(traffic humming) KEYRIS MANZANARES: For the past year, Lynchburg City Schools have taken a new approach when it comes to suspending students.

Instead of serving suspensions at home, Lynchburg City middle and high school students now come to the Restorative Suspension Center at the Amelia Pride House.

ROBERE SANDIFER: I greet 'em every morning I dap 'em up.

'How are you?'

If they're frowning, 'Nope, we're not going in there.

Let's go talk.

What's going on?'

You know what I mean?

Whatever made you mad outside of here, don't bring it in here because I didn't do it to you.

You just have a good day, so.

And it seems that it's contagious.

Guardian is up.

You guys should be all working.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Robere Sandifer gets students ready for the day by playing relaxing music and enforcing a cell phone-free policy.

At the Restorative Suspension Center, students are engaged in all-day programming that helps them complete their classwork so they don't fall behind.

They also focus on resolving conflict, repairing harm, and healing relationships.

ROBERE SANDIFER: You know, I always tell 'em that you can use your past, you know, we all have adverse, you know, things in our past.

You can use it.

You can either use it as an anchor to weigh you down for the rest of your life, or you can use it as stepping stones.

Hindsight, how you think you probably should have handled that role?

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Sandifer says what helps him connect with students is that he's a Lynchburg native who's been in their shoes.

ROBERE SANDIFER: At the end, I think it's just repairing relationships that we have, that they have tarnished with the teachers, with each other.

You know what I mean?

I'm helping them restore all that, everything, restore themselves, you know what I mean?

'Cause a lot of 'em come from backgrounds where they don't have anybody at home helping 'em out, you know, to remind them what they can be.

You know what I mean?

So they're only hearing it here sometimes.

JERETT MARTIN: Whose done a Restorative Circle before?

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Jerett Martin, the center's coordinator, leads a circle that focuses on healing and understanding.

JERETT MARTIN: We're setting some boundaries and guidelines within the circle that transitions to the classroom and transitions to home/life balance, different things like that, that helps the kids.

And then one of the questions that I asked the kids today was, 'What's one of your biggest fears?'

KEYRIS MANZANARES: He also works with students on a game plan that will help them as they transition back to their base school.

JERETT MARTIN: Some students just want you to do small check-ins with them, and bring them treats or rewards because they've been doing so well.

So sometimes we do 21-day challenges where we reward the students for being consecutive for 21 days, and working off some habits that they may need to break.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Dr. Derrick Brown, the Director of Student Services at LCS, says the Restorative Suspension Center is already making a difference.

DERRICK BROWN: 80% of the time, when a student comes over here, they don't return.

So that's much better than the 60% that we were seeing, that they were continuing to get re-suspended.

And additionally, it was really encouraging to see that students aren't coming back for the same offenses.

And so only 10% of the time, students are returning for the same offense.

Whereas, before they were being suspended over and over for the same behaviors and the same referrals.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: Dr. Brown says this program holds students accountable, while also sending them a very important message.

DERRICK BROWN: We don't just throw them away.

It's important for them to be restored and for them to have people that care about them.

They need to know that when they make a mistake or they mess up, that doesn't mean that they're a bad student.

It just means that they made a mistake.

And we're all humans.

We make mistakes.

But we should always grow from those mistakes and we should learn and we should get better, and we shouldn't repeat those mistakes over and over and over.

KEYRIS MANZANARES: For VPM News, I'm Keyris Manzanares.