WCHCS Board discusses policy changes

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The Washington Court House City Schools (WCHCS) Board of Education discussed various policies on Monday as part of its monthly board meeting.

Three policies were discussed during the meeting on Monday — the first being a minor adjustment to an email policy. Policy 7540.05 concerns district issued staff email accounts, and more specifically the laws governing the availability of these emails. A paragraph within the policy stated originally that any email could be gathered from personal emails when the district meant they wanted to be able to acquire emails that specifically discussed district business. Personal emails of any other nature can remain private, but any emails that reference the district’s business need to be backed up within the schools’ database so it can be acquired at any time.

The second policy, under administrative guidelines, concerns the collection and payment for charged meals. The policy lays out a more definitive guideline to charging for meals.

“Moving forward, kindergarten through fifth grade is allowed five lunch charges, and if they need to charge more than five then the kids can be given an alternative lunch,” WCHCS Superintendent Tom Bailey said. “This is not uncommon for school districts to give an alternative meal, which is usually a cold sandwich, a fruit or vegetable and milk, until the account balance has been taken care of. The part we are adding is how the parents will know this. We ran into this issue last year of parents saying they did not know they owed money. So parents will receive an automatic phone call weekly if the child’s account is negative. If the charge gets to 10 dollars then the parents will be called personally. Grades six through twelve will be allowed three lunch charges, and if they have a negative balance they are not allowed to charge a la carte items. Staff members and adults are not allowed to charge.”

Currently within the district, roughly 65 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price meals, according to Bailey. These students would be unaffected by the changes, including if a reduced meal student charges for their meal.

The final policy discussed was required by the state. The policy concerns college credit plus programs and how students in a failing or tardy status will be handled by the district. As of Monday, students who fall into this category will be placed into probation if they begin to fail or not attend college classes. The probation will allow the student a chance to fix their grades and seek help, if needed, to remedy the situation. Further actions can be taken, including removal from the program, if the student does not perform well in the class following the probation. Appeals can be made, and the process to appeal is outlined in the policy.

In other business, the district accepted donations from various businesses, approved employment and volunteers for over 40 individuals, and promoted a few substitute cooks to full-time cooks as they had been working in the positions this past school year to replace a few cooks who left.

Stay with the Record-Herald for more updates on the Washington Court House City Schools Board of Education.

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By Martin Graham

[email protected]

Reach Martin Graham at (740) 313-0351 or on Twitter @MartiTheNewsGuy

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