June 18, 2013 at 5:30 PM - Regular Monthly Board Meeting

Rationale:  Current law requires three annual safety drills in addition to the monthly fire drills, and this recommended policy focuses on one of these three on armed intruders.  This law (Public Chapter 188) requires that the drill be conducted within the first thirty (30) days of each school year.

The law also changes the requirement for when the first fire drilll must be conducted from within the first thirty (30) days to within the first fifteen (15) days.

Rationale:  With legislation enacted last year, the dates for which a child must be five years old to enroll in kindergarten have changed.

With the 2013-14 school year, a child must be 5 on or before August 31st, and with the 2014-15 school year and all years thereafter, a child must be 5 on or before August 15th.

As you will see in this policy, parents of students who will turn 5 on or before the prior cutoff date of September 30th may request that their child be enrolled, and this process is outlined in the policy.

Please also find attached the Public Chapter of this new law.

Rationale:  Public Chapter 225 addresses homeschoolers in athletics.  If an LEAs schools are members of TSSAA, this law requires those schools to comply with the organization's regulations regarding the participation of homeschooled students.

Since your policy already says that the system adopts the bylaws of the TSSAA, the only change TSBA suggested to the Interscholastic Athletics policy was to add the paragraph regarding insurance.  Further in this policy, you will find a few clean-up items also in red.

Rationale:  In 2011, the board voted to add the first sentence of this policy to address homeschoolers.  Due to the change in the law regarding homeschoolers and TSSAA, and since the law only addresses athletics and no other extracurricular activities, the administration is recommending that the first sentence be amended as shown.

Rationale:  TSBA worked with a division within the State Department of Education to update this policy which was formerly entitiled "In-Service and Staff Development Opportunities."

Besides the change to the title, the policy has been updated to mirror the current federal and state standards.  In addition, this updated policy lists the standards as adopted by the State Board of Education rather than simply referring to them by name.

Note:  This policy was last revised on 4/19/12 and that change is noted in green.  The TSBA model policy still suggests the language in parenthesis.

Rationale:  Public Chapter 304 requires attendance of students to remedial programs so long as the programs are offered at no charge and transportation is provided.  If a student is absent from these programs, the laws relative to truancy will apply.

Public Chapter 155 creates consistency for the absences of students who are visiting a parent who is deployed on a military assignment.  This law provides 10 cumulative absences per year regardless if the parent is assigned abroad or domestically.

Rationale:  This policy was voted on and changed due to legislation that passed last year (note the changes in green).  This year the legislature tweaked the law with Public Chapter 214(Section 4) to remove the word "truancy" from the first offense of the law regarding suspension from schools as they viewed it to be counterintuitive that suspension be a punishment for truancy.

Public Chapter 222 clarifies the law to state that principals do not have to punish a student who was involved in an altercation if the principal finds that the student acted in self-defense.

Rationale:  Public Chapter 375 creates another offense that will qualify as a zero tolerance:  A student who transmits by an electronic device a credible threat to cause bodily injury or death to another student or school employee and the threat creates actual disruptive activity at the school.  The law also requires students, employees, and volunteers to report to school officials any knowledge of such threats.

Public Chapter 442 simply changes the terminology that exists in most policies to delete the term "battery" and replace it with "aggravated assault" as defined in the criminal code.

Rationale:  Revisions are needed due to the changes to Zero Tolerance policy.

Rationale:  These revisions are needed due to the changes on Zero Tolerance.

Rationale:  Public Chapter 439 requires that school systems continue to pay the benefits for teachers while on leave due to physical assault.  Teachers inquired about this during Collaborative Conferencing.

Rationale:  Public Chapter 301 requires notice prior to the employment of relatives, (including those of county officials), but it also requires board members to declare any relationship prior to a vote which may impact relatives such as the budget, tenure considerations and personnel policies.

Rationale:  Last September this policy had a major rewrite due to an agreement with Tennessee's LEAs and the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR).  OCR recently contacted districts to acknowledge an error in its guidance for the policy revisions implemented last fall and asked that updates be made to allow for oral complaints and oral requests for hearings.  OCR has requested that we notify them of these updates by July 2013.

This revision also contains a deletion of an erroneous provision whereby LEAs could only have legal representation if the complainant did.

Rationale:  This bid closed on the 17th and Mrs. Norris needed to be able to act upon it asap and needs board approval.  There was only one bidder and the only programs that could be purchased came from a list of three US Department of Education recommendations.  This is the only one of the three that had a parent component and counselors and instruction staff felt it was the best offered.  This will be fully funded through the Elementary Counseling Grant.