Can you put an emoticon in the Dawg Blawg?  Surely in the name of summer you can.  As temperatures soar and days fly by, we must recognize we only have a few weeks until teachers return, followed in short order by the babies, large and small.  Which means we have work to do!

For those of you who are hoping to push policy updates through the Board approval process during these last few weeks, I wanted to bring to your attention an important change to the TASB policy review process.  If you are familiar with policy updates or have taken a look at Update 111, you may have noticed that TASB included a memo this time with an overview of legal issues and best practices relevant to the affected policy codes.  This is a change from their past practice in which they would identify districts with locally developed content on each affected policy and prepare a legal opinion on the impact of the changes when a district’s policy raised concerns.  With 1000ish school districts to keep track of, you can imagine that was a tremendous amount of work.  The new approach is to give everyone the information they need to consider the impact of the updates on their district’s local policies.

The short story here is: read the memo. Even if your district only has “A” versions of all the affected policies, it will be helpful to you in considering other options and the attendant legal implications of those options.  If you have a bunch of X policies, read the memo very carefully so you can be sure you know how the updates will affect your district.  Above all, read the policy updates.  It is easy to get complacent when your policies are being developed for you and subjected to a fine tooth legal comb before they even reach your inbox.  You and your board need to know what they actually say.  Sometimes they require you to develop local regulations or guidelines.  Sometimes they require you to train your staff.  Sometimes they give you a whole bunch of authority you didn’t have before.  You won’t know unless you read them.

DAWG BONE:   PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO YOUR POLICY UPDATES AND THE INFO TASB PROVIDES. 

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