For principals, assistant principals, and deans who handle student discipline
Discipline Decisions
You Can Defend
Resolve is where you investigate the incident, decide it with the Progressive Discipline Matrix, document it, and follow through — so the next time a parent, a union rep, or a hearing officer pushes back, you have the whole story.
Included with ILA membership · No credit card required
It's 2:45. There's a fight referral on your desk, three students in your office, and three versions of what happened.
You'll make the call — you always do. But somewhere in the back of your mind, the questions are already forming. Is this what I gave the last kid who did this? What did I give this kid last time? The answer is in your head, on a sticky note, or nowhere.
Then comes the phone call: "Why did my son get suspended when the other boy didn't?" And the letter home you're still writing at 9 p.m., hoping you don't say the wrong thing to the wrong family. And the detention you assigned two weeks ago that — you're pretty sure — was never actually served.
None of that is a character flaw. It's what happens when high-stakes decisions live in your memory and a hundred sticky notes.
And the cost compounds quietly: every inconsistent call erodes your credibility with students and staff. Every unserved consequence teaches kids that consequences are optional. And the one time it goes to a hearing, you're reconstructing events from memory while everyone else has a lawyer.
There's a fix — and it isn't working harder
Experienced administrators solve this with a Progressive Discipline Matrix: behaviors down the side, escalating consequence levels across the top, so the first offense, the second, and the fifth each land in a defensible place — the same place for every student. We've taught this framework to school leaders for years, and the ones who use it describe the same shift: discipline stops being a gut call under pressure and becomes a practice they can stand behind.
But a matrix in a binder can't remember what you gave the last student, track whether Thursday's detention was served, or write the letter home.
That's exactly why we built Resolve.
Your working memory — not another system of record
Resolve is the school administrator's tool for investigating, deciding, and documenting student discipline — the investigation and the interviews, the matrix-guided decision, the follow-through, and the letters home, all in one place that works for you.
You still make the official entry in your SIS — Resolve is where you think it through, and it keeps the details the SIS never captures. When you're done, it even writes the paste-ready summary for your official entry. Nothing auto-sends. Nothing auto-reports. It works for you.
In your first week with Resolve, you'll go from reconstructing incidents from memory to walking into every parent conversation with the timeline, the statements, the precedent, and your written rationale in front of you.
Setup takes about 15 minutes. Your next incident is the first one it protects.
Resolve is for you if…
- ✓You're an AP, dean, or principal who owns discipline for a building — or a big slice of it
- ✓You've ever second-guessed a consequence on the drive home
- ✓A parent has ever asked why that kid got this — and you didn't have the answer in front of you
- ✓You've scrambled to reconstruct an incident for a hearing, a union meeting, or your superintendent
- ✓You've assigned consequences you quietly suspect were never served
- ✓You're writing letters home at night, from scratch, every time
Resolve is NOT for you if…
- ✗You want a PBIS points-and-rewards platform — Resolve doesn't gamify behavior, it supports your judgment
- ✗You're looking to replace your SIS — Resolve deliberately sits beside it, so there's no migration and no IT project
- ✗You want something that auto-sends messages or auto-reports to the district — in Resolve, nothing leaves without you
What Resolve Does
A real investigation workspace — not just a decision log
Discipline is detective work before it's a decision, and Resolve is built for that part too. Open an incident the moment it lands and start typing while the students are still in your office — your notes save as you go and are never altered, so your verbatim account is always the record. Add everyone involved and tag each role — subject, victim, witness, reporter, staff, or TBD for the fog-of-war phase before you know who did what. Capture each person's statement on its own: type it, or record the interview by voice and let Resolve transcribe it for you. Interview a student twice and the transcripts append into one statement; the audio auto-expires after seven days (or delete it on the spot) while the transcript stays. Nothing is ever put in anyone's mouth — a transcript becomes part of a statement only when you promote it.
