There was a meeting of Newburgh School District Policy Committee on Wednesday, December 14 at 4:30 PM. Board President Fucheck and Members Prokosch, Vesely, and Woodhull attended. Also present were Assistant Superintendent Human Resources Leimer, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Forgit, Attorney May, Superintendent Pizzo and District Clerk Botsford.

The first agenda item was "Comprehensive Student Attendance Policy #5200". Three administrators from NFA (Acting Executive Principal Siegel, Assistant Principal Mucci, and Assistant Principal Valentino) brought several attendance policy suggestions to the committee:

1. Itemized reasons for excused absences in policy 5200. Mucci said there were eleven listed reasons for excused absence--some items may be missing. There is a handbook printed every year that includes student illness, family illness, death in family, court attendance, religious observance, and "other explained". Policy doesn't recognize those. Students may have to take care of their own kids or parents when they are ill. The form also allows for "other" and filling in some kind of excuse.

The policy doesn't specify what qualifies as "death in family". Forgit mentioned that policies in other districts often don't specify all details--maybe allow principals to make a determination based on circumstances. Mucci said they thought there should be some broadening of scope of the items in the policy.

2. The deadline for bringing an excuse note. Mucci said the three day limit may be too short in some circumstances, given the importance of excused v. unexcused absences. Five days was suggested. Mucci said sometimes parents don't receive notice (by phone or mail) of absences until report card time. Perhaps there could be a way to have some kind of appeals process that could handle documented illness or extenuating circumstances.

Mucci also brought up that sometimes parents actually talk to the attendance caller, or send email--is a note still required? Attorney May asked if there was some way for the Parent Portal to receive excuses from parents. There was consensus that it did not currently do this.

3. It isn't clear how much time a student has to resolve an incomplete. There isn't a real grading policy. Apparently, there is an unwritten policy of having a minimum grade of 55 for the first quarter, but that doesn't exist in writing anywhere.

4. Attendance and grading. If you have a 55 in the first marking period the idea is to allow the student to still be able to pass the course. But there's a big difference if the 55 is for a struggling student or for a student who is putting in no effort and is counting on a grade of 55. Fucheck mentioned that a minimum seat time to pass had been discussed, but there had been pushback about that.

There was discussion about the school handbooks being checked for consistency with policy. Mucci said that the handbook for NFA was not updated for 2011-2012. He said that code covers student attendance, grading, etc.

5. When students drop and add a course there is no "linkage" between the changes. For example the dropped course may indicate increasingly unsatisfactory attendance because there's no flag in the system to handle the situation. [It sounds like the 90% attendance calculation cannot take into account arbitrary enrollment changes.]

There was some discussion around a five school day limit for excuse notes, and establishing an appeals process that might require a face to face meeting with the principal or a designee. There was also some discussion about insuring that any excuse forms or handbooks of rules and regulations are up to date. Leimer made the point that the notes must indicate the date the note was written, and the notes should have an indication of the date received by the school. Valentino explained that notes past the three day limit are coded in a way that indicates the note was received late and was not accepted as an excuse.

Later in the meeting, the board requested Attorney May to try to have a revised Attendance policy, 5200, ready for a first reading at the December 20 BOE meeting.

Next agenda topic was Title VI Civil Rights Act Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment in the Schools (New Policy/Regulation) brought to the committee by Leimer. There is an existing policy for students, classified staff, and professional staff. Leimer explained that this is one of the policies that says "regulations to be developed". Sample regulations from another district were made available by Attorney Shaw to be considered by the board. Attorney May explained that the Superintendent establishes regulations, and that doesn't require board approval.

Fucheck brought up an issue from the Dignity for All Act presentation at the workshop meeting. The Dignity Act applies to behavior and actions which affect students and one option would be broaden that to cover employees with the same policy.

Next agenda item Audit Committee Policy #6653. Attorney May is working on drafting how the Audit Committee should be composed. It could either be a committee of the whole BOE, a selection of board members, or an advisory committee which could include some non-board members.

There was also brief discussion about how to go about reviewing/revising the policy manual with NYSSBA. Attorney May had suggested to start at the beginning, with the 0's, 1000's and 2000's series of policies. They might get done more quickly than some of the higher numbered ones.

The meeting finished a little after 5:30PM.