sorted into houses upon their arrival—Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and of course, Gryffindor. It’s like a little team with its very own mascot, virtues, and color scheme. Students can earn or lose points for their house throughout the year in an epic competition with the other houses.
It’s an idea taken from real-life British boarding schools, and it’s now making its way into American public schools as evidenced by Pittsburgh Arlington.
The house system builds community and belonging for students. Competing against the other houses via good behavior also creates a built-in reward system that the students love.
After 130 fights at Pittsburgh Arlington in 2024, last school year there were only 10. That’s right, just 10 fights after implementing safety huddles, the house system, and other changes. That’s an absolutely incredible turnaround for a school that was on the brink.
House system is making a difference in schools all over the country
Houses have been so effective in Pittsburgh that the public school district is now rolling the program out to dozens of schools.
It’s also being used in nearby Duquesne City Schools where the district has reported a 74% drop in student disciplinary incidents since implementing houses.
Union County public schools in North Carolina are utilizing a similar system at about a dozen elementary schools. And that’s not even including the many individual schools around the country that are taking matters into their own hands to try out the clever idea from the wizarding world.
There are a lot of mechanisms hidden inside the house system that make it incredibly effective at engaging students. For starters, all kids find a sense of belonging and loyalty to their house just by the simple act of being sorted. Students are sorted into houses across different grades, so a natural mentorship arrangement often arises where older students can help younger students. Positive, pro-social behavior also becomes gamified via friendly competition.
Having a house system has been shown to reduce bullying, lower the number of fights and suspensions, and even improve academic performance across the board.
When students are experiencing homelessness or extreme poverty, violence in the streets on which they live, hunger, and more, they often act out and struggle in school.
But along with other schools around the country, Pittsburgh Arlington is proving that it’s still possible to make school a safe, welcoming place even when the world outside is anything but—and that can make all the difference.
