The Medical Lake school board welcomed a couple of new faces to the district at its Jan. 27 meeting: Karen Meganck, military family life counselor (MFLC) at Michael Anderson Elementary and Sally Anderson, a family therapist at Hallett Elementary.
The role of a MLFC is to support children, families and instructors in coping with deployment and separation, reunion adjustment, parent-child communication and other daily issues.
Meganck, who has 25 years of experience working with families, has already spoken with some of the students on campus. She is also willing to visit families outside of school.
“It’s been great so far, the children have been very receptive,” Meganck said. “At first they were apprehensive but more and more come by my office.”
Anderson, who works part-time at Hallett, has 30 years of experience working with children in crisis and trauma. She focuses on violence prevention and positive behavior intervention support.
“I’ve been real impressed with how welcoming the Hallett staff has been,” Anderson said. “The goal of the grant is to try and decrease violence in the school.”
Following the introductions of Meganck and Anderson, assistant business manager Chad Moss gave a report where he explained that revenues and expenditures were slightly down for the first quarter. He added that enrollment experienced a small downtick in the last month.
“We’ve haven’t lost a ton of kids which is great and hopefully we can build that back up,” Moss said.
In action items, the board approved the second readings of the updated policies P2161 “Special Education and Related Services for Eligible Students” and P2162 “Education of Students with Disabilities Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.”
They also approved the first and second readings of P5011 “Sexual Harassment” as well as the first readings of P3115 “Nondiscrimination,” P3207 “Prohibition of Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying” and P3115 “Homeless Students Enrollment Rights and Services.”
Superintendent Tim Ames explained that the district already has these policies in place but they are updating and cleaning up the language to comply with state and federal regulations.
“We’re redefining and clarifying. You’ll see a lot of ‘shalls’ changed to ‘wills,’” Ames said.
Board member Felicia Jensen asked if these changes would reflect the policies in the student handbooks. Ames said he will cross-reference the changes with what is written in the student handbooks.
Kim Headrick, director of teaching and learning, explained the district’s upcoming consolidated program review from the Washington state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). According to Headrick, OSPI will review Title 1, learning assistance, highly capable and career and technical education and other districts programs outside of special education. She said OSPI will visit the district April 21.
“OSPI will go to each of the buildings, looking at each document, just to make sure we are following state and federal regulations,” Headrick said.
During his superintendent’s report Ames gave details about attending the Greater Spokane Incorporated’s Joint Chambers trip to Olympia. He met with local representatives to discuss funding for education.
“Education is going to get money, it’s just a matter of how much money,” Ames said. “There was also a push to not take education and pit it against social services.”
Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].
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