The September Slide: Why Behavior Incidents Tend to Rise After the Honeymoon Period

If your first few weeks of school felt calmer than usual, you’re not imagining it. Ask any veteran teacher or SPED director and they’ll tell you the same thing: the start of the year has a honeymoon period. New routines feel novel. Students are still feeling out expectations. Staff are patient and everyone is on their best behavior, students included.

Then, sometime in late September, it shifts.

What’s Actually Happening

The honeymoon period isn’t luck. It’s the natural result of a school year that hasn’t fully found its rhythm yet. Structure is still light. Expectations haven’t been fully tested. Novelty is doing a lot of the work.

As routines set in and expectations tighten, students start to push against the edges of that structure. For students with a history of behavioral challenges, this is often when things that worked in week one start to break down. Staff who were managing fine in a low-demand environment suddenly find themselves face to face with the situations their training, or lack of it, was actually meant to prepare them for.

This pattern shows up so consistently that it has a name among school behavior teams: the September Slide. It’s predictable, which means it’s plannable.

Why This Matters for SPED Directors and Administrators

The honeymoon period creates a dangerous illusion: that this year will be different, that the team has it handled, that training and prevention planning can wait until there’s an actual problem.

But by the time incidents start climbing, you’re no longer planning. You’re reacting. And a staff member facing an escalating situation for the first time this year, without a consistent, practiced response, is exactly the moment where things can go wrong for the student and for the adult trying to help.

Waiting for the slide to happen before training your team is a bit like waiting for the fire alarm to teach a fire drill.

Acting Before the Slide, Not After

The window right now, while things are still calm, is the best time to make sure your team is actually ready for what’s coming. That means:

• Confirming staff certification status before incidents climb. If new hires, paraprofessionals, or substitutes started the year without full training, close that gap now.
• Refreshing de-escalation skills, not just credentials. A certification on file doesn’t mean a skill is fresh. A quick refresher before the slide hits keeps techniques top of mind.
• Reviewing behavior plans with the team that will actually use them. IEP and BIP updates often happen early in the year. Make sure the staff implementing them feel confident, not just informed.
• Building in consistency across roles. Teachers, paraprofessionals, and support staff should all be working from the same prevention-first approach, so a crisis moment doesn’t depend on who happens to be in the room.

Prevention Is Easier Before the Pattern Sets In

This is exactly where Safety-Care’s prevention-first approach makes the biggest difference. Districts that have implemented it have documented reductions of more than 58% in physical management use and more than 70% fewer seclusion hours, along with improved staff confidence heading into the moments that matter most.

The September Slide is coming whether your team is ready or not. The only real choice is whether you prepare for it now, while things are calm, or scramble to catch up once incidents start climbing.