September 13, 2023 at 4:30 PM - Policy Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Stout asked for the last meeting's minutes to reflect the proper amount of committee members. McCartney said she would update it. 

Discussion:  Hamby introduced this and turned it over to Maddox. Maddox told the committee that he had updated this policy to reflect TSBA's policy as well as the State Board of Education. He said this update reflected the changes in testing transfer students for grade placement or awarding credit and this applied to a lot of home school students that came back into the system after being homeschooled. Hamby asked if Patton had anything further. Patton said no. Hamby made a motion to send this on to the full board. Stout with the second. 

Discussion:  Hamby introduced this policy and said she had previously tabled this because the committee wanted to adopt White County's Use of Personal Communication Devices and Electronic Devices policy. She said on page 1, line 20 that she would like to add "teacher" to that line so as not to take away the teacher's rights to allow students to use their phones for academics. Maddox said the district's original policy states that this does not restrict communication devices to be used as an instructional tool at the discretion of the teacher. Hamby said she would like that statement to be put into the policy with the changes the district would like to adopt from White County's policy. Stull asked since White County's policy was broken up into grades, how would our district do it? Hamby said the younger grades have a different set of guidelines and they could just do it for the high school grades. Stout said it could be done for both grade sets. Stout asked Farley and Hobby if there was a need for PreK-8th to have reason to access their phones for instructional purposes. Farley said some students 6-8 might use it. Stull said she would rather the policy say 6-8 rather than PreK-8th. Patton said his concern is over the examination of cell phones and electronic devices. He mentioned the Summer Law session with Chuck Cagle concerning what admin actually get into looking at on students' phones. He said there a growing body of case law concerning unreasonable searches in the school setting. Patton said it has to be reasonable at its inception when they decide to search it-reasonable suspicion-and it has to be reasonable in scope. If searching a student's phone for a specific reason, that search needs to be limited to things that would relate to what you are searching for. Hamby asked if wording could be added. Patton said you could but he would like Mr. Stepp to be present just because he had spoken previously what direction he tells his admin to go in this matter. Hamby asked if he would like this tabled again until next month when Stepp could be present? Patton said he would prefer that for the purpose of getting that language together. Hamby asked Patton to try to come up with some wording that would work. Stout said she is concerned with the first portion of lines 11-13 on page 2 but doesn't like the last portion. Patton said the safety of the students and staff is paramount, so yes, leave anything in that pertains to that if there's suspicion there. He said he seemed to recall from Stepp's previous statement that the staff seemed to have a pretty good handle on these types of issues. Hamby suggested separating the grades portions to PreK-5 and then 6-8. She said mostly the 6-8 would match 9-12. Patton suggested making it 6-12 grade. Hamby was fine with that. Maddox advised getting some feedback from the principals. Hamby asked Hobby to contact the principals and get feedback for the committee. Hobby agreed. Stout asked if the the policy should read at "district level" versus "school level" and Maddox told her that procedures address that. Maddox told the committee that these changes would have to be added to every school's handbook. Hamby said they would table this policy until further review. 

Discussion:  Stull made the motion to adjourn. Stout with the second. The meeting was adjourned at approximately 4:49pm.