Haxtun BOE reviews new behavior & discipline matrices

Haxtun Schools started last week and when parents and students gathered for back to school night, they were presented new District behavior and discipline matrices. Those documents were also an area of focus during the Board of Education meeting last week.

High School Agriculture Teacher Jeff Plumb presented the new discipline and behavior matrices to members of the Board of Education on behalf of the District Leadership Committee. That committee is made up of seven school staff members including teachers Staci Tempel, Kristie Boerner, Meghan Lowe, Amanda Ridlin and Plumb as well as administrators Marsha Cody, Dustin Seger and Becky Heinz.

Cody, the District’s Superintendent, said when she accepted her new position with Haxtun last spring, one of her first items of business included staff surveys, which she sent out in late May. Overwhelmingly, she said, most staff members asked to clarify the behavior and discipline documents within the District to be clear and consistent.

Since receiving that correspondence, Cody tasked the District Leadership Committee with gathering samples from other districts and obtaining feedback from staff members. Over the course of the initial week when staff members returned to school this fall, the Committee completed that task and developed the documents as presented.

Plumb said the Committee hopes the documents will be simple, clear and concise and easy for students to understand and follow. The behavior metrics, he said, are clear with simple tasks such as “leave no trace, be kind and be courteous.”

“Here is what you should do and here is how you act,” Plumb said of the expectations from students.

Cody said her goal with the two documents is to be consistent across the board. “It is absolutely essential we all follow the same rules,” she told board members.

Final drafts of the two documents were distributed to board members for review in the Tuesday, Aug. 17 meeting and were also given to students on the first day of school. Plumb added that homeroom teachers planned to spend time reviewing the information with high school students in the first few days back this year and older students would help teach expectations to younger elementary and junior high students.

The two documents may also be found on the District website, haxtunk12.org.

To kick off the August meeting, board members spent a great amount of time of the two-hour meeting hearing from Cody regarding her Superintendent’s report. Included in her report were details in the first reading of several policies needing updates.

Cody first talked about the school dress code and proposed making changes to discipline for offenses for inappropriate dress in the classroom. Many of the offenses, she said, carried steep punishment including out of school suspension and expulsion. Changes, she proposed, include detention time and in-school suspension for most offenses.

“Dress code is always a hot topic,” she added. Cody asked board members to think about changes to the length of shorts and how to distinguish an appropriate length.

A second policy under review, at Cody’s request, is IKFE regarding graduation requirements. In 2015 the Colorado Department of Education mandated new graduation requirements for all Colorado schools that were to be implemented within five years.

Throughout that time in Haxtun, some seniors, juniors and sophomores have not or will not meet those exact graduation requirements and in adopting the first reading of the policy, Cody asked for a grace period for those students to still obtain a high school diploma.

Some areas of concern include physical education, math and science credit requirements and courses equivalent for those credits.

Board member Tamra Durbin asked why some of the students will fall short on those requirements and in short Cody and High School Principal Dustin Seger told her they didn’t know how the setback occurred. Seger said as of the meeting date, the changes in credits affected five high school seniors.

The dress code and graduation requirement policies are in the initial stages of changes and will be looked at again during the September meeting.

In other business the Board:

• Approved the resignation of Mimi Weaver as high school secretary. She plans to retire in September. The District is currently accepting applications for the position, which will be filled as soon as possible so training can begin;

• Approved Jennifer Arguello as a para-professional;

• Approved McCall Etl as the junior high assistant volleyball coach;

• Approved the 2021-22 bus routes.