School district policies

It is imperative that written guidelines be established so that your school system will not flounder from day to day and from crisis to crisis. These guidelines, called policy statements, are local matters and may vary widely from one community to another.

The 1993 Education Reform Act clearly defined policy making as a critically important responsibility for school committees, and central to the smooth and effective operation of the schools. The committee should ensure that policies are well-organized, clear, and available to all. Their purposes include:

• Providing consistency in dealing with day-to-day issues.
• Delineating the procedures under which the school committee will govern itself.
• Clarifying the relationship between the superintendent and the school committee.
• Specifying guidelines under which the staff is to operate.
• Recording the solution of a problem, so that it need not be constantly reconsidered.
• Allowing for continuity.
• Enabling the community to better understand how the school committee operates.

The educational policies of a community are found in decisions that have been made concerning certain issues. As policies are identified, they should be put in logical order: a policy handbook can then be assembled from this material. The statements should always be based on principles and issues; personalities should never be involved. Policies should be worded so that future applications can be clearly defined. New policies are created as necessary. Once policy statements have been developed, they should be carefully reviewed by the committee before adoption. Particular attention should be given, of course, to requirements of state and federal law, which no local policy may violate. Any action found to be contrary to the law is void.

Keep in mind, also, that a school committee may not adopt policy which is in conflict with a provision of collective bargaining agreements.

Once a policy handbook is compiled, it must be regularly reviewed and updated. While some policies may stand unchanged for years, others may need to be revised within a relatively short time. Outdated policies should, of course, be deleted immediately from the manual, and a copy of all current school committee policies should be located in each public school building.

While the authority to make policy decisions belongs exclusively to the school committee, the responsibility for carrying out the school policies should be left to the superintendent and the professional staff--those people who have the skill and training needed for these specialized tasks. In the absence of a clearly defined policy, administrators must make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

MASC POLICY SERVICE

MASC offers a policy service to its members which can be an invaluable resource to committees as they develop local guidelines. MASC policy support services include: providing sample policies on particular topics; the complete MASC Policy Reference Manual which conforms to state and federal law; a contract policy service which provides a customized policy manual tailored to individual districts; and a policy subscription service that regularly provides members with sample policies based on recent state and federal legislation.