By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

RESERVE – A 135-page packet containing new and updated policies for the St. John the Baptist Parish public school system was issued to board members last week by Director of Human Resources Leigh Ann Beard.

While the majority of the policies deal with internal matters such as leave, qualifications and discipline measures for employees, some are specifically aimed at the interactions among parents, students and employees of the school system.

The majority of the policies remain the same as those in place last school year, but a handful were either revised or introduced for the first time in September.

The only completely new policy deals with electronic communication between students and employees of the school system. It states communication by means of e-mail must be limited to school-related information and such communication should only be done using a school board-provided e-mail address. The purpose of this policy is to stifle any inappropriate communications between students and school system employees. The implementation of this policy was mandated by the state legislature at their last session.

One of the newly revised policies involves the hiring of personnel within the school system. The revised portion of the policy strengthens the language pertaining to disclosure of information of applicants.

Other recent changes include those to policies regarding student discipline and truancy.

The district’s executive committee will meet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. tomorrow at the central office to discuss the policies.

The school board will vote on the policies at their next meeting on Thursday, Oct. 15, at 6 p.m. in the Godchaux Grammar School Cafeteria.