Cheney High School finally has an updated new Associated Student Body constitution.
At its May 27 meeting, the Cheney School District board of directors received a report and a copy of the new constitution from several ASB officers and high school assistant principal Jeff Roberts. Roberts said the work on revising and updating the old constitution, which was last updated in 1994 and contained references to procedures dating back to 1978, began in February.
The ASB had hoped to have it finished by April, but the task proved more difficult than anticipated, particularly when it came to language and agreement on what updates would benefit future CHS students. Roberts said the group just finished the document a couple weeks ago.
ASB officer Jackson Spencer said the need to update the document came about from disputes over homeroom representation during the 2013-14 school year.
“Really, we hadn’t even been using the constitution anymore,” Spencer told the board.
Spencer said a lot of the work centered around updating the election processes as well as defining officers’ roles and responsibilities, such as how to deal with officers who are not attending ASB meetings on a regular basis. ASB president Mary McCombie added they also included language defining expectations of incoming officers, and how the ASB might hold the rest of the student body accountable to these expectations as well.
The officers told the board there were many times during the revision process when opinions came into conflict. As a humorous example, they noted that they changed the school’s colors from red and black, to black and red.
“We’re really proud of this document and hope it will serve our ASB,” Spencer said on a more serious level.
The school board later in the meeting voted unanimously to accept the new constitution.
In old business, the board held the second reading and final passage of revisions to a policy regarding the release of resident students to attend other districts, and a policy regarding sexual harassment. Both policies’ language revisions were reviewed at the May 13 meeting and had no changes since that time.
The board also approved as complete work performed by contractor 4QTRS, LLC on installation of emergency response software. The work was paid for through a grant from the Washington state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and connects all safety equipment in the school district such as cameras, information and alert systems into one central location.
Finally, the board approved renewing a contract with the firm of Myers-Stevens for providing the district’s student accident insurance. Myers-Stevens has been the district’s policy carrier for the past 12 years, but after renewing the contract last year the board asked the district’s executive director of finance, Kassidy Probert, to look into other options for the same insurance. Probert said he contacted other school district’s in the area regarding potential options.
“They all came back saying this (Myers-Stevens) was really the only option for this,” Probert said.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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