Your matrix, your policy
Resolve seeds a complete starter matrix — 16 behavior categories across five levels, with severe behaviors starting high — and every cell is yours to edit, with your own aggravating and mitigating notes on each behavior so the guidance reflects how your school actually decides. Have a district matrix already? Photograph it, and Resolve reads the table and builds it for you, mapping offenses onto levels and pulling in your consequence vocabulary, labels intact. Keep as many matrices as you like — a working one that drives decisions, and drafts for next year's proposal.
Decision support that remembers everything
For each student and violation, Resolve shows a suggested level range from your matrix: first offenses suggest low, repeats escalate, and the suggestion never drops below the student's highest prior level for that behavior. Alongside it: the student's linked history and how you've handled the same behavior for other students — so similar cases get similar treatment. One incident can carry a separate decision per student and per violation — the student who both fought and vaped gets two, each with its own level and rationale, while a witness gets none. Pick a level and Resolve auto-drafts the matching consequence straight from your matrix, ready to edit. It's always a suggestion; you make the call, and your written rationale becomes part of the record that protects you.
Follow-through that closes the loop
Set up your standing sessions once — lunch detention Monday through Friday, ISS, Saturday school — then book consequences into them. Resolve tracks every slot as served, absent, or excused; absences roll into a needs-action queue where one tap reschedules or escalates to the next matrix level, rationale logged. Print a scan-friendly attendance sheet for the supervisor, or attach a photo as proof of completion. Assigned-but-never-served consequences stop happening at your school.
The right letter for every family — and every colleague
One incident can send a lot of communication, and Resolve drafts a separate notice for each stakeholder — the subject's family, a victim's family, a witness's family, and the staff who need the outcome. Each is centered on their role and says only what they're entitled to know. The guardrails are structural, not a matter of careful proofreading: a victim's or witness's family cannot be shown another student's consequence, level, or due date, because those fields aren't available to their letter at all — only the addressed student's own name ever merges in. Flip the Redacted toggle to mask every other student as "Student A" or "Witness 1" (staff are never masked). Translate any letter into one of ten languages, and Resolve remembers that family's language and defaults to it next time. Draft every party's letter at once with "Prepare all," then download a PDF or send it from your own email — so it comes from you, and only when you decide.
A second read on the whole file
When the statements pile up and the accounts don't line up, have Resolve read the file for you. Summarize condenses the whole incident into a few sentences. Contradiction check reads every statement side by side and flags exactly where two people's accounts disagree — so you walk into the next interview knowing the one question to ask, instead of re-reading five pages to find the gap. Both land in their own fields as suggestions; your notes and every statement stay verbatim and untouched.
Hand it to your SIS — no double entry
When the incident is decided, Resolve compiles a clean, factual, paste-ready narrative for your official SIS entry. The thinking is done, the record is defensible, and you're not retyping any of it.
The full picture, every morning
Your dashboard: open incidents needing a decision, consequences awaiting follow-through, frequent-flyer chips for students showing up repeatedly, and a searchable history. Each student has a private timeline and per-category history, and you can flag a student for check-in before the next incident instead of after it.
What changes when you run discipline through Resolve
- Answer "why did my kid get that?" in ten seconds — the matrix level, the precedent, and your written rationale are on one screen
- Stop replaying decisions on the drive home — the suggested range, the student's history, and your own past calls are in front of you when you decide
- Walk into hearings with the whole story — verbatim narrative, every statement, every parent contact, every letter, timestamped
- End the era of the unserved detention — the needs-action queue means nothing assigned ever quietly disappears
- Send the letter the same day, not at 9 p.m. — drafted for each family, translated if needed
- Never leak one family's business to another — audience guardrails are enforced by the system, not by your late-night proofreading
- Catch the story that doesn't add up — the contradiction check tells you what to ask before you decide
- Make the SIS entry in one paste — Resolve writes the official summary from the record you already built
- See the pattern before the next referral — frequent flyers and check-in flags surface repeat students early
Resolve is part of the Instructional Leadership Association — the system trusted by more than 15,000 leaders in 50 countries.
