Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to the March 23rd meeting of the Student Behavior and Accountability Committee. We're calling this meeting to order at 4:06 PM. I'm Carrie
Labelle, the chairman, and I understand Ms. Donahue is not able to make it today, but as we are not voting on any action items today, we do have quorum. So if we will, are there any public comments over there? Do we know? No. Okay. All right. Have you had a chance to read the minutes from our last meeting? Wonderful. Would you like to make a motion for me? Yes. I move to approve the minutes from our last Student Behavior and Accountability Committee meeting. And I will second them. So at that point in time, all those in favor of
accepting the minutes of the last meeting say aye. Aye. Yes. Thank you, Chair Labelle. For your review and consideration today as an information item, we do have suggested revisions to Policy 8210, currently titled Introduction to Student Discipline. One of the revisions is a change of title to simply Student Discipline, instead of Introduction to Student Discipline. In any case, there are three primary changes to the policy that I would like to point out
for you. The first is you will see that a not insignificant amount of information has been struck. For example, information related to compulsory attendance, information related to the various types of sanctions, information related to student search and seizure, et cetera. That information that has been struck and not simply moved or wordsmithedis struck because it is covered adequately in other policies, and it is, in my view, a strong preference not
to repeat policy in various locations, because if you change your policy in one place, you would then have to remember all the other places that it is referenced to be able to make parallel changes. So for that reason, you will see that certain chunks of information have been removed. The second main change to the policy is to add, I hesitate to say the word additional, but I'll say it for now, to add additional violations or notice of violations that for whatever
reason, were not included in this policy. This policy serves as notice of the acts for which students may be disciplined. So I went through and very systematically cross-referenced other documents to ensure that all acts, or as best as I was able, all acts for which a student may be disciplined or is subject to discipline, are actually referenced in the policy so that students and families have appropriate notice. As I was doing the cross-checking and the
cross-referencing, I realized that there were a number of violations that for whatever reasons, were not referenced in Policy 8210. I won't list them all for you unless you'd like me to, but you're going to see additional violations. Again, it is for the purpose of notice, and those additional violations include sexual assault, stalking, hazing, gang-related activity, gambling, arson, dress code violations, retaliation. So some of them are less serious offenses, one might say, a dress code violation, for example,
and some of them are very serious violations. So I really did try to systematically ensure that any act for which a student could be disciplined was included in this policy for appropriate notice. And finally, I included a provision related to reimbursement because I do not believe, at least to my knowledge, that existed in policy elsewhere related to students who intentionally damage, lose, break, again, intentionally, LCPS property, that there would be an expectation that there would be reimbursement made
to the system. Defacing. And defacing, yes. For the cost of either replacement or repair of property. Those are the primary changes that were made. I'd be happy to hear any questions that you might have. Go ahead. On the reimbursement piece, when you say added, I suppose, is this just enshrining something that was already in practice, just not in policy? And if it was in practice, was it written down anywhere previously and now it's just here? Or was it just in a... Yeah. I suspect that it was in practice. It would be very surprising to me to learn
that there was never any expectation that the school system be reimbursed for property that was deliberately damaged or destroyed or lost. Again, deliberately is the key here when we're talking about student conduct. So I would be surprised to learn that it wasn't in practice. It came to my attention that it wasn't in this policy when, frankly, a school-based administrator reached out to me with a concern and was looking for something in the policy, in our student policies that referenced
restitution. And that school-based administrator couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. I was in the process of considering the revisions for this policy and said, "Well, this is the perfect place to put it." Okay. So it did not exist in a regulation or some kind of sub- Standalone. I have not come across it. Okay. I see. That is helpful. Thank you. And then another question I had in terms of the conduct that was added, that you had referenced, was there a particular document or set of practices you were referencing when adding those in,
or does that run the gamut in different kinds of places that that might have been? There were two primary documents that I was cross-referencing. One, in full transparency, I was heavily involved in writing the similar policy for Fairfax County Public Schools, so I did recognize that things seemed to be missing, just from my experience there. So I did cross-reference those two documents. And then additionally, I went through the VDOE, we call it the SBAR for short, but essentially all of the different violation codes provided by VDOE, which are used to report student
misconduct, and I wanted to make sure that for every code, there was essentially a home. Now, there were some types of misconduct, weapons and drugs come to mind, where there are a variety of codes, but I wanted to ensure that if there was a code, we could tag that code specifically to a violation. Thank you. That's helpful. You're welcome. I also noted that in the beginning, you seem to have deleted a number of definitions. Is that because you moved them to someplace else in the document?
So a lot of the definitions were related to various sanctions. Mm-hmm. And those reside in Policy 8220- Yeah ... Student Disciplinary Sanctions. Okay. So that is an example of a wholechunk of information that was repeated in this policy, even though its home is in a different policy. That policy was actually recently revised, and so the definitions would no longer match, which is a perfect example of why it's best to
cross-reference the policy without essentially cutting and pasting it. Thank you. That's what I noticed because we usually start with definitions, and I said, "Well, maybe they're someplace else now." And what I would point out is this is the third policy in what I consider a suite, and it's the third of three to be revised this school year. 8205 provides the jurisdiction when students can face disciplinary action. 8210 provides the violations. So that's really the starting point.
In some ways, that would've been a good place to start, but it was the least deficient, quite frankly. 8210, what's before you now, provides the violations or the actions for which a student can be disciplined. That then dovetails with 8205, which was recently revised, which says under what jurisdiction can we actually impose a disciplinary sanction for that type of violation. And then the third is 8220, which sets forth what are the various sanctions that a student could face
if there was a violation, 8210, that occurred within our jurisdiction, 8205, brings you to the sanction, 8220. That makes sense. I'm glad we're getting it cleaned up. Any other questions? I'm very excited to have the suite complete when this is done. Well, that was one of the things I noticed when I first came on board, that there was a lot of things that were in different places, rather repetitive, but not actually stating the same thing. In other words, they were in conflict with one another, and I thought we really need to get this sorted. So thank you for that.
Anything else? Do we have any new business before us? Before we move on to that, would you like to make a motion to forward the recommended revisions for public comment and to our advisory committees in particular? Are we allowed to do that without Ms. Donahue here? You are. Okay. All right. Would we like to do that, Mr. Stevenson? Yes, I'm happy to. Madam Chair, I move that we forward the revisions to policy 8210 to public feedback from information
and move it to our next meeting. I second the motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Hearing no opposition, motion passes. Two for it and one absent for the vote. Okay. Moving forward now, do we have any new business? No. Seeing as there is no new business, this meeting of the Student Behavior and Accountability Committee will adjourn at 4:19. I haven't got my glasses on. Thank you. 4:19. Committee's adjourned. Thank you for coming.