The Littlefork-Big Falls School Board heard Wednesday that discussion has continued with other districts on a comprehensive truancy policy, under a Criminal Justice Initiative in which area principals, superintendents and deans of students seek to enforce uniform consequences to all students who are truant in Koochiching County.
“It’s a work in progress,” Superintendent Fred Seybert told The Daily Journal. Seybert reports that implementation of a new policy could begin yet this school year or may begin in the 2010-11 school year.
Truancy, said Seybert, is generally defined as excessive absences and tardy arrivals at school which affect the student in a negative way.
The L-BF district is also reviewing possible changes in its bus drop policy, which was reviewed by the Transportation Committee and has been sent to the Policy Committee. Of concern is the direction by some students that, instead of being dropped at the point near their own residences, they ask to be dropped somewhere else. Seybert said the board is considering that the policy should state that bus drops should only be at the student’s assigned pickup and drop point.
The transportation director will review a revised policy which will go before the board for action at the November meeting.
The L-BF Nutrition Committee reported to the board that it has continued reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the school’s breakfast and lunch programs. The committee is currently in discussion on nutritional issues with school nurse Susan Palm as well Natalie Stone of the Koochiching County Health Department.
The committee also reports that the school’s vending machines will be shut off from 7:45-8:45 a.m. and 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., to keep products in the machines from competing with the meals offered by L-BF.
Copies of 2008-09 Annual Report on Curriculum Instruction and Student Achievement were distributed at Wednesday’s meeting, and the information which includes the district’s state test results as well as goals, is also available on its Web site at www.isd362.k12.mn.us.
L-BF students of the month are high school student Christopher Paulbeck and junior high school student Chandon Street.
