School board policy committee talks dress code, bus driver shortage at meeting
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on February 15, 2017 9:57 AM
The Wayne County Board of Education policy committee discussed several policies Tuesday to be brought before the board at its Feb. 21 work session and March board meeting.
The policies ranged from relatively new initiatives to long-standing debates which may finally be resolved. The latter was the case in the discussion over teacher dress code, which committee chair Jennifer Strickland said has been going on in one form or another for two years.
The proposed policy loosens some aspects of the code, allowing teachers to wear sleeveless dresses and giving principals the latitude to allow "jean days" for teachers as an incentive for hard work or during spirit weeks.
District 3 representative Patricia Burden said that policy was too "wide open" and allowed too much flexibility in how principals can determine dress code. She took issue with a line in the policy reading "Supervisors and school level interpretations shall be given deference," as effectively allowing principals to set dress codes to be whatever they wanted at all times, which is not the intent of the policy.
She said the policy as written would not address the issues it was designed to.
"Sometimes, you can walk into a school and not be able to tell who are the teachers and who are the students," she said. "And it's not because of age, it's because of dress."
The committee also discussed changes to the responsibilities of some employees, specifically instructional assistants and custodial workers. Under the changes to policy 7435, anyone applying for one of those positions would also be expected to obtain and maintain a commercial driver's license in order to drive a school bus if needed. The changes are part of the employment agreement form for those positions, meaning that being able and available to drive a bus if necessary would be considered part of the employee's job description.
Robert Lee, director of transportation, said the changes bring the county in line with others in the surrounding area. He said that instructional assistants and custodians would only be called upon when a bus driver was unable to come to work, and they would be assigned to the shortest routes possible.
District 2 representative Len Henderson expressed concern that adding additional responsibilities outside the skill set of an instructional assistant could drive potential candidates away.
"We need to make sure we are monitoring this to make sure it is not to our detriment," he said. "We could end up decreasing our candidate pool."
Lee said that, while some candidates had come to Wayne County in the past specifically to avoid this kind of policy in surrounding counties, it was still necessary to combat the bus driver shortage the district currently faces.
He said that making sure kids get home safely and on time is what matters.
"Parents get tired of hearing me say 'I'm sorry,'" he said.
The committee then discussed the NCSTAR system, an online tool the district has begun using to keep up with school improvement plans. With NCSTAR, school improvement teams are required to update their plans frequently, as opposed to writing a plan for the year and then leaving it be.
Tamara Ishee, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, said that the plans have not been updated as frequently as they should be. However, she cautioned the committee members that schools are still getting used to the technology, and not to expect the returns to be perfect right away.
The tool, she said, is not the main problem anyway.
"It's not about NCSTAR, it's about how do we ratchet up their commitment to school improvement," Ms. Ishee said.
Henderson said he wanted to make sure there was some way to convey to the average person what schools are doing to improve themselves. School improvement plans are often dense, technical documents, and Henderson said there needs to be a way to break that information down for someone who might not understand all of the details.
After some discussion, Ms. Ishee suggested to the committee that she convene a meeting of parents, students, faculty and board members to discuss what NCSTAR does and does not provide, and how to best account for the services it doesn't have.