No credit card required
Up and running before your next referral
Start your free ILA trial — Resolve is included, no credit card required
Set up in about 15 minutes — tune the starter matrix (or photograph your district's) and adjust categories to your language
Log your next incident — notes, people, statements, contacts, all on one screen
Decide, notify, and follow through — with the matrix, the guardrails, and the queue doing the remembering
"I don't have time for another system."
Fair — most discipline software is built for the district, and you feed it. Resolve is built for you, and it feeds your SIS.
There's nothing to migrate and no IT project: no roster upload required, students are created the first time you name them, and setup is a one-time 15 minutes. During an incident, Resolve is faster than your legal pad — and at the end, it hands you the paste-ready SIS narrative, the letters, and the attendance sheet you'd otherwise produce by hand.
It doesn't add a system to your day. It absorbs the worst hour of it.
Built by The Principal Center
Resolve comes from Justin Baeder, PhD, Director of The Principal Center — author of Now We're Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership and host of Principal Center Radio. A former principal, Justin has spent more than a decade helping school administrators build evidence-based professional practice, and The Principal Center's tools are used by leaders around the world.
Resolve applies the same standard to the highest-stakes decisions in your day: document as you go, decide from evidence, and be able to stand behind every call.
How to get Resolve
Resolve isn't sold separately. It's included with membership in the Instructional Leadership Association — along with Repertoire, the classroom walkthrough and observation app; the first suite of productivity tools purpose-built for instructional leaders; and new training and resources each week.
ILA membership is $99/month. Compare that to one hour with the district's attorney — or one decision you couldn't defend.
Try everything free for 14 days — no credit card required. Set up your matrix, run your next real incident through it, and see what it's like to make the call with the whole story in front of you. If it's not for you, walk away — nothing to cancel, nothing charged. If you join and change your mind later, cancel anytime.
Included with ILA · $99/month after trial · Cancel anytime
Questions administrators ask
Is Resolve the school's official discipline record?
No — deliberately. Your SIS remains the system of record, and you still make the official entry there (Resolve writes a paste-ready summary to make that fast). Resolve is your professional working record: the investigation, the reasoning, and the details the SIS never captures.
Does anything get sent automatically?
Nothing. Every letter is drafted for your review, and delivery is always your action — PDFs download to you, and email goes out through your own mail client, from your own address.
What about student privacy?
Resolve is your private account — you enter students yourself (full names or just initials, your choice), and your records are visible only to you. Letter guardrails make it structurally impossible for one family's letter to include another student's consequence. Interview audio expires automatically after seven days (or delete it immediately); you keep the transcript.
My district already has a discipline matrix. Do I have to rebuild it?
No — photograph it or screenshot it, and Resolve reads the table and builds your matrix from it, preserving your district's own labels and consequence language. You review everything before it's created.
We don't have a matrix at all. Where do I start?
Resolve seeds a complete starter matrix — 16 behavior categories, five levels, severe behaviors starting high — based on the Progressive Discipline Matrix framework we've taught for years. Most administrators tune it to their school in one sitting.
Do the AI features decide anything for me?
No. The matrix suggestion, the summary, the contradiction check, and the drafted letters are all suggestions you review and edit. Your narrative and every statement are stored verbatim and never altered.
What if my families don't speak English?
Translate any notice into any of ten languages with one click. Resolve remembers each family's language and defaults to it next time.
Is Resolve sold on its own?
No — it's included with ILA membership, alongside the classroom walkthrough tools and weekly training the ILA is known for. One membership, everything included.
The next incident is coming
Maybe today, maybe Thursday. Another referral, another set of conflicting stories, another judgment call with your name on it.
You can keep making those calls from memory — and keep hoping nobody asks you to reconstruct one six months from now.
Or the next one can be the first incident where the matrix does the remembering, the guardrails do the worrying, and you make the call with the whole story in front of you — and a record you can defend.
Included with ILA membership · No credit card required · Cancel anytime