School board votes to contribute to organization leading statewide effort to uphold ruling on education funding
By BECKY THOMAS
Staff Reporter
The Cheney school board voted Jan. 13 to contribute $4,000 to the Network for Excellence in Washington Schools, a group working to uphold a court ruling that said the state is not meeting the state constitutional requirements for funding education.
Cheney joined more than 100 educational organizations, including Medical Lake and Spokane school districts, in supporting NEWS.
“From a policy perspective, you are as a board the advocates for the kids of the communities that we serve and this is the time for us to send an absolute message to the legislators that all districts and educational organizations believe that the state has not lived up to that mandate and they need to do that,” Superintendent Larry Keller told the board. “Although this may not influence the court at all, it will certainly put pressure on the legislature.”
The board also looked ahead to construction of two new middle schools in the district.
Project manager Beth Bock of OAC Services, Inc. outlined a constructability review that took a fresh look at plans for the new buildings. She said a team of eight people—OAC employees, engineers, architects and contractors—reviewed the plans for possible problems.
“This group of people had never seen the document before, so they're coming at it from a perspective like a contractor would,” Bock said.
The review was one of the requirements in the process to receive state matching funds, which the district plans to use to build a new elementary school. Bock said the review consisted of several comments from the group and the project's architect, NAC, agreed with most of the comments and made clarifications where necessary.
Bock also told the board that NAC had finalized the building plans and construction documents in advance of bid advertisements to be published in the next two weeks.
Also at the meeting, the board completed first readings of several new and revised policies dealing with harassment, tobacco use and release of information concerning sexual and kidnapping offenders moving into the area.
The board read a new policy outlining who should be informed about juvenile offenders in schools. The policy required the school principal to inform teachers and students when appropriate about a student who had been convicted of one of a list of offenses, including violent, sexual, firearm and drug offenses as well as kidnapping, harassment or stalking.
A revision to the school board's policy on harassment, intimidation and bullying included more details for schools to prevent and react to the actions or allegations of actions.
“The school district has an obligation, which we currently do, to prevent harassment by teaching the proper ways to treat one another. That's currently part of our practice,” assistant superintendent Deb Clemens said.
The policy also requires schools to intervene in conflicts with counseling, discipline, law enforcement referrals or other strategies and prohibits retaliation or knowingly reporting false claims.
Two more policies were revised: the ban of tobacco use on school district property included smokeless tobacco and nicotine delivery products and devices. The last requires the district to release information to staff, parents, students and the community on sexual and kidnapping offenders who move into the community when a law enforcement agency requests it.
Becky Thomas can be reached at [email protected].
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