How to Help a Young Student With a Drug Problem

Organizational Analysis: Defining Your General Organizational Realities for the Case Study The structure of the organization is hierarchical and pyramidal with a two-way flow that allows that communication from bottom-up and from top-down to be implemented. The chain of command is indicated in the following: the principal is at the top, followed by the vice-principal. Under the vice-principal are the counselors, guidance committee, academic deans of various subjects, department heads of special educations and of all grade levels, faculty/staff, and finally students.

The formal authority in the organization is the principal and administrators, all of whom are overseen by the board of directors. Economic authority rests with the board of directors; they assume legal, contractual and collegial authority, although in the daily monitoring of business affairs, the school HR is responsible for hiring, contracting, and financial affairs. The board merely operates as an oversight committee.

The span of control in the organization is based on tenure-track services; all faculty members report to academic deans and department heads once a week for teachers' meetings, and these reports are filed with the principal's staff. There are four levels of management in the school: the principal level, the dean/department head level, the teacher level, and the staff/administration level. The departmentalization structures of the organization consist of administrators, counselors, deans, humanities, maths, sciences, special education, trade, health, and sports.

These departments are structured with heads/leaders, teachers, assistants, and staff, and the whole report through the head to the principal level. Decisions are being made at teachers' meetings in a democratic fashion in the form of recommendations, which are then passed to the principal level for ratification; if approval from the oversight committee is needed, decisions are passed to the board of directors for confirmation.

On the centralized continuum, major administrative decisions are made by the principal -- these regard teachers' freedoms in the classroom, hours for meetings, requirements for testing, and disciplinary actions; in terms of the decentralized continuum, a teacher is free to conduct his/her classroom in a manner that is of his/her choice so long as it falls within the parameters of guidance given by the principal and the oversight committee.

In terms of disciplinary action, the guidelines for assessing behavioral situations and/or functional behavioral assessments is stipulated by the board and allows teachers the room to recommend actions; but for suspensions given by the principal level, board stipulates automatic behavioral assessment implementation in line with the nationwide research on the subject (Chandler, Dahlquist, 2014; Drasgoq et al., 1999; Sugai et al., 2000). Staff/line distinctions are made in the organization and these are clearly outlined within the departmental structure, meetings, and overall organization communication flow.

With regard to James in the case study, the primary level at which intervention begins is in the decentralized level of the faculty/teacher(s) who deal directly with James in the classroom and who will make recommendations for his high school teachers/administrators in the file that goes with him to the next academic level.

The teachers will makes observations and record their data in the file, which will be used for the functional behavioral assessment that the school will rely upon going forward in order to best understand how to help James. The functional behavioral assessment is not used to determine manifest determination but rather to identify the reasons for the behavior -- and this is achieved through observation, interviews with James, family members, teachers, staff and administrators.

Every level of the organization is thus involved in the process of helping James, which is in line with the IDEA concept promoted by the Department of Education and which encourages a school to utilize all tools at its disposal to address the needs of struggling students (Chandler, Dahlquist, 2014).

By viewing the organization as an organism that lives and breathes and that depends upon the whole of its parts working together to affect a positive outcome, the organization can better apply itself to the principles of IDEA, No Child Left Behind, and the general spirit put forward by the Department of Education in helping young students like James to overcome obstacles.

As Morgan (2006) points out, the organization can take a cue from nature and allow for contingency theory to play a part in the intervention designed to assist James in the coming years.

The notion of establishing shared futures, in which the organization as a whole depends upon the well-being of James (which thus posits that James is part of the organization, as a student, and that he is not someone who should be marginalized or discarded), the school can rise to the challenge of assisting him and employing teachers, faculty and department heads along with the counselor to see which options are best for James.

This would necessarily include obtaining assistance from his family, parents/guardians, and friends -- as it is important that a suitable support structure be established that can assist James when he is not in school. The goal of the organization is therefore to reach and extend outside the sphere of its immediate influence and provide guidance and support in the life of the organization's members at all times -- not just when within the walls of the school.

The decisions to be made regarding James and his situation with drugs, socioeconomic background and development in the coming years are to be made by an independent functional assessment committee in accordance with the board's functional behavioral assessment (FSB) guidelines. This committee is responsible for gathering the relevant data on James, interviewing teachers, making observations, obtaining assistance from family members, and involving future teachers, faculty, staff, counselors and administrators at the high school level in the process of devising a best course scenario for James so that he.