January 18, 2024 | By Keith Shearon
Perhaps you recently read that Franklin County is changing its policy to charge out-of-system students a portion of instructional costs. I heard the story (word of mouth), and it was told in the context of that county’s schools not being at capacity, as if to say this would allow Franklin to fill its schools. You might find it interesting that Granville County has had such a policy for a while. Granville County currently has 15 students across the county enrolled using this policy. The policy states that those students will reimburse Granville Public Schools for the portion of instructional costs borne by the county.
A policy on support animals was discussed, with staff and board members going over the accommodations made, primarily for support dogs. The dogs are specially trained to assist their owner and adapt well even in the school environment, so are unlikely to cause a mess or have other problems in the student population.
It turns out however that the discussion yielded a surprising fact. The Federal government protects one other family of animals besides canine, and it’s equine. Miniature equines. That’s right, not only are miniature horses permitted to be service animals, but miniature horses in service are protected by federal law where the premises can be modified to accommodate them. This odd law stems from a desire to have service animals with a longer life span than that of dogs.
One member of the group, who shall remain unnamed, noted that cats are not permitted as service animals because cats don’t want to serve anyone. Cats are great, but I admit that all of my cat’s have been self-centered and incapable of providing support.
It’s against school policy to have lunch delivered by a service, for instance Domino’s.
The school system carries insurance for students engaged in school activities. But there was some discussion about “unusual but normal” student activities, like driving a tractor in an Agricultural program, a perfectly normal activity for Ag students, yet not for most students.
State law requires the school system give an extra measure of protection for personal information in cases where students and their families may have suffered from abuse. Students and parents may seek to conceal their residential address, for instance, where a court has provided such protection during the adjudication of an abuse case. There was some discussion amongst the board about this policy and the situation where a student’s image might appear in ordinary news coverage of a school sporting event. The board may take up this topic in future discussions.
The staff and board members present for the meeting said they have gotten a lot of positive feedback on school cell phone policies, indicating that restrictions in place now are providing better student discipline.
Regarding student behavior and discipline, there was more discussion among the committee about the failure to enforce the school dress code throughout the system. Observations were made by Board Member Danielle Hayes that some female teenagers routinely display more of themselves than the code allows. Dr. Stan Winbourne indicated that this is likely due to male staff members’ lack of comfort in the current culture to address violations directly with offenders, teenage girls.
All of the committee seemed to agree however that there are enough female staff at every school to enforce the code, and that additional effort will be made to enforce the dress code more precisely. There was general agreement that it may become regular practice to exclude non-compliant dress at the front door each day. In other words, if parents don’t make sure their child is properly dressed when they arrive at the schoolhouse door, those parents may find themselves having to retrieve their child from school early in the morning because the child failed to arrive properly dressed for class.
And it was noted that bus cameras are being closely monitored such that student behavior be compliant to all procedures and rules, primarily to keep the peace and assure that the travel to school was as stress-free as possible.