November 17, 2016 at 6:00 PM - Board of Education Policy Committee Meeting

Rationale:  Recently, Mrs. Yonsky, Mr. Germinaro, Mr. Galliford and two EMT's from Bethel Fire Department met to review our bus accident protocols.  The change in regulation is for your information only.  The changes in the protocols were minor, but the review provided the team an opportunity to refresh our understanding. 

Rationale: 

At the last regular Board of Education Committee meeting, the Bethel Board of Education asked to review the Policy and Regulation 6153 on Field Trips.  The administration and some selected teachers have reviewed both the policy and the regulation.   We are not recommendations any changes to the policy, but have several recommended changes in the regulations.  We feel that the recommended changes better reflect practice, create a deeper level of transparency with regard to international trips and all of the forms/permissions we use. All forms and permissions were vetted through Shipman and Goodwin.  

The Board asked Dr. Brooks to identify a timeline for policy review and consideration of the trip to Montreal over Columbus Day weekend 2017.  The trip would need to be finalized and communicated to students by the late winter/early spring, so there is time for the Board to consider any changes.  

 

Rationale:  When reviewing the policy 6153 on Field Trips, we searched all other policies associated with Field Trips.  We came upon two additional policies, 6153.1 (Educational Tours) and 6153.11 (Senior Class Trips).  We reviewed both with our Attorney from Shipman and Goodwin who recommended deleting them (redundant to the field trip policy).   We reviewed both to determine if there were aspects of the policies which were not included in Policy 6153, the regulation or forms/permissions.  We could not identify any.  We also could not identify what would constitute and educational tour which would not be a field trip.  Therefore, we are recommending deleting Policy 6153.1 and 6153.11.  

Rationale: 

As discussed at the last regular Board of Education meeting, I provided an update on the need to add district provided student emails as a component of Directory Information.   Student email is the foundation of our Google Platform and some other online software programs.  By providing the email as directory information, which parents can opt out of, we are in compliance with FERPA (student email is not deemed personal identifiable information).  This helps to maintain compliance with the new Data Privacy Act.  

A reminder, the policy dictates that the administration can control who receives the Directory Information.   By placing restrictions on student email, for instructional purposes only, it would limit the scope of the requests. For example, because it is for instructional purposes only, we would not give it to an outside organization to advertise directly to students.  

I have made the updated changes to the regulation as recommended by the Policy Committee to include:  

• Aligning the definition of directory information to list in the regulation;  
• And changing the wording from "instructional use" to "for school purposes".  

Rationale:  Please see briefing for Policy 5145.15 as the two are connected.