Olympia School District begins board policies review with Citizens Advisory Committee

The Olympia School District (OSD) held the first reading of the policies, starting with its guidelines for its Board of Directors, July 27, after it was first reviewed by its Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC).

“We are in the process of bringing new policies or consideration and amended policies for consideration to the board as a part of the Citizens Advisory Committee that was triggered by the board in March,” OSD President Darcy Huffman said.

OSD’s CAC comprises of students, family members, staff, and community members who are leading the work of the district policy review in preparation for adoption by the school board. 

“Director [Talauna] Reed and I have been taking the lead on that work and working with an incredible group of dedicated community volunteers that represent the student voice and educator voice and community members from across our district and various perspectives,” Huffman added.

The CAC’s purposes are:

• To complete a review and update of all OSD policies.
• To revise district policies not in compliance with state and federal laws.
• To draft a policy for board consideration that establishes a standing committee of the board to conduct regular policy reviews and recommend policy updates to the board.
• To expand opportunities for students, families, practicing educators, and the community to lead in the policy and governance of OSD.
• To alleviate the burden on staff to draft policy revisions for board consideration.

Review of the Board’s 1000 series

The CAC and the board first reviewed the policies under the 1000 series - Board of Directors referred to in OSD’s agenda.

The review and revisions would be benchmarked on the policies of the Washington State School Directors' Association (WSSDA).

Reed said that the revisions are mostly minor language edits, updating references, updating to mirror the most current model policy, and a few additional items. Some revisions are focused on making the language of policies more inclusive.

“We decided as a group that just all instances where it says ‘he/she’, we're just going to change those all. And then, in the summary, anywhere where it says ‘kindergarten to 12th-grade students’, we just changed that to ‘all students.’ That includes the preschool and post-high school students to be more inclusive,” Reed said.

Reed also indicated that the revision introduces a more robust and concise version of the board’s current policies.

“We wanted to make the policies robust enough that there wouldn't be a lot of questions about them. But we also wanted to make them concise enough that they were understandable and clear, so we took out a lot of redundancies here,” Reed added.

Huffman informed the attendees that the fastest the next reading can occur would be three weeks after the current meeting.