Changes to the elementary, middle school and high school handbooks were approved by the Lisbon School Board.
Elementary principal Justin Brown said one of the biggest changes to the elementary handbooks were to classroom teacher requests, middle school band and a minor change to harassment policy.
Brown said the district changed the language to classroom teacher requests. Brown said with more than 47 requests made a year, that’s a significant percentage of the student population.
“Teachers do a lot to balance their classrooms, including considering their personality and how that interacts with students,” Brown said. “There’s also a lot of students that intermix outside of each classroom during different parts of the day.”
In the band portion, director Joseph Arch wanted language added to the middle school band.
“With only having three or four students who weren’t in the band, it’s clear we have a lot of interest,” Brown said.
Arch wanted to communicate to students is that if they choose to enroll in band, they need to give band a month of commitment.
“After that month period if a student finds band isn’t for them, the student and parents can meet with Arch about their decision to drop out of band,” Brown said. “The goal is to have students think about their participation and perseverance to give band a chance.”
The other change was to language in the harassment policy to address physical aggression between students.
“We previously had no language that addressed physical aggression by students,” Brown said.
Other changes were to common practices and how they’re addressed, like the cell phone and visitors policy.
On the high school side, principal Jack Leighty’s changes were to language of current policies.
One of the changes was to remove Saturday school, something that the district rarely offers anymore. It came up during the interview process, and Leighty checked with teachers before suggesting its removal.
Another change was to the tardiness policy. The first three tardies in a semester are given passes, but the fourth one goes to an in-school detention.
“That detention could be served during lunch time for students as opposed to after school,” Leighty said.
The other change was to the language for open enrollment to reflect the current state policy.
There was some discussion on the new open enrollment policy proposed by the state, especially on the potential impact to the Lisbon School District.
Superintendent Autumn Pino said that at a legislative session for superintendents, the communication they got on the new policy was that it opens districts to accept open enrollments at any time of the year, and there are very few instances where a district can deny the requests.
“In the case of a student with very specific needs, the district can have conversations with families about the ways they could accommodate the child or other options,” Pino said. “It’s really opened the ability for school choice for districts by lifting the application deadlines and we won’t know the full impact until a year after this has been rolled out.”